*                Today in Black History - December 22                *

1873 - Abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond joins the ancestors.  He was
        the first African American lecturer employed by the Massachusetts
        Anti-Slavery Society.

1883 - Arthur Wergs Mitchell is born near Lafayette, Alabama.  He will
        become the first African American Democrat elected to Congress,
        representing Illinois for four terms.  In 1937, after being
        forced from first-class train accommodations in Arkansas to
        ride in a shabby Jim Crow car.  Mitchell will sue the railroad
        and eventually argue unsuccessfully before the Supreme Court
        that interstate trains be exempt from Arkansas' "separate but
        equal" laws.

1898 - Chancellor Williams is born. He will become a historian and
        author of "Destruction of Black Civilization."

1905 - James A. Porter is born in Baltimore, Maryland.  An artist,
        chairperson of the department of art at Howard University and
        one of the earliest scholars of African American art, Porter
        will exhibit his works widely in the United States, Europe,
        and Africa.

1939 - Jerry Pinckney is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  He will
        become an award-winning illustrator of children's books and
        numerous U.S. postage stamps featuring notable African Americans.

1943 - W.E.B. Du Bois is elected as the first African American member of
        the National Institute of Arts & Letters.

1980 - Samuel R. Pierce, Jr., a New York City lawyer and former judge,
        is named to President Ronald Reagan's Cabinet as Secretary of
        Housing and Urban Development.

1984 - 4 African American youths on a New York City subway train, are
        shot by Bernhard Goetz.  The white man shoots because he thought
        they were going to rob him.  He claims he was seconds from
        becoming a mugging victim when he opened fire, and will be
        acquitted of attempted murder in 1987 but will serve 8 months on
        a weapons charge.  In 1996, he will lose a civil case brought
        against him by one of the youths that he shot and paralyzed. The
        civil judgment brought against him will be $ 43 million.

1988 - South Africa signs an accord granting independence to South-West
        Africa.

1989 - The art exhibit "Afro-American Artists in Paris: 1919-1939"
        closes at the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery on the Hunter
        College campus in New York City.  The exhibit of eight artists
        including William Harper, Lois Mailou Jones, Archibald Motley,
        Jr., Henry O. Tanner, and Hale Woodruff, among others, powerfully
        illustrates the results achieved by African American artists when
        they were able to leave the confines and restrictions imposed upon
        them by race in the United States.

1996 - Kordell Stewart of the Pittsburgh Steelers runs 80 yards for a
        touchdown in the first half of an 18-14 loss to the Carolina
        Panthers, the longest scoring run by a quarterback in NFL history.

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