History

THE CASES of two historic buildings facing demolition went before the city's Board of License and Inspections Review Friday with different outcomes. The board upheld a stay blocking demolition of the Church of the Assumption, at 11th and Spring Garden streets, which has ties to two Catholic saints: John Neumann and Katharine Drexel. The board said it continued the stay because of a pending earlier appeal in Commonwealth Court. But residents near a former mansion at 40th and Pine streets lost a round Friday, when the board split in a 2-2 tie to stop the mansion's demolition.

Eighty-seven years ago - when black Americans were still terrorized by lynching - black historian Carter G. Woodson had a simple but powerful idea: Designate a week to celebrate the contributions that black Americans had made to their country. Woodson chose the second week of February to commemorate the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Negro History Week, as it was known, was an important development for its time. Back then, official history barely acknowledged the presence of black Americans, while popular culture actively diminished their humanity.

TUSKEGEE, Ala. - There is only one college or university designated a National Historic Site by the U.S. Congress, and it is not Harvard or Yale or Princeton. It is the Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University. History is rich on this campus, and the ghosts of its storied faculty and alumni are ever present. These include founder Booker T. Washington, botanist George Washington Carver, author Ralph Ellison, and Daniel "Chappie" James, the first African American four-star general.

By Steven Conn State of the Union addresses are for setting agendas and laying out visions of the future. The address provides the president with a platform to set his legislative goals, and last week, President Obama did just that. At the same time, in asserting unapologetically that government has a role to play in furthering the nation's business and in fostering its progress, Obama rooted his address firmly in America's most successful traditions. Since the beginning of the republic, Americans have used the power of government to improve our economy and our society.

For many years, artist Lady Bird Strickland painted the people that she met in her life - and it was no ordinary life. Subjects such as Dizzy Gillespie, Josephine Baker, Charlie Parker, Marian Anderson, Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington were all part of the jazz bebop scene in Harlem where the young Georgia native danced and romanced in the 1940s, before putting it all down with brushstrokes. But by the 1980s - married, settled down in suburban Willingboro, and still painting - Strickland began to grasp that the New York jazz era that she had witnessed was just one scene in a much larger mural of the African American experience.

If anyone out there has a giant (27-inch by 41-inch) original MGM-issued poster for the 1929 King Vidor film Hallelujah! , John Kisch would very much like to meet you. The director of A Separate Cinema, an archive of almost 35,000 posters, lobby cards, film stills, and graphic images chronicling the history of black cinema in America - from the Silent Era to the not-at-all-silent Tyler Perry - Kisch is still on the prowl, 40 years since he began...

Sixteen years ago, Louise Fischer and Tony Perez purchased a stone Tudor in Roxborough. With the sale came a bin of blueprints and three bound volumes chronicling the 1920 construction of the house. The archival material confirmed that beneath shag carpets and lime-green paint was a home with elegant bones. In 1997, Fischer was living in a new townhouse in Andorra and shopping for a place with character she could share with Perez, who loved old homes. Her daughter, Lisa Santoro, had found a prospect on Green Lane.

LEBRON JAMES became the first player in NBA history to score 30 points and shoot at least 60 percent in six straight games, Chris Bosh scored 32 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, and the Miami Heat held off the visiting Portland Trail Blazers, 117-104, on Tuesday night. James surpassed Adrian Dantley and Moses Malone, who had accomplished the feat in five straight games. James has made 66 of 92 shots (71.7 percent) over the past six games, all wins. On Tuesday, James scored 30 points on 11-for-15 shooting and Dwyane Wade added 24 points for Miami, which wasted a pair of 14-point leads - then put the game away with a 14-0 run in the final minutes.

I disagreed with former President George W. Bush on many things. But on one issue, I admired him greatly: He was wise enough to marry a teacher and a librarian. I'm unabashedly biased about this, since my late mom was also a teacher and a librarian. I have been thinking a good deal about her because she would have turned 100 on Friday. She died in 1995, and my sister and I have spoken often about the extraordinary social changes she came to terms with and was part of. We break the story up into discrete chunks: the Depression, World War II, the 1960s, and the like.

When Prohibition was repealed at 5:32 p.m. on Dec. 5, 1933, millions of Americans galloped to their favorite speakeasies to raise a glass of champagne - or beer or whiskey or gin, or whatever else stood on well-stocked shelves - to celebrate the passing of an almost 14-year period in which the manufacture and sale of alcohol was banned in the United States. But it didn't take long for puritanical instincts in some states - especially Pennsylvania, famous for its Blue Laws against many forms of Sunday recreation - to take hold.