Chicago's WVON Radio and the Sonorous Image of Black Lives, 1963-1983 a DISSERTATION SU

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NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Talking Drum: Chicago’s WVON Radio and the Sonorous Image of Black Lives, 1963-1983

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

for the degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Field of Communication Studies

Zachary William Mills

EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

September 2017

3 ABSTRACT

My dissertation, “Talking Drum: Chicago’s WVON Radio and the Sonorous Image of Black

Lives, 1963-1983,” studies WVON radio as a mediating institution of the black public sphere in

Cold War Chicago. “Talking Drum” explores how WVON celebrated, represented, and mobilized black public life in the mid-twentieth century amid a dominant public sphere that circulated racist scripts of black citizenship. Local black-oriented radio stations like WVON provided alternative forums through which African Americans could talk back to those misrepresentations, ideologies, and policies constituting the era’s national imperatives of black containment. Much like the polyrhythmic correspondence disseminated through the African drum among enslaved blacks in colonial North America, WVON’s programming demonstrated the power of black vernacular expression to construct meaningful cultural communiqués. “Talking Drum” explores how WVON’s sonorous rhetorical assault on negative public images and epistemologies of African American citizenship provided new grounds for defining, claiming, and securing freedom and interpreting black identity, interests, and needs. By analyzing the radio station’s public affairs, news, popular culture, and political programming, my dissertation contributes to discussions about the capacity of

Cold War radio and contemporary innovations of the black public sphere to inspire and mobilize disenfranchised communities in shared struggles to secure greater democratic freedoms.

4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As I composed this dissertation I was fortunate enough to have a strong community of people supporting me every step of the way. I owe a special thanks to Angela G. Ray, who served as my advisor and the chair of my dissertation committee. Angela’s mentorship and editorial eye strengthened me as a scholar and writer. I am also thankful for the incredible generosity, affirmation, and expertise of Kate Baldwin and James Schwoch, the other two members of my dissertation committee, who added significant insights to my dissertation. I am humbled by the efforts of Sarah

McFarland Taylor, who has been an unwavering advocate of mine and whose work compelled me to explore the intersections of religion and media. I am grateful and indebted to those mentors, friends, and family members who encouraged me, during the most difficult moments, to keep writing. To my parents, Janet and Hank, I am forever grateful for allowing me to litter their upstairs with my books during the year I wrote this dissertation. Their generosity in providing me a familiar and loving space to write made this dissertation possible. Finally, I am grateful to God for giving me the mysterious energy and enthusiasm that pushed me, late at night and early in the morning, to press on until this project was completed.

5 DEDICATION

This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Janet Lea Mills and Russell Henry Mills, for helping me always to hear my true self amid all the noise.

6 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

DEDICATION ...... 5

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER 1 ...... 32

“FATHER, OPEN OUR EYES”: WVON’S HOTLINE, FAKE NEWS, AND PROPHETIC

DISCONTENT

CHAPTER 2 ...... 83

“YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY!”: WVON’S BERN CLUB, FOREIGN SHORES,

AND AMBASSADORS OF BLACK WOMANHOOD

CHAPTER 3 ...... 137

“NOW RUN AND TELL THAT!”: WVON’S EDITORIALS, AURAL RELEASE, AND

SOUNDSCAPES OF CITIZENSHIP

CHAPTER 4 ...... 188

THE PANTHER WITH THE PEN: WVON’S LU’S NOTEBOOK, ALTERNATIVE SITES OF

LEARNING, AND THE JOURNEY TOWARD POLITICAL LITERACY

CONCLUSION ...... 239

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 249

INTRODUCTION

Suddenly, the task before young black activists of the mid-1960s, whether in Chicago or Memphis, was to create a new conceit for modernism. It required a figure that could move an urban black public sphere to consciousness and action.1 —Houston A. Baker Jr.

