January 23

On January 23, 1964, the 24th Amendment was ratified, outlawing the poll tax as a prerequisite for voting in Federal elections, with the Supreme Court ruling the following year in Harper v Board of Elections that it was unconstitutional in elections at any level. Southern states of the former Confederacy had adopted poll taxes in laws of the late 19th century and new constitutions from 1890 to 1908 as a way to prevent African Americans and often poor whites from voting. Efforts had been made state-by-state to abolish it over the previous two decades, and at the time of the ratification, only Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi still had a poll tax.

Birthdays

Amanda Berry Smith (January 23, 1837 – February 24, 1915) became an evangelist and missionary for the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church following the death of her husband in the Civil War. She worked primarily in the western U.S. until a visit to England led to missionary work in India, Liberia, and other countries in western Africa. After her return to the U.S. she founded the The Amanda Smith Orphanage and Industrial Home for Abandoned and Destitute Colored Children in West Harvey, Illinois, near Chicago. Her autobiography was published in 1893.

Ora Mae Washington (January 23, 1898 - December 21, 1971) led the Tribune Girls (sponsored by the Philadelphia Tribune) to 11 straight Women's Colored Basketball World Championships from 1930 to 1940. She also played tennis, winning the American Tennis Association singles title 8 times out of 9 years (1929-1937) and 12 straight doubles titles. In 2009 she was elected to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.

Ajay Deforest Johnson (January 23, 1901 - October 12, 1996) is shown here in a clipping from  the Chicago Defender (November 15, 1947) about his promotion to lieutenant in the LAPD, going on to say: "The promotion was one of several moves planned by the department and city officials to improve race relations, further integration of the force and speed up an even better law enforcement on the coast." Lt. Johnson was a native of Waco, Texas, and before joining the police force in 1929 was a pitched for the Los Angeles Sox and the Philadelphia Royal Giants.

Benjamin Arthur Quarles (January 23, 1904 - November 16, 1996) was a historian who taught at Shaw, Dillard, and Morgan State Universities over a period of 40 years. He was a prolific writer, focusing on the contributions made by the black soldiers and abolitionists of the American Revolution and the Civil War, and many of his books were required reading in the African-American history courses that were developed in American universities during the 1960s with the civil rights movement and increasing interest in the history of minorities and women. Major books by Dr. Quarles include The Negro in the American Revolution (1961), Black Abolitionists (1969), The Negro in the Civil War (1953), and Lincoln and the Negro (1962).

Sir William Arthur Lewis (January 23, 1915 — June 15, 1991) was a Saint Lucian economist noted for his contributions in the field of economic development. In 1979 he won the Nobel Prize in Economics, becoming the first black person to win a Nobel Prize in a category other than peace, and is one of two St Lucian Nobel laureates. He held a PhD from the London School of Economics (1940) and taught there until until he was named a lecturer at the University of Manchester in 1948. He was the first economic consultant to Ghana after the nation gained its indepenence in 1957, and later returned to the Caribbean before accepting a faculty position at Princeton where he taught from 1963 to 1983.

Robert Parris (Bob) Moses (born January 23, 1935) was field secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), project director of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), and one of the chief organizers of the Freedom Summer voter registration movement and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1982, which he used to implement Project Algebra to improve the math skills of low-income students. He holds a BA from Hamilton College and an MA in the philosophy of mathematics from Harvard University, and has taught in The Bronx, New York; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Jackson, Mississippi; and Miami, Florida.

Events

On January 23, 1891, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams founded Provident Hospital and Training School in Chicago, the first hospital in the United States owned and operated hospital in the U.S. Though the historic Provident Hospital was forced to close in 1987 due to financial difficulties, it reopened in 1993 as part of Cook County's Bureau of Health Services to provide services to residents of Chicago's South Side. It is now known as Provident Hospital of Cook County.

On January 23, 1957, truck driver Willie Edwards Jr. was on his way to work in Montgomery, Alabama, when he was stopped by four Klansmen. The men mistook Edwards for another man who they believed was dating a white woman. They forced Edwards at gunpoint to jump off a bridge into the Alabama River. His body was found three months later.






Photo Gallery

On January 23, 1943, legendary musician Duke Ellington played at Carnegie Hall in New York for the first time. 

