*                 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. She will join the ancestors on 
	February 24, 1915.

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 plays 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 the 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 joins the ancestors, as the result 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 vs. 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.

2003 - Nell Carter, Tony Award winner and television star, joins the
	ancestors at the age of 54. She had suffered from diabetes 
	for years and underwent brain surgery in 1992 to remove an 
	aneurysm. She recovered and continued to perform, mostly on 
	stage.

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