The drummer beat his drum, and the fellow who had been sent away came back and did what the message told him to do, without hesitation. It seemed amazingly simple. The speaker had whispered this message: “Find the pocket radio and put it in its case,” which is exactly what the demonstrator did. The amazed speaker said, “I bet you don’t even have a word for ‘radio.’ What on earth did you tell that brother?” The chief replied, “You’re right. We don’t have such a word. We told him, ‘Find that which speaks to you and you can’t speak back, and put him in his house.’” The message was transmitted with ease and brevity, with no audible consonants over vowels or visual promptings. The point was very clear: African drums were at the very least as good as Western Union.2

—Henry H. Mitchell

In a March 19, 2006, article in the Chicago Tribune, Melody Spann-Cooper, chairman of

Midway Broadcasting Corporation and president of Chicago’s WVON radio, described WVON as an important extension of the city’s black public sphere. In fact, since the station’s first broadcast on

April 1, 1963,3 and throughout the turbulent political years leading up to the 1983 election of Harold

Washington, the city’s first black mayor, WVON, Spann-Cooper insists, has mediated public discourse that has mobilized, celebrated, and improved black lives in Chicago. The station’s call letters claim its significance: once Voice of the Negro, the letters now stand for Voice of the Nation.

The daughter of legendary Chicago radio personality Pervis “The Blues Man” Spann, Spann-Cooper says that black-oriented radio stations like WVON are critical institutions of contemporary black public life in the United States:

1 Houston A. Baker Jr., “Critical Memory and the Black Public Sphere,” in The Black Public Sphere: A Public Culture Book, ed. Black Public Sphere Collective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 31. 2 Henry H. Mitchell, Black Church Beginnings: The Long-Hidden Realities of the First Years (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 4. 3 “Our History,” WVON website, http://www.wvon.com/about-us/our-history/.

8 “We’ve come a long way, but there are still a lot of obstacles to overcome,” Spann-Cooper says, referring to the hard-won gains of the civil-rights movement. “We still need that talking drum.”4

Talk about “that talking drum” may be foreign to some as a trope for the black public sphere, turbulent political years, public discourse, and black public life in general. But Spann-Cooper’s trope of the talking drum finds its legitimacy in the history of communication among African peoples.

Lawrence W. Levine, Henry H. Mitchell, and Albert J. Raboteau have emphasized the African drum’s significance as a communication medium on the African and North American continents.5 In particular, Mitchell describes Africans’ use of highly complex drumming codes in colonial North

America to forge communal existences beyond their white captors’ semiotic and physical boundaries. The African drum’s various tonal pitches functioned as a “Morse Code” of sorts,

Mitchell explains, and soon slave owners acknowledged the pagan medium’s ability to broadcast encrypted polyrhythmic correspondence: “When whites discovered that enslaved Africans often communicated the latest news to each other days before their masters knew it, they were terrified by the potential for conspiracy.”6 Slave owners dared not deny it—the drum could talk!

By evoking the talking drum as a trope for WVON, Spann-Cooper reveals the political stakes of black-oriented radio in Cold War and contemporary Chicago. The implication is that through the medium of WVON radio, African Americans were able to convene, mobilize, and ultimately talk back to hostile dominant cultures, ideas, politics, and practices—much as their African ancestors did through the talking drum. In his 1964 study, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man,

Marshall McLuhan referred to radio as a “tribal drum” that returns its listeners to a preindustrial oral

4 Don Terry, “Raising the Voice,” Chicago Tribune, March 19, 2006. 5 For more information, see Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Mitchell, Black Church Beginnings; and Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 6 Mitchell, Black Church Beginnings, 4. Mitchell borrows this idea from John Lovell Jr., Black Song: The Forge and the Flame (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 121; and John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 35.

