Early Years
Simpkins' father, C. O. Simkins, Sr., is a dentist from Shreveport, Louisiana, who served from 1992 to 1996 as a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from the heavily African American District 4. His mother, the former Dorothy Herndon, is a social worker, also originally from Chicago.
Until he was fourteen, Simpkins, lived with his family in Shreveport, at the time a heavily segregated city. Simpkins, Sr., took an active role in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Two of their family homes in Shreveport were bombed. The senior Simpkins' malpractice insurance was cancelled, and he was denied renewal because he was listed as No. 1 on the death list of racist elements. These events forced the Simpkinses to leave Louisiana, but the senior Simpkins later returned to Shreveport. Simpkins hence received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, having graduated with honors in chemistry. In his senior year at Amherst, he began work on the biography of American saxophonist and composer John Coltrane. After graduation from Amherst, he earned his medical degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1974. At Harvard, he finished the book Coltrane: A Biography, which was published in 1975. Another biography of Coltrane, Chasin’ the Trane by J. C. Thomas was published in the same year. It is not clear which book was published first. Coltrane: A Biography was well received by major media critics such as Mel Watkins who wrote in The New York Times Saturday book review section, “Dr. Simpkins very often accomplishes something that few other jazz biographers have done: He narratively simulates the emotional effect of the subject’s music.”
Read more about this topic: Cuthbert Ormond Simpkins
Other articles related to "early, years, early years":
... from the death of Richard the Lionheart until the early reign of King John Robin and Marian 1976 1199-c. 1201 England from the death of Richard the Lionheart until the early reign of King John The Life and Death of King John 1951 1199–1216 England The reign of King. 1429 ... France Joan of Arc, the French heroine of the Hundred Years' War Saint Joan 1429 ... France Joan of Arc, the French heroine of the Hundred Years' War Joan of Arc 1999 ...
... produced by Ron Moss, who both contributed to the early days of Double Jay ... In the more conservative media climate that emerged in the Fraser years, Double Jay and some of its presenters and commentators were frequently accused of left-wing bias ... In its early years Double Jay's on-air staff were mainly recruited from either commercial radio or other ABC stations but in another first the roster also ...
... county was in dispute for the first six years of its existence due to the Honey War, a bloodless territorial dispute between Missouri and Iowa ...
... By the time Susann entered high school, she was dabbling in drugs and had earned the reputation of being a party girl ... Although her parents hoped she would enter college, Susann left for New York City after graduating from West Philadelphia High School in 1936 to pursue an acting career ...
Famous quotes containing the words years and/or early:
“I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active—not more happy—nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)