* Today in Black History - January 23 *
1837 - Amanda Berry Smith is born into slavery in Long Green, Maryland.
She will be widowed twice, after which she will attempt to
minister to her people. Unable to preach in the AME Church,
which did not ordain women ministers, Smith will become an
independent missionary and travel throughout the United States
and three continents. She will publish her autobiography,
"Amanda Smith's Story - The Story of the Lord's Dealings with
Mrs. Amanda Smith, The Colored Evangelist," in 1893.
1891 - Provident Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, the first African
American hospital, is founded by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams.
He also establishes the Provident Hospital School of Nursing
around the same time, because Emma Reynolds, an African
American, had been denied admission to every school of nursing
in the city of Chicago.
1941 - Richard Wright is awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal for his
book, "Native Son."
1943 - Duke Ellington's band played for a black-tie crowd at Carnegie
Hall in New York City. It is the first of what will become an
annual series of concerts for 'The Duke'.
1945 - The Army Nurse Corps discontinues its color barrier and starts
admitting nurses without regard to race. This is due primarily
to the pressure applied by the National Association of Colored
Nursing Graduates (NACGN) and other groups.
1962 - Demonstrations against discrimination in off-campus housing are
staged by students at University of Chicago for fourteen days.
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) charges that the
university operates segregated apartment houses.
1964 - The 24th amendment to the United States' Constitution, abolishing
the poll tax in federal elections, is ratified. The poll tax
had been used extensively in the South as a means of preventing
African Americans from voting.
1976 - Paul Robeson dies of a stroke in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He
had been a world-renown actor and singer. He was perhaps the
best known and most widely respected African American of the
1930s and 1940s. Robeson was also a staunch supporter of the
Soviet Union, and a man, later in his life, widely vilified and
censored for his frankness and unyielding views on issues to
which public opinion ran contrary. As a young man, Robeson was
virile, charismatic, eloquent, and powerful. He learned to speak
more than 20 languages in order to break down the barriers of
race and ignorance throughout the world, and yet, as Sterling
Stuckey pointed out in the "New York Times Book Review," for the
last 25 years of his life his was "a great whisper and a greater
silence in black America."
1977 - The first episode of "Roots," adapted from the "New York Times"
bestseller by Alex Haley, is aired on ABC. Over the next
several nights, 130 million Americans will be transfixed before
their televisions as the story of Kunta Kinte is told.
1985 - O.J. Simpson becomes the first Heisman Trophy winner to be
inducted into pro football's Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
Roger Staubach of the Dallas Cowboys, another Heisman winner, is
also elected, but is after O.J. in the sequence of induction.
1986 - The first annual induction ceremony for the Rock 'N' Roll Hall
of Fame is held in New York City. Among those inducted were
Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, and Fats Domino.
1989 - In "City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co.," the United States
Supreme Court invalidates the city's minority set-aside program,
a major setback for the concept's proponents.
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