9 folk culture that emphasizes nonvisual, auditory resources as a means to respond to the exigencies of daily life.7 McLuhan concluded:

The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber.8

McLuhan observed that the advent of radio brought an implosion of Western civilization as electronic media instantly connected individuals to other parts of the globe. In other words, for

McLuhan, radio’s tribal magic was its ability to convene and involve people with one another. As

African Americans listened to and participated in WVON’s programming (such as live call-in talk shows, games and promotions, affiliated off-air social clubs, news and editorials, and civil rights demonstrations), black homes, workplaces, automobiles, and other urban spaces became discursive sites through which black Chicagoans connected through shared values, experiences, hopes, and even disagreements amid a national anti-black public sphere. In short, much as McLuhan saw radio functioning as a “primitive extension of our central nervous system, that aboriginal mass medium, the vernacular tongue,” WVON served as an extension of individual and collective black voices that could talk back in their own vernacular to those social forces seeking to contain, reduce, or silence black lives.9 And certainly, those urban spaces in which African Americans listened to WVON also often became important educational sites in which many learned how to talk back.10 Thus, as the city’s only twenty-four-hour black-appeal radio station in 1963,11 WVON participated in a transformation

7 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet Books, 1964), 262-63. 8 Ibid., 261. 9 Ibid., 264. 10 Rev. Dr. Charles B. Williams, email interview by the author, 2013, Chicago, Illinois. In a written response to questions regarding a biography project I am producing on the Rev. Clay Evans, the Rev. Dr. Charles B. Williams, pastor of Unity Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, described his memories as a child pantomiming radio preachers while he listened to their sermons from home. Williams’s reflection offers anecdotal evidence of a practice that involved some radio listeners mimicking both the tones they heard and the bodily movements they imagined preachers were making during their sermons. Such ritual engagements with radio, particularly the mimicking of preaching and other oratorical styles, helped to cultivate skills in public discourse and public reason. 11 Jennifer Searcy, “The Voice of the Negro: African American Radio, WVON, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in

10 (or perhaps a retribalization of sorts) of Chicago’s black public sphere, as significant numbers of black Chicagoans were empowered in the midst of hostile daily circumstances to connect and become involved with each other through the station’s programming. This capacity of radio has not received adequate scholarly attention. “The power of radio to retribalize mankind,” McLuhan laments, “its almost instant reversal of individualism into collectivism, Fascist or Marxist, has gone unnoticed.”12

My dissertation, “Talking Drum: Chicago’s WVON Radio and the Sonorous Image of Black

Lives, 1963-1983,” attempts to demonstrate how the discourse that WVON generated and broadcast through its programming between 1963 and 1983 mediated public issues affecting African

Americans by offering repositories of alternate popular knowledge about black lives that mobilized listeners against a dominant local and national anti-black public sphere. In that dominant public sphere, the medium of radio served as a potent weapon for reinforcing white supremacist ideology between the beginning and middle of the twentieth century. For instance, the enormously popular radio comedy Amos ’n’ Andy, which aurally circulated minstrel-styled performance caricaturing

African Americans (a sonic blackface), became disturbingly successful. In just four months after its

August 1929 debut, Amos ’n’ Andy broadcast to forty million listeners. Several decades later, popular radio-TV comedies such as The Jack Benny Show featured caricatured black domestic roles such as butlers and maids and rarely offered African Americans dramatic roles or technical or production jobs.13 A primary presupposition here, then, is that, as members of the dominant public sphere in the United States, whites have been, as Elizabeth Alexander claims, the “primary stagers” of historical spectacles involving traumatized, racialized black bodies. These images or

Chicago” (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University, 2012), 164, Paper 688, http://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/688; Robert Pruter, Chicago Soul (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 14. 12 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 265. 13 Barbara Dianne Savage, Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Radio, 1938-1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 6, 10-11.

