January 13 · This Day in America
In the cafeteria of a maximum-security prison northeast of Sacramento, Johnny Cash walks up to a microphone in front of two thousand inmates and says, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash." The room comes apart. His career is fading, the radio has gone cooler on him, and he has fought to make this record at all — a live album, in here, for these men. He sings to them, not at them: songs about cell blocks and bad luck and the long want of freedom, and he means every word. When the cheers land in the wrong places, the producers later quiet them; the truth of the room does not need editing. The album, released that spring, resurrects him. It also makes him a voice for men with no microphone, and four years later he carries their case to the U.S. Senate. One greeting in a prison hall, and the Man in Black is born again.
Source: www.loc.gov
Also on this day · 1966
President Lyndon Johnson announces he will name Robert C. Weaver to lead the new Department of Housing and Urban Development, making him the first African American to sit in a president's Cabinet. An economist who had spent decades fighting housing discrimination, Weaver would run the federal agency in charge of the nation's homes and cities. The man kept out of so many neighborhoods would help decide how America builds them.
Source: www.archives.gov