Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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dropped from the professional tour for failing to recruit

African Americans

to their

membership. Most recently a young star named Tiger Woods has emerged who claims

both African and Asian ancestry. His prominence may spur further re-examination of the

membership practices at private clubs across the nation, and may encourage more

minority youths to take up what has until now remained a sport played mostly by whites.

Further reading

Feinstein, J. (1999)

The Majors,

New York: Little Brown and Co.

ROBERT ANDERSON

Good Neighbor Policy

Latin America; Roosevelt, Franklin Delano

Gordy, Barry

music, popular; Motown

Gore, Albert, Jr.

b. 1948

Son of the distinguished

Democratic Party

senator from Tennessee, Gore grew up

between

Washington, DC

and Carthage, Tennessee before attending Harvard and

enlisting for service in Vietnam. He later worked as a journalist and attended Vanderbilty

Divinity and Law Schools before joining Congress in 1977 and becoming a senator in

1984. He ran unsuccessfully in a crowded Democratic primary field in 1988, but became

Bill

Clinton’s

running-mate in 1992, serving two terms as vice-

resident. Gore has

claimed special commitment to and expertise in environmental issues (

Earth in the

alance,

1992) and

telecommunications

. Heir to Clinton, in his 2000 presidential

campaign Gore was both tainted by administrative scandals and unable to project the

charisma that had carried Clinton through. His sober, wooden delivery and gaffes became

the stuff of political satire. His performance at the Democratic

Conventions,

however,

forced a tighter race with George

Bush

GARY McDONOGH

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 496

gospel music

While this may refer to traditions of white hymnody (which intersect with

country

music

), “gospel” is more often identified with a black genre that emerged from spirituals

after the turn of the nineteenth century alongside ragtime,

blues

and

jazz

. This free-form

singing, with emotive solos, antiphonal responses of repeated spiritual messages,

instrumental back-up (piano and tambourine) and rhythmic choral support, was also

associated with the rise of charismatic and spiritual churches. In fact, mainline black

Protestant denominations avoided it for decades. Among its guiding spirits was Thomas

Dorsey, who turned from blues to the composition of classic gospel hymns like “Precious

Lord, Take my Hand” (1932). Gospel influenced—and was influenced by—

rhythm and

blues

and

soul;

artists Sam

Cooke

and Aretha

Franklin

embody this intersection in their

work.

GARY MCDONOGH

gourmet food

Since the 1960s, “gourmet” (sometimes “continental”) food has been associated with

vague derivatives of classical French cuisine, using cream or wine sauces, expensive

ingredients outside the northern European palate (olives, snails, pâté, wines) and

elaborate presentations. As Jane and Michael Stern discuss this evolution in

American

Gourmet

(1991), this cuisine, as American as chop suey established itself in hotels and

kitchens

across the country and often constitutes a separate section in supermarkets and

cookbooks

. Yet it is also a style many view with suspicion because of its “upper-class”

associations.

Further reading

Stern, J. and M. (1991)

American Gourmet,

New York: HarperCollins.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

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governors

The governor is the head of the executive branch of

state government

. He or she is

opularly elected, serving in most cases for a term of four years. The timing o

governors’ elections varies; some are elected in the same year as presidential elections,

while others are elected in the mid-term elections that take place halfway through a

presidential term of office.

Although the original intent in establishing state governments was that governors

should enjoy powers within their states broadly analogous to that of the president, in fact

there are substantial restrictions on governors’

owers. Many aspects of governance for

which they are nominally responsible, including

education,

public health and

welfare,

are also supervised by federal agencies that can override the governors’

owers.

Governors, like

presidents,

are also answerable to their state Senates and Houses o

Representatives. In some cases, governors of states that have large urban centers with

powerful

mayors

find their writ is limited with regard to the latter; the governor of

New

York,

for example, is arguably less powerful than the mayor of New York City who is

nominally subordinate to him. The early practice of locating state capitals in relatively

minor towns (such as Albany in New York, Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, or Sacramento in

California

) can also serve to increase governors’ isolation from the main currents o

affairs in their states.

