*                Today in Black History - January 19                 *

1854 - Biddy Mason and her children are granted their freedom by the
        courts of Los Angeles County after three years in the state of
        California.  Mason will become a major landowner in Los Angeles
        known for her philanthropy to the poor.

1887 - Clementine Hunter is born in Natchitoches, Louisiana.  She will
        become a painter in the 1930's after spending years working on
        the Melrose Plantation, a haven for many rural Southern artists.
        Her folk-art style will earn her the nickname "the Black Grandma
        Moses."

1918 - John H. Johnson is born.  He will become the president of Johnson
        Publishing Company, Inc., the most prosperous African American
        publishing company in America.  His company will publish "Ebony,"
        "Jet," "Black Star," "Black World" and "Ebony Jr." magazines. He
        will receive numerous awards, including the Horatio Alger Award,
        the NAACP Springarn Medal and the National Newspaper Publishers
        Association's Henry Johnson Fisher Award for outstanding
        contributions to publishing.

1959 - In a letter to her mother shortly before the opening of her first
        play, "A Raisin in the Sun," Lorraine Hansberry says "Mama, it
        is a play that tells the truth about people Negroes and life and I
        think it will help a lot of people to understand how we are just
        as complicated as they are-- and just as mixed up--but above all,
        that we have among our miserable and downtrodden ranks--people
        who are the very essence of human dignity.  That is what, after
        all the laughter and tears, the play is supposed to say."

1970 - The University of California at Los Angeles fires Angela Davis
        for being a communist.

1983 - In its "State of Black America" annual report, the National Urban
        League warns that the recession had disproportionately hurt
        African Americans: "A major question facing the nation in 1983
        is whether the inevitable restructuring of the American economy
        will include Black people."

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