11 metaphorizations have become pieces of a negative collective representation of African American identity within the white U.S. imaginary. Consequently, when these images are made public, they function as mechanisms (figures of hegemonic publicity) for the further oppression of African

Americans.14

The existence of a dominant public sphere in Cold War North America that constructed and circulated national imperatives of black containment (including negative aural images of blackness in national white imaginaries) is precisely why Melody Spann-Cooper renders WVON radio tropologically as “that talking drum.”15 The station’s programming functioned, ultimately, as rituals of talking back to a dominant anti-black culture. Thus, “Talking Drum” suggests that WVON circulated a counterdiscourse that signified on anti-black rhetoric and negative rhetorical constructions of blackness and black public life.16 WVON’s sonorous signification on embedded negative public images of African American life provided new grounds for defining, claiming, and securing freedom and interpreting black identity, interests, and needs.17 This dissertation relies upon vernacular theory and rhetorical analysis as it examines the station’s signification on a dominant politics of racial oppression and racist representation, or what I refer to as mainstream myths.18

14 Elizabeth Alexander, “‘Can you be BLACK and Look at This?’: Reading the Rodney King Video(s),” in Black Public Sphere, ed. Black Public Sphere Collective, 83, 94. 15 I understand that using the concept of an “aural image” of African American identity or citizenship might be confusing. I use the term here and throughout the dissertation to refer to the images or tropes of African American identity and citizenship that are mediated through the medium of radio and that listeners fashion in their consciousnesses. 16 I borrow the term “signified” from Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s notion of Signifyin(g) in The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 46. 17 Here I borrow Nancy Fraser’s theories on subaltern counterpublics from “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 14. 18 Specifically, “Talking Drum” follows Houston A. Baker Jr.’s approach to analyzing the production and circulation of black vernacular “texts” in order to define the black public sphere and to demonstrate the power of its mediating institutions (here black-oriented radio). See Houston A. Baker Jr., Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). In my deployment of black vernacular theory’s treatment of Signifyin(g) and signification, it is important to note that I approach the concept of ritual insults with the understanding that engagements with media are not exclusive mediations of a social center. While such rituals might share similar sentiments in response to a political reality (racism, for instance), it does not mean that such rituals emanate out of a social center in which all of the members of a particular community or public sphere share political cohesion. In other words, “Talking Drum” does not presume that there is such a thing as “the social whole” on which social values and

12 “Talking Drum” presumes that African and African American responses to chattel slavery, and subsequent generations of legalized segregation and its governing codes in North

America, have been instrumental in inventing, shaping, and transforming the black public sphere against a hostile national public sphere. Enslaved Africans and African Americans cultivated traditions and rituals—such as convening of secret meetings and broadcasting intelligence through figurative expression, stories, coded songs, and polyrhythmic drumbeats, to name a few—to establish black public collectives distinct from dominant, white public cultures.19 “Talking Drum” approaches the black public sphere in the United States as a site of critical production and circulation of non-state discourse among a heterogeneous collective of private individuals of African descent unbound by space, physical presence, or racialized geopolitics.20 A brief clarification regarding my conception of the black public sphere is necessary at this point. In other words, before going further it is useful, to paraphrase Stuart Hall, to consider what the “black” in the term “black public sphere” entails.21

“Talking Drum” presumes the black public sphere to be a transnational space that circulates discourse that counters explicit or subtle national narratives of exclusion. Unlike the bourgeois public sphere that Jürgen Habermas described, the black public sphere does not rely solely on elite society’s highbrow institutions for its resources. Rather, the black public sphere’s dynamism draws upon black vernacular cultural productions and their institutions of publicity (drumming, spirituals, art, music, singing, preaching, blues, ritual insults, black-oriented news media, radio, television, rap, hip hop, etc.). Thus, Houston A. Baker Jr. concludes correctly that the space of the black public

relationships to social order (and the role of media and people’s media practices) are based. See Nick Couldry, Media Rituals: A Critical Approach (New York: Routledge, 2003), 9. 19 Mitchell, Black Church Beginnings, 30. 20 Here I draw upon Jürgen Habermas’s distinction of a public as a site of the production and circulation of nonstate discourse among private individuals. See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). 21 Stuart Hall, “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture,” Social Justice 20, nos. 1-2 (Spring-Summer 1993): 104.