Despite this, many governors do have significant impact on their states. Michael

Dukakis’

term as governor of Massachusetts saw important reforms affecting legal and

social issues, while in

Texas

George W.

Bush’s

program of “caring conservatism” has

claimed a similar impact.

Until comparatively recently most presidents of the United States came from the ranks

of the

Washington, DC

elite, with most having served previously as senators, members

of Congress or

vice-presidents;

this was the case with, for example, John F.

Kennedy

and Richard

Nixon

. More recently however, successful governors have increasingly used

their position as a platform for presidential ambitions. Gerald Ford and George Bush are

the only recent presidents not to have been governors. Meanwhile, Jimmy

Carter

(Georgia), Ronald

Reagan

(California), and Bill

Clinton

(Arkansas) all came from state

rather than national politics. Michael

Dukakis,

Bush’s unsuccessful Democratic

opponent in 1988, was also Governor of Massachusetts. The majority of candidates

seeking their party’s nomination for the presidency in the last two decades have also been

governors or former governors; other powerful governors such as Mario

Cuomo

have

een pressed to stand, but have refused. George W.Bush (son of the former president)

arlayed the weak governorship of Texas into a platform from which he became

Republican

presidential nominee in 1999. Among those discussed to balance the ticket

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 498

was yet another governor, Tom Ridge of Pennsyl

Governors of wealthy high-

opulation states such as California, Texas, Massachusetts

and New Jersey are often influential figures on the national scene, but many of those in

the smaller states in the

Midwest

and

West

are all but unknown outside their own state.

The election of a former professional wrestler, Jesse Ventura, as governor of Minnesota

was one of the few events in state politics to make national headlines in 1998.

MORGEN WITZEL

graffiti

While painting and writing on buildings has a millennial history graffiti in late twentieth-

century America faced two contradictory evaluations. An explosion of extensive stylized

words and pictures in vivid colors associated with particular artists on New York

subways in the 1970s focused debate on graffiti as

popular art,

associated with hip-hop

culture and urban vitality Generally these paintings are not seen in terms of political

issues, although

race and ethnicity

underpin graffiti wars. Yet, while

museums,

art

galleries and universities have championed this viewpoint, urban officials have identified

graffiti with vandalism, danger,

gangs

and quality-of-life issues. Hence, cities have

adopted zero-tolerance policies to remove graffiti immediately (especially in downtown

areas), or to prevent it through design or alternatives like active public mural programs

(

Philadelphia, PA,

for example, has covered nearly 2,000 walls in this fashion).

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Graham, Bill

Rock promoter Bill Graham turned the concert hall, the Fillmore, into a legendary site for

San Francisco, CA

rock and one of the key meeting places for the counterculture that

roliferated in the late 1960s in the Bay area. Graham started out as manager for the

avant-gardist San Francisco Mime Troupe; when the troupe got into legal trouble for

performing its risqué art publicly he organized a fundraiser at the Fillmore with the

Jefferson Airplane and The Fugs. Graham took over the hall and became renowned for

promoting eclectic combinations of artists in a night’s bill and introducing audiences to

erformers outside the mainstream. Graham died in a helicopter accident in 1991; the

Fillmore continues today under separate management.

Entries A-Z 499

ee also:

rock ’n’ roll

EDWARD MILLER

Graham, Billy

b. 1918

Preacher William Franklin Graham, Jr brought evangelical

religion

to the global stage

via mass revivals and

mass media

. After his childhood in the Depression South. Graham

turned to the fundamentalist ministry founding his Evangelical Association in 1950. His

primary vehicle was the mass crusade in urban centers from

New York

City to

Los

Angeles, CA

(and eventually from London to Moscow), rebroadcast for multiple nights

over

television

worldwide. Graham also became a conservative Christian confidant to US

presidents

from

Eisenhower

Clinton

. including the awkward Vietnam and

Nixon

years. His autobiography

Just as I am,

appeared in 1997.