On January 23, 1976, noted singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson died in Philadelphia

Publications

Sam and Barbara Cooke | Sam Cooke Is Dating Harlean Harris - Jet Magazine, January 23, 1958

The Black History of the White House (City Lights Open Media) by Clarence Lusane. $14.45. Author: Clarence Lusane. 544 pages. Publisher: City Lights Publishers; 1 edition (January 23, 2013)

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January 18

A young Vietnamese girl presents a floral wreath to an African American soldier arriving with the 25th division on January 18, 1966 at Vung, Tau, forty miles south of Saigon. --- Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

Daniel Hale Williams (January 18, 1856 - August 4, 1931) is noted for performing heart surgery in 1893 on a stabbing victim by repairing the pericardium which covers the heart. He had assisted in a similar surgery two years earlier by Henry Dalton, and there are two other recorded pericardostomies. (Heart surgery was not regarded as feasible by most surgeons until World War I.)

Dr. Williams also founded Chicago's Provident Hospital in 1891 to provide health care and training to African Americans. During his career he also taught Clinical Surgery at Meharry Medical College and was an attending surgeon at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. In 1895 he co-founded the National Medical Association for African American doctors, and in 1913 he became a charter member and the only African American doctor in the American College of Surgeons.

Birthdays

George Dawson (January 19, 1898 – July 5, 2001) was called "America's favorite poster child for literacy" after learning to read at the age of 98 when a door-to-door recruiter for an adult literacy program happened to contact him. His life story, Life Is So Good, was published in 2000. He worked as a laborer, and retired at age 79 after working in a dairy for 30 years.

Randolph W. (Bill) Bromery (January 18, 1926 – February 26, 2013) earned a BS in mathematics from Howard University in 1956 while working full-time at the U.S. Geological Survey as an airborne exploration geophysicist, and was the first African American professional geophysicist with the USGS. He later earned an MS in 1962 from American University, and a PhD from Johns Hopkins in 1968, both in geology, and joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Geology Department in 1969, earning tenure quickly, and becoming Chancellor in 1971. He also promoted African American studies, securing the papers of W. E. B. Du Bois and Horace Mann Bond for the University's Special Collections Department. The Library has since been named the W. E. B. Du Bois Library. Bromery, a saxophonist himself, recruited several well-known jazz figures to the faculty, including Max Roach, Archie Shepp, and Fred Tillis. During World War II, he was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, flying missions in Italy.

David Ruffin (January 18, 1941 – June 1, 1991) was most famous for his work as one of the lead singers of The Temptations (1964–68) during the group's "Classic Five" period as it was later known. He was the lead voice on such famous songs as "My Girl" and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg". Known for his unique raspy and anguished tenor vocals, Ruffin was ranked as one of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine in 2008 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.

Benjamin Todd Jealous (born January 18, 1973) served as president and chief executive officer of the NAACP from 2008 to 2013. He was an NAACP organizer while a student at Columbia University, and after being suspended for protesting the university's plan to turn the site of Malcolm X's assassination into a research facility, he worked with the NAACP in Mississippi to keep the state's three HBCU's open As a reporter, and later managing editor, forthe Jackson Advocate, Mississippi's oldest historically black newspaper, he investigated abuses at Parchman Prison. After returning to Columbia, he earned a B.A. in political science, and a Rhodes Scholarship leading to a master's degree in comparative social research from the University of Oxford. He then served as Executive Director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), a federation of more than 200 black community newspapers, as director of the US Human Rights Program at Amnesty International, and as president of the Rosenberg Foundation.

Shoshana Nyree Johnson (born January 18, 1973) is a Panamanian-born former United States soldier, and was the first black or Hispanic female prisoner of war in the military history of the United States. Johnson was a Specialist of the U.S. Army 507th Maintenance Company, 5/52 ADA BN, 11th ADA Brigade. During a gun fight that led to her capture she suffered bullet wounds to both of her ankles. She was freed in a rescue mission conducted by United States Marine Corps units on April 13, 2003.



Events

On January 18, 1958, Willie O'Ree broke the color barrier in the NHL when he made his first appearance with the Boston Bruins against the Montreal Canadiens. He played two games that season, and another 43 in 1961. There were no other African American players in the NHL until 1974.

On January 18, 1975, The Jeffersons debuted on CBS, and ran through June 25, 1985. It is the longest-running sitcom with a predominantly African American cast in the history of American television. The show focuses on George and Louise Jefferson, an affluent African American couple living in New York City.


Photo Gallery

Black leaders discuss civil rights with President Lyndon B. Johnson in his office at the White House on January 18, 1964. L-R: Roy Wilkins (NAACP), James Farmer (CORE),  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (SCLC), and A. Whitney Young (NUL)..

Leslie Uggams and Clarence Williams III on the set of ‘Mod Squad.’ Ms. Uggams was a guest star in the episode, “Kill Gently, Sweet Jessie,” which aired on January 18, 1972

The Ogunsanya Quadruplets, age 23, graduated from Warwick University, UK, with Masters Degrees on January 18, 2012.

President Barack Obama With 1st Lady Michelle Obama In The Blue Room January 18, 2013

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