Blind Tom

Blind Tom by Shirley-Raye Redmond Download PDF EPUB FB2

Everyone knows that trains helped build the West, but few know the story of Blind Tom, a sightless workhorse who pulled flatcars for construction crews on the world’s first transcontinental rail-road/5(8). The story of Blind Tom is symbolic of how white businessmen and the American legal system have exploited and profited from African American genius from cradle to grave before and after the Civil War.

It also illustrates how white supremacy was supported by the American Legal System, in a timeless metaphor of how African American lives are only valuable if someone Cited by: 3.

"The Ballad of Blind Tom is a unique look at America" s past through the life of a truly unique American." - Present Magazine, Kansas City "Deirdre O" Connell writes dynamically enough to fittingly illustrate Wiggins" beautiful and tragic story, from his youth spent entertaining plantation society with his "parlor tricks" to his later days, when he faded into the damning realm of /5(14).

This nonfiction picture book gives young readers a glimpse into the building of the Intercontinental railroad. The story is especially accessible because of the focus on Blind Tom, a horse.

A repetitive pattern of questions and answers should keep children engaged/5. The Ballad of Blind Tom is one of the Books All Georgians Should Read compiled by the Georgia Center of the Book. About the Author Deirdre O'Connell is a writer and documentary-maker with an interest in biography and African American music history.

Blind Tom: The Horse Who Helped Build the Great Railroad is a quiet treasure. In fact, the book is so quiet that Blind Tom doesn’t even appear until almost halfway through the book. Before he makes his entrance, author Shirley Author: Shirley Raye Redmond.

Blind Tom Wiggins his earliest years "Blind Tom," as he became Blind Tom book, could mimic many kinds of sounds, from birdcalls to trains, with unbridled and uninhibited enthusiasm. In time he would incorporate such effects into his musical works, imitating wind and rain, for example, and claiming that the sounds of nature had taught him the melodies.

Although Tom was blind, his strength and spirit led him to be chosen as the lead horse for the Union Pacific line. Hardworking, patient, and loyal, he was the pride of the UPRR. Telegraph operators tracked the rail workers’ daily progress by asking, “Where’s Blind Tom today?”.

Read The Ballad of Blind Tom and discover more about the remarkable life of Thomas "Blind Tom" Wiggins. At the age of eight, Tom was licensed out to a travelling showman named Perry Oliver who promoted him as a Barnum-styled freak— “a. A tribute to Blind Tom Wiggins, 19th century slave pianist and autistic savant.

Empish holding book on Blind Tom This month is Black History Month. To start things off I am posting a story that I previously published at the Center for the Visually Impaired and VisionAware.

Later in the month I will share about another interesting blind African American. So stay tuned. Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriett. National Library Service (NLS) is a free braille and talking book library service for people with temporary or permanent low vision, blindness, or a physical disability that prevents them from reading or holding the printed page.

Through a national network of cooperating libraries, NLS circulates books and magazines in braille or audio formats, delivered by postage-free mail or. Anne, and Blind Tom book. Read reviews from world’s largest community for readers. Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis (), born Rebecca Blaine Harding, /5(3).

The Elton John song "The Ballad of Blind Tom", from his album The Diving Board, is about Blind Tom. Blind Tom Wiggins is the subject of a novel, The Song of the Shank, () by Jeffrey Reynard Allen. Waking Up Blind: Lawsuits over Eye Surgery is a riveting, true story that reads like a novel.

While my novels deal with fictional medical disasters, Harbin spins a devastating, real-life account that will make the reader forever wary of the charming, super by: 1. Blind Tom was the stage name of Thomas Greene Wiggins, a blind black pianist born into slavery in Noted by many musical authorities to be a musician of amazing skill, expressive playing, and incredible memory, he was nonetheless considered by his "admirers" still nearer to "animals" than other human beings, and was exploited by a series of whites after the /5.

To the Editor: Thomas L. Riis's interesting article on Blind Tom Wiggins, the remarkable 19th-century black piano prodigy [''The Legacy of a Prodigy Lost in Mystery,'' March 5], indicates that.

Thomas Wiggins, more popularly known as “Blind Tom,” was the first black superstar performer in America, this country’s first documented outsider artist, and the first in a long line of African-American musicians, including many of the bluesmen that followed, to have been canonized in life and marginalized and all but forgotten in death.

Purchased, out of pity, by 'General' James Bethune, 'Blind Tom' demonstrated a savant's talent for mimicking sounds. In a second act of relative kindness, Bethune let Tom play with the family's piano/5. Get this from a library.

The ballad of Blind Tom. [Deirdre O'Connell] -- The true story of a black musical savant in the era of slavery, this rollicking and heartrending book offers a look into the culture of celebrity and racism at the turn of the 20th century.

50 b & w. Book Review of The Ballad of Blind Tom by Deidre O'Connell.Get this from a library! The ballad of Blind Tom. [Deirdre O'Connell] -- Biografie over de blinde autistische ex-slaaf Blind Tom (), die de achternaam van zijn slavenhouder kreeg en die over grote gaven beschikte op het gebied van improvisatie en compositie van.The Adventures of Blind Tom depicts the life story of Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins, an African American enslaved classical pianist, composer, and singer who performed to audiences around the world.

As illustrator and writer of this children’s book, Dr. Obiora N. .