GARY McDONOGH

Graham, Martha

b. 1894; d. 1991

Dramatic doyenne of American modern

dance

. As both dancer and choreographer,

Graham incorporated American cultural themes and classical dramas into her repertoire,

translated into strong bodily expression and vivid movements. She also worked with

major American composers like Aaron

Copland

and Samuel

Barber

GARY McDONOGH

Grand Ol’ Opry

country and western music; Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 500

Grateful Dead

They emerged from mid-1960s

San Francisco, CA

counterculture, adding a country

accent to psychedelic music. Starting out at the Fillmore (see

Graham, Bill

) they came to

be one of the hardest touring bands in rock history—in 1969 the band played 152 shows.

Their shows were long, filled with improvisatory solos, with audiences of “deadheads”

given to ingesting hallucinogens and dancing. Deadheads often followed the band around

the country recognizable in their tie-dyed attire and band insignia. A skull became “the

Dead” logo and the band members—especially singer/guitarist Jerry Garcia, but also Bob

Weir, Pig Pen and Mickey Hart—

ecame legendary. The band ended when Garcia passed

away in 1995 after a long struggle with drugs. Over 25,000 people paid their respects in

San Francisco’s Memorial Park.

ee also:

rock ’n’ roll

EDWARD MILLER

Graves, Michael

b. 1934

Postmodern architect and theorist. Identified as one of the New York Five (with Peter

Eisenman, Richard Meier, John Hejduk and Charles Gwathney), Graves has become

known for his interweaving of colors, classical and figurative references and natural

themes. Among his best-known works are the Portland Building and the Humana

Headquarters

(Louisville, KY)

. Graves, based at Princeton, has also extended his design

in the classroom and through association with major corporations like

Disney

and Target,

for whom he designed a housewares line.

ee also:

architecture

GARY McDONOGH

Great Lakes

Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario, five interconnected freshwater lakes,

Entries A-Z 501

make up one of the largest surface freshwater reservoirs on Earth. (The polar ice caps and

Russia’s Lake Balaika are larger.) The 10,900 mile coastline touches eight US states

(Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York)

and two Canadian provinces, Ontario and Quebec. The 295,000 square mile Great Lakes

watershed, including five rivers linking the lakes to each other and to the Atlantic Ocean,

provides 95 percent of the United States’ fresh-water supply

Unsurpassed water transportation routes and the region’s seemingly limitless supply o

lumber, iron and other metallic ores sustained the Great Lakes area from the 1820s to

1960 as the United States’ premier center of industrial production. Well-paid

union

labor,

making wood products, steel and later railroad equipment and cars, built the ethnically

diverse industrial cities of

Chicago, IL, Detroit, MI

and

Cleveland, OH

Milwaukee

grew famous brewing beer from Great Lakes’ water, while rivals Green Bay Wisconsin

and Kalamazoo, Michigan tapped the waters for their paper industries.

Buffalo, New

York

prospered first by moving cargo around Niagara Falls and later as the headquarters

of massive hydroelectric power systems utilizing Niagara itself.

The general decline of heavy industry in the urban

Northeast

after 1960 impoverished

the region, which has tried to encourage

tourism,

leisure and summer-home development

to replace good jobs lost in industry and shipping. Leisure had long contributed a share to

the regional economy especially at Mackinac Island in Michigan, Door County in

Wisconsin and the area around Niagara Falls. Since 1960,

fishing,

boating, cruising and

sightseeing have grown in proportionate importance as industry has declined. Sport-

fishing mushroomed in Lake Michigan after the introduction of Coho salmon to the lake

in the early 1960s. Old industrial

waterfronts

in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and

elsewhere were reclaimed in the 1970s for leisure use. Since the 1980s, shipwreckhunting

cruises, restored historic lighthouse facilities and collections of Great Lakes shipping

history and lore have fed new tourist interest in the more romantic aspects of the region’s

industrial past.