13 sphere is not reserved for intellectuals but is “a wider sphere of critical practices and visionary politics” in which intellectuals can engage black vernacular practices (and the ideas and energies they conjure) in collective efforts to confront the exclusionary trauma in public spaces within the United

States. In sum, “Talking Drum” maintains that the black public sphere is a vital discursive space that enables creative interventions in injustices against black lives within the larger public sphere of the

United States. To borrow Baker’s language, the black public sphere “extends the horizon of generosity, the politics of well-being, and the deepening of democratic values.”22

Additionally, “Talking Drum” does not inscribe a form of black essentialism, nor does it reduce the arena of the black public sphere to a single concern, such as the family, education, violence, religion, or other topics. Rather, this project approaches “the black public sphere” as an umbrella term that situates diverse matters of black public concern insofar as these concerns have been scripted out of the generalizable public sphere of U.S. civil society. Thus, this project approaches the black public sphere not as a monolithic, universal entity but as a collective of multiple heterogeneous “black” publics that can vary along class, gender, culture, political, religious, or ideological lines.23 Some scholars argue that such variegated perspectives actually represent the fracturing of black political cohesion during the last two hundred years and, ultimately, the decline of the black public sphere’s organizational structure.24 That historical analysis, however, offers stronger evidence for the black public sphere’s “internal diversity” than for its demise. Finally, it is important to note that “Talking Drum” does not understand the black public sphere as the sole province of black peoples. Rather, I approach the black public sphere as a collective of ideologically, culturally, and politically diverse peoples concerned with and committed to improving the condition of people

22 Black Public Sphere Collective, Black Public Sphere, 1-3. 23 Here I draw upon the insights of Catherine Squires and other theorists of the black public sphere who contributed to the series The Black Public Sphere (1995). 24 Michael C. Dawson, “A Black Counterpublic?: Economic Earthquakes, Racial Agenda(s), and Black Politics,” in Black Public Sphere, ed. Black Public Sphere Collective, 212-14.

14 of African descent in the United States and globally.25 Therefore, “Talking Drum” presumes that the black public sphere consists of multiple overlapping coalitions of members of the African diaspora and their allies who are engaged in the production and circulation of discourse invested in the improvement of black lives.26 This dissertation, however, is necessarily limited in geographic scope, and so I use the term “black public sphere” specifically to refer to black publics in North

America.

If, in fact, the public sphere is predicated on a private/public distinction, then the origin of a black public sphere in the United States involves blacks’ experiences with the geopolitics of chattel slavery and its subsequent legally sanctioned iterations. Laws constituting slavery in North America created a slaveocracy with a matrix of duties and obligations that distinguished between those who were considered slaves and those who were considered free. “This definitively separate and putatively equal black public sphere of American life,” Houston A. Baker Jr. argues, “comprised a world of civic responsibility, commercial duty and professional obligations shared by southern blacks.”27 Slave codes, legal distinctions of race, antebellum and postbellum discussions about freedom, and blacks’ experiences with each participated in the making of a black public sphere in which alternative, non-state discourse about black lives was produced and circulated to (re)shape ideas and expectations governing black public life.28 Baker continues: “In its codes of class,

25 Catherine Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere: An Alternative Vocabulary for Multiple Public Spheres,” Communication Theory (November 2002): 446-468. Squires borrows from Rita Felski, who refers to the feminist public sphere as alliances of related subcommunities that share common agendas of challenging gender inequality. See Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). 26 Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere,” 454. 27 Baker, “Critical Memory and the Black Public Sphere,” 23. 28 Following Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, the Virginia General Assembly passed laws prohibiting blacks from conducting their own funerals. The law also made it illegal for blacks to preach or hold any kind of public assembly. See Ted Delaney and Phillip Wayne Rhodes, Free Blacks of Lynchburg, Virginia, 1805-1865 (Lynchburg, VA: Warwick House Publishing, 2001), 56. Congress passed Fugitive Slave Acts in 1793 and 1850 that provided measures for the return of all escaped slaves captured in other states. “Fugitive Slave Acts, United States [1793, 1850],” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, last modified July 20, 2008, http://www.britannica.com/event/Fugitive-Slave-Acts. Black codes were laws enacted after the Civil War between 1865 and 1866 intending to replace the social controls that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment had dismantled. See “Black codes, United States History,” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online,

