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Images Sources: CBS 1942, Jim Crow Museum, Radio Hall of Fame, and Shelley Stewart

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Season Two: Episode 04
The Evolution of Black Media, Part 2

Today we continue exploring the Evolution of Black Media and the role Black radio stations played during the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s.

We explore how the Black population began to look to popular disc jockeys such as Jack Gibson, Gertrude Cooper, Georgie Woods, Martha Jean “the Queen,” and the Plumbline’s very own Shelley “The Playboy” Stewart to hear coded messages regarding protests and demonstrations.

Black Radio stations gave a voice to Dr. King and other prominent members of the Movement and became the medium of choice for disseminating urgent messages and direction.

Shelley Stewart, WAOK

Books

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Black-oriented radio emerged after World War II. Full time programming from sun-up to sun-down; blues, spirituals, rhythm and blues replaced jazz as the primary form of music. These improvising "street rapping" Disc Jockeys dominated the airwaves. Welcome to Black Radio...Winner Takes All!

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After World War II, when thousands of African Americans left farms, plantations, and a southern way of life to migrate north, African American disc jockeys helped them make the transition to the urban life by playing familiar music and giving them hints on how to function in northern cities. These disc jockeys became cultural heroes and had a major role in the development of American broadcasting. This collection of interviews documents the personalities of the pioneers of Black radio, as well as their personal struggles and successes. The interviewees also define their roles in the civil rights movement and relate how their efforts have had an impact on how African Americans are portrayed over the air.

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One of the most innovative and ambitious books to appear on the civil rights and black power movements in America, Just My Soul Responding also offers a major challenge to conventional histories of contemporary black and popular music. Brian Ward explores in detail the previously neglected relationship between Rhythm and Blues, black consciousness, and race relations within the context of the ongoing struggle for black freedom and equality in the United States. Instead of simply seeing the world of black music as a reflection of a mass struggle raging elsewhere, Ward argues that Rhythm and Blues, and the recording and broadcasting industries with which it was linked, formed a crucial public arena for battles over civil rights, racial identities, and black economic empowerment.

Shelley Stewart The Road South_.jpg

As a five-year-old in Home-wood, Alabama, Shelley Stewart watched his father kill his mother with an axe. Two years later, Stewart escaped the care of abusive relatives, making a living as a stable hand. A stint in the army led to electroshock treatments for trying to integrate whites-only dances. But despite numerous setbacks, he never gave up his will to succeed. Eventually, odd jobs at radio stations laid the foundation for a 50-year career in broadcasting.

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Dive Deeper

The University of Arizona 

The Evolution of Black Representation on Television

February 21, 2022

Television has served as "a primary source of America's racial education," says UArizona scholar Stephanie Troutman Robbins.

Q: What are the main ways that TV's depiction of Black people has changed over time?

A: Early television really reflected a very narrow representation of non-white characters. And a lot of the earlier characters were caricatures and racist depictions in many ways. 

 

And then as time goes on, we start to see more Black folks and we start to see them move from peripheral or secondary characters into primary focus. But for a while in television, you had extremes. You had the Black criminal stereotype and all the negative tropes associated with Blackness on the one hand, and then you had good, assimilating, respectable Black characters on the other. 

In the '80s, "The Cosby Show" depicted a Black affluent family who were different from the way that Blacks were mostly portrayed in mainstream TV at the time.

National Museum of African America History & Culture

Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom

Blackface: The Birth of An American Stereotype

Historian Dale Cockrell once noted that poor and working-class whites who felt “squeezed politically, economically, and socially from the top, but also from the bottom, invented minstrelsy” as a way of expressing the oppression that marked being members of the majority, but outside of the white norm. Minstrelsy, comedic performances of “blackness” by whites in exaggerated costumes and make-up, cannot be separated fully from the racial derision and stereotyping at its core. By distorting the features and culture of African Americans—including their looks, language, dance, deportment, and character—white Americans were able to codify whiteness across class and geopolitical lines as its antithesis.

Make sure you check out their collection at https://shorturl.at/btTV3

Doug Battema

Pictures of a Bygone Era: The Syndication of Amos ‘n’ Andy, 1954-66

Abstract

This article seeks to raise questions about historiographical practice, challenge the reliance on apparently stable discourses of nation and race within contemporary historiography, and expand understanding of the potential and multiple sites of influence in which television operated during its early years as a popular medium. Drawing on principles articulated by Foucault and de Certeau about the production and generation of knowledge, the article critiques previous historical examinations of Amos ‘n’ Andy for overlooking salient features of the television program's cultural and industrial context, as well as its syndication run from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. Using information about the syndication of Amos ‘n’ Andy gleaned principally from entertainment and advertising trade journals, the article points out how a more thorough understanding of the local, regional, and international context and of industrial practices may prove essential for recognizing possibilities about the patterns and circulation of cultural beliefs and historiographical norms.

Battema, D. (2006). Pictures of a Bygone Era: The Syndication of Amos ‘n’ Andy, 1954-66. Television & New Media, 7(1), 3–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476403253999.

Lanier Frush Holt

Writing the wrong: can counter-stereotypes offset negative media messages about African Americans?

Abstract

Several studies show media messages activate or exacerbate racial stereotypes. This

analysis, however, may be the first to examine which types of information—those

that directly contradict media messages (i.e., crime-related) or general news (i.e.,

non-crime-related)—are most effective in abating stereotypes. Its findings suggest

fear of crime is becoming more a human fear, not just a racial one. Furthermore,

it suggests tbat for younger Americans, the concomitant dyad of the black criminal

stereotype—race and crime—is fueled more by crime than by race.

Holt, L. F. (2013). Writing the wrong: can counter-stereotypes offset negative media messages about African Americans?  Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 90(1), 108. 

Lanier Frush Holt

Writing the wrong: can counter-stereotypes offset negative media messages about African Americans?

Abstract

Several studies show media messages activate or exacerbate racial stereotypes. This

analysis, however, may be the first to examine which types of information—those

that directly contradict media messages (i.e., crime-related) or general news (i.e.,

non-crime-related)—are most effective in abating stereotypes. Its findings suggest

fear of crime is becoming more a human fear, not just a racial one. Furthermore,

it suggests tbat for younger Americans, the concomitant dyad of the black criminal

stereotype—race and crime—is fueled more by crime than by race.

Holt, L. F. (2013). Writing the wrong: can counter-stereotypes offset negative media messages about African Americans?  Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 90(1), 108. 

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