Word: francos
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When Guinea was preparing for independence from France in 1958, President Charles de Gaulle proposed that it join in a Franco-African community that was to maintain political and economic ties to France. The leaders of all twelve other former French colonies in Africa decided to participate, but not intense, eloquent Ahmed Sékou Touré. Said he to De Gaulle: "We prefer poverty in liberty to riches in slavery...
...helped organize labor unions. Others fought for civil rights in an age when the color barrier kept blacks out of state colleges and the World Series. Radicals lived on the barricades then: leading strikes, tangling with cops, even shipping out-3,200 of them in 1936-to fight against Franco as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Wasn't that a time...
...deeply conservative U.S. President and a Socialist French leader with four Communists in his Cabinet to have anything good to say about each other is remarkable enough. The amiable, easygoing Reagan and the aloof, intellectual Mitterrand, moreover, could hardly be more different. Yet the Franco-American alliance is at its rosiest since Charles de Gaulle returned to power in 1958. "We have never seen relations so good," says a top State Department official...
...Gaulle appointed himself guardian of that greatness at an early age. His father had fought in the Franco-Prussian War, and Charles grew up in Lille and Paris during the period of Prussian pre-eminence following France's loss. Determined to help restore la gloire, he won admission to the prestigious St.-Cyr military academy, where he stood out for his arrogance and scholarship as well as for his height (6 ft. 5 in.). As an officer in the late 1920s, he insisted on wearing his beret tilted unconventionally to the right, and championed the superiority of tanks...
...hand-picked successor to Generalissimo Francisco Franco--who ruled Spain with an iron grip from 1939 to his death in 1975--Juan Carlos succeeded to the throne and promptly instituted a constitutional monarchy...