15 patriotism, respectability, dissent, consensus, tolerance, justice and ethics, the black public sphere offered a sometimes radical critique of the dominant white society with which it coexisted.”29 Thus, people of African descent in North America have always existed in a state of countercitizenship, counter to the operations of the established laws of the land. And while the talking African drum sounded those truths constituting a black public sphere in colonial North America, this dissertation argues that WVON radio in mid-twentieth-century Chicago accomplished a similar but distinct critique from other mediating institutions of the black public sphere, like churches, magazines, and newspapers.30 Evoking radio as a talking drum is a performative conceit or trope for an African/African

American aesthetics of prophetic (or political) discourse and response aimed at (re)defining and

(re)shaping visions of and for the present and future.31 The critical force of Spann-Cooper’s trope of the talking drum, then, is rooted in the reality that through the medium of WVON, black folk organized against a hostile dominant public sphere much as their ancestors did through engagements with the tribal talking drum. Therefore, my dissertation explores how WVON radio provided a forum for African American Chicagoans during the post World War II years to debate, challenge, and (re-)broadcast alternative discourse—to talk back—about the public issues affecting and shaping their lives.

http://www.britannica.com/topic/black-code. Additionally, the Separate Car Act of 1892 legally segregated common carriers. In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson legally supported racial segregation in public facilities. William Loren Katz records the testimony of Moses Grandy of Boston. Grandy’s brother-in-law was a preacher from North Carolina who was tortured for months (and eventually died from his injuries) for leading worship services without the permission of whites. “Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy,” in Five Slave Narratives, ed. William Loren Katz (New York: Arno Press, 1968), 35-36. 29 Baker, “Critical Memory and the Black Public Sphere,” 23. 30 Ibid., 27. 31 Literary critics use the term “conceit” as figurative language that combines dissimilar images in order to render their similarities. Baker, “Critical Memory and the Black Public Sphere,” 31. I use the term “prophetic” to refer to the countercultural discourse similar to the discourse produced among prophetic characters (e.g., Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos) in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) that often included direct, hyperbolic, or incendiary rhetoric to expose and challenge various kinds of injustice while calling leaders and communities to repentance and recommitment to national ideals. This rhetorical practice often broadcast direct, controversial critiques of the present in hope of reorienting people to new ways of living together.

16 Though two white financiers, Leonard and Phil Chess, founded WVON, African

Americans were in charge of the station’s programming. Born in Poland in 1917 and 1921 respectively, Leonard and Phil immigrated to the United States with their impoverished family in

1928 and settled in a Jewish community on Chicago’s South Side. As adults in the 1940s, the Chess brothers started a number of ventures in Chicago, including operating liquor stores, running bars, and hiring black blues singers and black jazz musicians for their establishments—the largest being the Macomba Lounge, located in the back of Chess Liquors on 39th Street and Cottage Grove.32 It was at the Macomba Lounge that the two brothers formed Chess Records, a blues label that also recorded a little jazz. The success of their record company inspired the Chess brothers to start a radio station both to exploit the radio industry’s unwillingness to play black music and to target a large African American audience hungry to hear their music on the radio. In 1963, the Chess brothers purchased the AM station WHFC (standing for Where Happy People Congregate) for one million dollars from Illinois Republican congressman Richard Hoffman, who had owned the station since 1932. The sale also included an FM frequency, WSDM (which stood for Smack Dab in the

Middle). The Chess brothers renamed their newly acquired AM station WVON (which stood, as mentioned above, for Voice of the Negro).33

After WVON first aired on April 1, 1963, its focus on black music yielded immediate success.34 By 1964, WVON commanded between 44 and 48 percent of Chicago’s daytime African

American listenership. A March 28, 1964, Billboard article stated that WVON ranked second in

