You need b2evo 1.8 or above.

If you have it, click "Display available plugins".

If this fails, bump the PHP memory_limit.

When I click on the Plugins tab, I get this

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 46080 bytes) in /var/www/html/blog/inc/_misc/_plugin.funcs.php on line 404

I cannot get rid of it and it displays all the time in the plugin section. I have the PHP memory limit set to 24MB.

I am trying to do is figure out how to get the smilies plugin to work...

[edit]
Forgot to mention I am running a new install of version 1.9.1 - beta

Read the fatal error again. You still have 8MB memory limit, not 24!
E.g. in safe_mode you cannot change the memory_limit (at least this may be the case).
Check phpinfo()

much appreciated