Gyrate, Jimi Hendrix was voted off in the first round.
I’ll put a word in to save John Marshall, the greatest Chief Justice of the United States. Through persuasion, legal skills and intellect, he forged the early Supreme Court into a coequal branch of government and, in writing Marbury v. Madison, established the Court’s power to rule on the constitutionality of laws. Over the long term, his work has done more to preserve American liberty than just about anyone else on the list.
Anyhow, here’s who remains:
John Adams: President, writer, statesman
Susan B. Anthony: Suffrage activist
Henry Bergh: Saved children, animals
Leonard Bernstein: Composer, conductor, educator
John Brown: Righteous, inspirational abolitionist
Andrew Carnegie: Industrialist, philanthropist
Willis Carrier: Air conditioning pioneer
George Washington Carver: Agricultural botanist
Carrie Chapman Catt: Women’s rights suffragist
Bruce Catton: Civil War historian
Joshua Chamberlain: Civil War hero
Cesar Chavez: Civil rights activist
Chief Joseph (Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt): Leader, peacemaker, tactician
Aaron Copland: Composer, musician
Frederick Douglass: Abolitionist, orator
Thomas Edison: Inventor, workaholic
Albert Einstein: Scientist, activist
Dwight D. Eisenhower: President, war hero
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Philosopher, writer
John Franklin Enders: Modern vaccines pioneer
Philo Farnsworth: TV piorneer, inventor
Richard Feynman: Physicist, Renaissance man
Benjamin Franklin: Scientist, statesman, inventor
Robert Frost: Greatest American poet
William Lloyd Garrison: Abolitionist, writer
George Gershwin: Prolific, versatile composer
Kurt Gödel: Mathematician, incompleteness theorem
Alexander Hamilton: Financier, economist, statesman
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: Supreme Court Justice
Langston Hughes: Harlem Renaissance poet
Thomas Jefferson: President, Declaration writer
Helen Keller: Redefined language, mind
John F. Kennedy: President, “New Frontier”
Martin Luther King Jr.: Preacher, orator, humanitarian
Lewis and Clark (Meriwether and William, resp.): Louisiana Purchase explorers
Abraham Lincoln: President, emancipator, writer
Douglas MacArthur: WWII general
James Madison: President, Framer, statesman
George Marshall: General, diplomat, statesman
John Marshall: Fourth Chief Justice
J.P. Morgan: Financial giant, tycoon
Audie Murphy: Decorated soldier, actor
Edward R Murrow: Broadcaster
Thomas Nast: Editorial cartoonist, muckraker
Jesse Owens: Famed Olympic athlete
Thomas Paine: Political theorist, pamphleteer
George S. Patton: WWII general, orator
John J. Pershing: Top WWI general
Edgar Allan Poe: Poet, writer, critic
James K. Polk: President, statesman
Elvis Presley: Rock and Roller
Jackie Robinson: Athlete, activist, inspiration
Will Rogers: Humorist, social commentator
Eleanor Roosevelt: Reformer, writer, advocate
Franklin D. Roosevelt: President, reformer, statesman
Theodore Roosevelt: President, conservationist, statesman
Carl Sagan: Astronomer, science popularizer
Jonas Salk: Polio vaccine inventor
William Seward: Diplomat; bought Alaska
Upton Sinclair: Author, muckraker
Sitting Bull: Indian leader, warrior
Tecumseh: Indian leader, uniter
Henry David Thoreau: Poet, naturalist, philosopher
Jim Thorpe: Native American athlete
Harry Truman: President, statesman
Harriet Tubman: Civil rights advocate
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens): Humorist, “Huckleberry Finn”
John von Neumann: Mathematician, scientist, polymath
Earl Warren: Chief Justice, governor
George Washington: President, general, statesman
Daniel Webster: Orator, advocate, statesman
Walt Whitman: Civil War poet
Eli Whitney: Inventor, cotton gin
Roger Williams: Statesman, religious leader
Orville and Wilbur Wright: Aviation pioneers, inventors