32 Gerald Brennan, “Chess, Leonard,” Encyclopedia.com website, 1999, last accessed March 8, 2016, http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3494200017.html. Also see John Collis, The Story of Chess Records (New York: Bloomsbury, 1998), 25. 33 Pervis Spann with Linda C. Walker, The 40 Year Spann of WVON (Chicago: National Academy of the Blues, 2003), 5-8. In 1947, Leonard and Phil Chess became affiliated with Aristocrat Records and eventually acquired complete control of the label. They renamed it Chess Records in 1950. “Our History,” WVON website. 34 “Our History,” WVON website.

17 ratings in the local market, with Chicago’s WLS leading the way.35 The twenty-four-hour all-black program format at WVON was novel, and compelling. Wesley South hosted a call-in talk show called Hotline from 11:00 P.M. to midnight; Pervis “The Blues Man” Spann spun the blues from midnight to 5:00 A.M.; Roy Wood reported WVON news; Bernadine C. Washington hosted a program on fashion and popular culture called On the Scene with Bernadine; and Bill “Doc” Lee or

William Lee, known as “The Bishop of the Airways,” played gospel in the mornings when his predecessor, Bud Riley, left WVON after a short time.36 Pervis Spann, who was one of the original

WVON deejays, recalled the station’s instant connection with African American listeners:

“Excitement rippled through the Black community, crackling, seeming as if the transmitter of the station was plugged directly into the current of one’s soul.” WVON became such an important extension of Chicago’s black community that people in crisis would often call the station to share or receive critical information. “It was nothing unusual,” Spann remembered, “for people to call the station in times of trouble before they called the police.”37 German dramatist Berthold Brecht’s poem “Radio” (1936) illustrates the significant role that radio stations play as nerve centers containing and circulating information vital to daily survival among people under siege:

You little box, held to me when escaping So that your valves should not break, Carried from house to ship from ship to train, So that my enemies might go on talking to me Near my bed, to my pain The last thing at night, the first thing in the morning, Of their victories and of my cares,

35 David Whiteis, “Not So Smooth Operator,” Chicago Reader, January 18, 2001. Also see Kit O’Toole, Michael Jackson FAQ: All That’s Left to Know about the King of Pop (Milwaukee: Backbeat Books, 2015). O’Toole mentions the Billboard article at the beginning of chapter 3, “If It’s in the Stars, They’re Surely on My Side: How the Jackson 5 Were Really Discovered.” 36 Isabel Joseph Johnson later became another gospel music personality heard on WVON. In 1972, she was serving as director of WVON’s religious programming and hosted her own gospel show, Isabel Speaks, live on Sunday mornings and afternoons. Additionally, she served as the host of the television show, Rock of Ages, on Saturday evenings on WCIU Channel 26. See “‘Rock of Ages’ Celebrates its Anniversary on WCIU-TV,” Chicago Defender, March 27, 1972; display ad, Chicago Daily Defender, January 20, 1973. See Spann with Walker, 40 Year Spann of WVON, 95. 37 Spann with Walker, 40 Year Spann of WVON, 8-14, 38.

18 Promise me not to go silent all of a sudden.38

Brecht’s poetic depiction of radio certainly falls within McLuhan’s definition of “hot media,” media that provides high amounts of data, leaving little to be filled in or completed by the audience and thus media that require little participation. However, WVON’s weekly programming, such as its live call-in talk show, Hotline, complicates McLuhan’s categories of hot and cold media. For instance, when listeners phoned in live to Hotline, they participated in and shaped the content of the show. In any case, with WVON’s transmitter proverbially plugged into the souls of black lives, the station enhanced what McLuhan observed to be “the native power of radio to involve people in one another.”39

Amazingly, WVON thrived despite its limited wattage power as a Class Four station, the lowest level the Federal Communications Commission issued. Class Four stations, which could only muster frequencies between 250 and 1,000 watts, were often the most financially realistic options for those African Americans interested in owning a radio station. WVON flourished in large part because its 1,000-watt transmitter was centrally located, which enabled the station to reach the entire city.40 Additionally, a significant shift in musical tastes among black Chicagoans had occurred as southern blacks steadily poured into the city during the immediate post-World War II years. This shift in taste—from classic ’30s-rotted blues styles, to West-Coast jump blues, to a downhome Delta sound—created a thriving new market for southern sounds upon which WVON capitalized.41 Like the African drum several centuries earlier on North American soil, WVON radio animated audible mediations of a vibrant and changing black public sphere.