The continuing importance of the Great Lakes’ water both for consumption and leisure

has generated numerous interstate and international cooperative efforts to control water

quality detoxify sediments, clean beaches and rebuild the damaged ecology of the whole

region. Modern

environmentalism

has even given surviving Native American tribes new

voices in regional deliberations, almost 180 years after they were defeated in the

international scramble for control of the Great Lakes. Though its troubles are

compounded by unexpected economic decline, the Great Lakes area really continues to

struggle with the same age-old problem of balancing the claims of competing

urisdictions and contradictory uses for the region’s great natural assets.

Further reading

Bastow, T. (1986)

This Vast Pollution,

Washington, DC: Green Fields.

Lloyd, T. and Mullen, P. (eds) (1990)

Lake Erie Fishermen,

Urbana: University of

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 502

Illinois.

Wille, L. (1991)

Forever Open, Clear, and Free: the Struggle for Chicago’s Lakefront,

Chicago: University of Chicago.

http://www.epa.gov.glnpo

SHARON ANN HOLT

Great Society

Johnson, Lyndon Baines; War on Poverty

Greek Americans

The first wave of Greek immigrants arrived in the United States in the 1890s, settling

mainly in cities along the east coast. There are no exact statistics, but it has been

estimated that between 1890 and 1930 some 450,000 Greeks had emigrated to the United

States; more than 200,000 of them returned to Greece, however, either as volunteers

during the First World War or because of the Great Depression in the States, and many

more because they felt that they were not welcome in the United States.

The second phase of Greek

immigration

was between 1946 and 1960, following the

end of the Second World War and the civil war, that left Greece in ruins. Most of the new

immigrants came to the States for economic reasons and some as displaced persons. The

third and final phase began in 1966 when the immigration laws were liberalized. It has

een estimated that between 1945 and 1980 some 250,000 Greeks emigrated to the

United States.

No accurate statistics exist, but, according to the 1990 census, in addition to those o

immigrant status there are 1,110,373 Americans of Greek ancestry and there are nearly

400,000 whose mother tongue is Greek. All in all there may be close to 2 million

Americans with Greek roots, most of them living in major cities throughout the United

States.

While the early immigrants engaged in small business, including restaurants,

newspaper parlors, dry-goods stores, shoemakers, tailor shops, grocery stores and

bakeries, their descendants have turned to

education,

the sciences and professions. Thus

today there are some 5,000 educators,

college and university

professors, including

administrators of major universities, many physicians and lawyers, and many more in

finance and business administration, including chief executives who served or serve

major corporations such as

Dow Chemical,

Mobil Oil, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Thermo

Electron, American Standard, Conoco, Boston Scientific, International Paper and Giant

Foods—to mention just a few ranked by

Forbes

magazine.

Entries A-Z 503

Another major trend among Greek Americans of the second and third generation is

interest in politics and civil service. In the last quarter of the twentieth century Americans

have seen a vice-

resident (Spiro Agnew), presidential candidates (Michael Dukakis and

Paul Tsongas), members of a president’s Cabinet (Peter Peterson) and advisers (George

Stephanopoulos), several senators and members of Congress (Brademas, Sarbanes,

Tsongas, Olympia Snow, Yatron, Gikas, Billirakis, Pappas, Galifianakis) of Greek origin.

Even though Greek names are easily recognizable, there are many Greek Americans who

have shortened or changed their names for business or professional reasons

(Anagnostopoulos=Agnew; Petropoulos =Peterson; Kyriazdis=Kress; Makris=Long;

Papanikolaou=Paps). Today one finds Greek Americans in every profession, including

radio,

television, publishing,

athletics and more.

