Jan. 16. 1893: Hawai'i: Queen Lilluokalani's regime is overthrown by pineapple tycoon Sanford Dole and sugar interests. US troops land "to protect US interests." With US support, Dole declares himself Hawai'i's president and lobbies for US annexation.

Jan. 17. 1938: Birth of Martha Cotera, Chicana feminist, librarian, and civil rights worker. 1970: Chicano activists gather in Crystal City, TX to found Raza Unida Party.

Jan. 18. 1965: Segregationists assault Martin Luther King, Jr., in Selma, Alabama, as he registers as the first black guest in a hotel built a century earlier with slave labor.

Jan. 19. 1808: Birth of utopian, individualist, anarchist, abolitionist Lysander Spooner. He set up a private postal service so successful that the federal government outlawed it. 1903: Birth of Kay Boyle, St. Paul, MN. Novelist, journalist, and short story writer, single mother in the '30s and '40s, blacklist victim in the '50s, prominent Vietnam War opponent in the '60s, Amnesty International activist in the '80s.

Jan. 20. 1932: El Salvador: Peasant uprising leading to the "Matanza Massacre." The government refuses to seat Salvadoran Communist Party candidates who won elections. Augustin Farabundo Marti and other leaders are arrested, and unarmed peasants march into the nation's cities. The army, in response, launches a genocidal campaign; killings will number more than 30,000. By the time La Matanza is over, 4% of the Salvadoran population is dead. 50 years later Salvadoran rebels will name themselves after Marti.

Jan. 21. 1647: Margaret Brent becomes first US woman to ask for vote (in Maryland assembly).

Jan. 22. 1991: Fourteen ACT-UP AIDS activists are arrested disrupting CBS, NBC and PBS evening news broadcasts with "Fight AIDS, not Arabs" banners.

Jan. 23. 1970: Folksingers Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, Country Joe McDonald, Phil Ochs, and Pete Seeger are denied permission to sing as part of Collins' defense testimony at the trial of The Chicago Seven.

Jan. 24. 1921: Death of Cap'n Streeter, Chicago. His scow ran aground on a sandbar in Lake Michigan on the Chicago waterfront. The wreck caused the sandbar to grow, marshland filled it in, and Streeter proclaimed it a free district open to the poor and homeless. He successfully defended his territory against Chicago cops and developers until his death.

Jan. 25. 1851: Sojourner Truth addresses first Black Women's Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio.

Jan. 26. 1907: Congress passes an act forbidding corporations from contributing to election campaigns for national office. 1991: 100,000 march against Gulf War, New York City and San Francisco.

Jan. 27. 1957: For the second time in a year, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s home is bombed. 1977: In one of his first acts as President, Jimmy Carter pardons some 10,000 Vietnam draft resisters.

Jan. 28. 1995: Over 100 Solders' Mothers Committee members go to a Russian army training camp to reclaim their sons from the Army.

Jan. 29. 1737: Thomas Paine, radical writer, born, Thetford, Britain. 1983: Demonstrators against military aid to El Salvador blockade naval base, Port Chicago, CA.