Harlan, John Marshall (b. June 1, 1833, Boyle county, Ky., U.S.—d. Oct. 14, 1911, Washington, D.C.) U.S. jurist. In the 1850s he was a law¬ yer and county judge in Boyle county, Ky. From 1861 to 1863 he com¬ manded a Union regiment in the American Civil War. He served as state attorney general (1863—67) and ran unsuccessfully as a Republican can¬ didate for governor in 1871 and 1875. In 1877 he was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by Pres. Rutherford B. Hayes. During his tenure, which lasted to his death in 1911, he became one of the most forceful dissenters in the court’s history and its outstanding liberal jus¬ tice. His best-known dissenting opinions, such as those in Plessy v. Fergu¬ son (1896) and the Civil Rights cases (1883), favoured the rights of blacks. He also issued famous dissents in favour of the federal income tax (1895) and opposing monopolies in cases arising under the Sherman Anti¬ trust Act of 1890. His grandson John Marshall Harlan (1899-1971) also served on the Supreme Court (1955-71).
Harlem District occupying part of northern Manhattan Island, New York City, U.S. It lies north of Central Park, with its business district centred on 125th Street. Founded by Peter Stuyvesant in 1658 as Nieuw Haarlem, it was named after Haarlem in the Netherlands. During the American Revo¬ lution it was the site of the Battle of Harlem Heights (Sept. 16, 1776). It was a farming area in the 18th century and a fashionable residential dis¬ trict in the 19th century. A black residential and commercial area by World War I, in the 1920s it was the centre of the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance.
Harlem Globetrotters African American professional basketball team. The team was organized in 1927 in Chicago by the promoter Abe Saperstein and initially was a competitive team that won a world profes¬ sional championship in 1940. Since the 1930s the team had incorporated comic routines into their games, and, with the integration of the NBA in the 1950s, the team increasingly emphasized comedy over competition. For the next 50 years the Globetrotters played exhibition games all over the world, displaying spectacular ball handling and humorous antics and always defeating their official opposition, the Washington Generals. In the mid-1990s the team returned to playing competitive games.
Harlem Renaissance or New Negro Movement Period of out¬ standing vigour and creativity centred in New York’s black ghetto of Har¬ lem in the 1920s. Its leading literary figures included Alain Locke (1886— 1954), James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Jean Toomer, Wallace Thurman (1902-34), and Arna Bontemps. The literary movement, which both fed and took inspiration from the great creative and commercial growth of jazz and a concurrent burgeoning of the visual arts (see Aaron Douglas) —in Harlem as well as in Paris, Chicago, Washington, D.C., London, and the Caribbean—altered the character of much African
Black-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus californicus )
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© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
840 I Harlequin ► harp
American literature. Increasingly, this literature reflected a newfound con¬ fidence in self-expression and examined the African American experience in all its variety.
Harlequin \'har-li-k(w)3n\ Principal stock character of the Italian com- media dell'arte. In the 16th century he was a wily, unscrupulous comic ser¬ vant, but by the early 17th century he was a faithful valet involved in amorous exploits. His costume of peasant clothes covered with coloured patches developed into a tight-fitting costume decorated with bright tri¬ angles and diamond shapes. He carried a batte, or slapstick, and wore a black half-mask. In mid-18th-century England Harlequin was portrayed by John Rich in dance pantomimes (see mime and pantomime). He was also the principal character of the slapstick form known as a harlequinade in England and elsewhere.
Harley, Robert, 1st earl of Oxford (b. Dec. 5, 1661, London, Eng.—d. May 21, 1724, London) English politician. Elected to Parlia¬ ment in 1688, he led a coalition of Whigs and moderate Tories. He was speaker of the House of Commons (1701-05) and secretary of state (1704-08). A favourite of Queen Anne, he changed his politics to ally with the Tories. He became chancellor of the Exchequer and head of the Tory ministry in 1710. Created earl of Oxford (1711) and lord treasurer, he secured a reasonable peace at the Peace of Utrecht (1713). He was exiled from power by the Hanoverian succession and imprisoned (1715— 17), after which he retired from politics.
Harlow, Jean orig. Harlean Carpenter (b. March 3, 1911, Kan¬ sas City, Mo., U.S.—d. June 7, 1937,
Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. film actress. She worked as an extra and played bit parts before her first suc¬ cess, in Hell’s Angels (1930). With her platinum-blonde hair and flashy vulgarity, she became Warner Broth¬ ers’ resident sex symbol in The Pub¬ lic Enemy and Platinum Blonde (1931). At MGM she showed herself to be an able actress with a flair for comedy in films such as Dinner at Eight (1933), China Seas (1935),
Libeled Lady (1936), and Saratoga (1937). After surviving two divorces, the suicide of her second husband, and public scandal, she died of ure¬ mic poisoning at 26.
harmonic See overtone
harmonic motion See simple har¬ monic MOTION
harmonica or mouth organ
Small rectangular wind instrument consisting of free metal reeds set in slots in a small wooden frame and blown through two parallel rows of wind channels. Successive notes of the diatonic (seven-note) scale are obtained by alternately blowing and sucking; the tongue covers channels not required. In chromatic (12-note scale) models, a finger-operated stop selects either of two sets of reeds tuned a semitone apart. The har¬ monica was invented in 1821 by Friedrich Buschmann (1805-64) of Berlin, who borrowed the basic prin¬ ciple from the Chinese sheng. It is widely used in blues as well as folk music and country music.
harmonium or reed organ
Free-reed keyboard instrument in which wind from a foot-operated bellows causes metal reeds to vibrate. Pitch is determined by the size of the reed; there are no pipes.
Separate sets of reed produce differ¬ ent tone colours, the sound quality being determined by the size and shape of the tone chamber surround¬
ing each reed. The harmonium developed in the early to mid-19th cen¬ tury in Europe and America, and it was a very popular church and home instrument into the 1930s.
harmony In music, the sound of two or more notes heard simulta¬ neously. In a narrower sense harmony refers to the extensively developed system of chords and the rules that govern relations between them in Western music. Harmony has always existed as the “vertical” (the rela¬ tionship between simultaneous melodic lines) aspect of older music that is primarily contrapuntal; the rules of counterpoint are intended to con¬ trol consonance and dissonance, which are fundamental aspects of har¬ mony. However, the sense of harmony as dominating the individual contrapuntal lines followed from the invention of the continuo c. 1600; the bass line became the generating force upon which harmonies were built. This approach was formalized in the 18th century in a treatise by Jean-Philippe Rameau, who argued that all harmony is based on the “root” or fundamental note of a chord. Tonality is principally a harmonic con¬ cept and is based not only on a seven-note scale of a given key but on a set of harmonic relations and progressions based on triads (three-note chords) drawn from the scale.
Harmsworth, Alfred See Viscount Northcliffe
harness racing Horse-racing sport. In harness racing, Standardbred horses are harnessed to lightweight, two-wheeled, bodiless (seat-only) vehicles known as sulkies. The sport’s origins date to ancient chariot races. Today two types of horses are used, trotters and pacers. The former employ a gait in which the legs move in diagonal pairs, the latter a gait in which the legs move in lateral pairs. Since the establishment of pari¬ mutuel racing under lights in the 1940s, the sport has grown tremendously in popularity.