In addition to local and state Greek American organizations such as the Pan-

Macedonian, Cretan, Peloponnesian and Thessalian societies, Greek American concerns

are voiced through several national organizations such as the American Hellenic Institute,

the World Council of Hellenes Abroad and the American Hellenic Educational

Progressive Association (AHEPA).

Over the course of seventy-five years, the Greek American

community

has gone

through transitions, adaptations and acculturations. Nevertheless, they maintain a strong

consciousness of the contributions and value of their historic heritage. Recent

sociological studies indicate that Greek Americans “statistically possess the highest

degree of academic achievement, i.e., education and degrees, of any ethnic group in the

United States.”

ee also:

Greek Orthodox

Further reading

Moskos, C.C. (1989)

Greek Americans,

New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Psomiades, H. III and Scourby A. (eds) (1982)

The Greek American Community in

Transition,

New York: Pella Publishing Company.

DEMETRIOS J.CONSTANTELOS

Greek Orthodox

The Greek Orthodox Christian Church in the United States is under the spiritual and

administrative jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate with headquarters in old

Byzantion, Constantinople, present-day Istanbul, Turkey. The term “Greek,” used to

describe the church, is applied in a cultural and historical sense. Even though early

Christianity was born in Hellenistic Judaism, it was nurtured by and blossomed through

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 504

the Greek language, the thought-world and missionary activity of the Greek-speaking

eople under Roman rule for at least the first four centuries of our era. Today Greek

Orthodox is synonymous with Eastern Orthodox, and is used by several churches o

different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

Doctrinally the Greek Orthodox Church subscribes to the faith of early Christianity as

it developed on the basis of the holy scriptures, and the understanding and interpretation

y important church elders, local councils and ecumenical synods, and the living

experience of the church in history. Maintaining continuity with the past, without

remaining static in its interpretation, is a major concern of the Greek Orthodox Church.

The earliest Greek Orthodox

community

in the United States was founded in 1864 in

New Orleans, LA

. It served the needs of Orthodox Christians of various ethnic and

cultural backgrounds. Between 1864 and 1900, there were but a few thousand Greek

Orthodox Christians. By 1922 there were 139 Greek Orthodox communities throughout

the United States, but there was no administrative unity—no coordinating head—and

they resembled Greek city-states in the American continent.

The real history of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States starts in 1922 when

the Greek Orthodox archdiocese was chartered and began to bring under its aegis all

Greek Orthodox communities in the Americas. There are no official statistics about the

number of active members in the church. At the end of 1997, there were 525 organized

church communities served by 586 pastors, 35 priests with lay professions and several

retired clergymen. The archdiocese is under one archbishop, five metropolitans and three

auxiliary bishops.

Most of the church’s members between the early 1900s and 1945 were immigrants

who came either from Greece or as

refugees

from Asia Minor, present-day Turkey Egypt

and other Near-Eastern countries and Eastern Europe. A new wave of Greek immigrants

in the 1960s contributed to the establishment of new communities and educational

institutions. At present, the archdiocese supports a liberal arts college, a theological

school, an institution for the training of Greek language teachers and church workers,

several homes for the aged, a mission center, several day and many afternoon Greek

language and culture schools.

The Greek Orthodox Church in the United States is presently going through a

transition. While for many years the leadership of the church was in the hands o

immigrant parents and grandparents, today it has passed to second- and third-generation

Greek Americans

. Furthermore, Greek, as the official liturgical language of the church,

is slowly but steadily yielding to the use of English, especially in communities o

Midwestern

and Pacific states. The transition has not been conducted without some

tension between the founders and the inheritors of the churches. But no schisms or

conflicts have impeded the growth and influence of the church, whose membership today

includes many who have joined it either through intermarriage or through personal

spiritual quest.

The Greek Orthodox Church in the United States views their faith (doctrine, ethos and

liturgical life) as old wine put into new wineskins (cf. Matthew 9.17).

Entries A-Z 505