38 Translation from McLuhan, Understanding Media, 260. 39 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 36, 260-61. 40 Spann with Walker, 40 Year Spann of WVON, 13, 26. 41 Collis, Story of Chess Records, 24.

19 This dissertation emerges at a time when the fields of media and communication studies are becoming increasingly interested in sound as an academic category, and it contributes to that ongoing conversation.42 My guiding methodological approach for this project follows cultural historians and media and communication scholars Dayo F. Gore, Barbara Dianne Savage, and Nick

Couldry, whose activist approaches to historical archives emphasize the political interventions of historically disenfranchised peoples that are often minimized or erased from historical monographs on modern racial politics in the United States.43 This study also follows previous media and communication studies scholarship that relies upon rhetorical rituals among popular audiences to inform methodological approaches to historical and cultural interventions in dominant culture in the

United States.44

Review of Literature

42 See Rick Altman, “The Material-Heterogeneity of Recorded Sound,” in Sonic Theory, Sound Practice, ed. Rick Altman (New York: Routledge, 1992); Greg Goodale, Sonic Persuasion: Reading Sound in the Recorded Age (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011); and Alexander Weheliye, Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). This growing interest in the sonic also occurs as public rage erupts among many North Americans who are voicing concerns about contemporary imperatives of black containment in the United States. Thus, “Talking Drum” intends to open a pathway for media and communication studies to reflect critically on hidden or apparent aurally constructed and aurally reinforced racist representations of African Americans and to theorize how understanding sound technologies as mediating institutions of the black public sphere (and mechanisms of power wielded by dominant public spheres) might generate new, more savvy, and efficacious discursive spaces in which to contest and refigure representations of African American life, identity, and citizenship that threaten black lives in the twenty-first century. 43 Insofar as archival documents of recorded program broadcasts, secondary literature, audience letters, and oral histories provide a snapshot of the time and place of reception, I approach historical documents in this project ethnographically. In other words, my engagement with this dissertation’s object and oral/aural history archive will attempt to re-create (or re-member) events from the perspectives of the African American audiences who interacted and interact with WVON radio, even while I narrate my own experience interacting with history in the present. I will utilize close readings of archival objects in conjunction with oral histories as an interpretive lens that attempts to identify particular social meanings and historical practices in particular cultural objects. 44 Jasmine Nichole Cobb, Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century (New York: New York University Press, 2015); Nick Couldry, Media Rituals: A Critical Approach (New York: Routledge, 2003); Nick Couldry, Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2012); Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984); Angela G. Ray, The Lyceum and Public Culture in the Nineteenth-Century United States (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005).

20 Despite WVON’s significance among black Chicagoans, little scholarly work on the station exists. In fact, only two substantive academic studies of the station are available. In 2004

Catherine Squires published an article, “Black Talk Radio: Defining Community Needs and

Identity,” which examines WVON’s role as an extension of Chicago’s black public sphere, but she limits her analysis to black talk radio in the 1990s.45 Jennifer Searcy’s 2012 Loyola University dissertation, “The Voice of the Negro: African American Radio, WVON, and the Struggle for Civil

Rights in Chicago,” examines WVON’s beginnings and role during the civil rights movement. Searcy examines WVON during the six-year period between 1963 and 1969 and situates her study within a larger analysis of the emergence and development of the black-oriented radio market. Consequently,

Searcy’s study, while essential to critical works on WVON, does not offer a substantive account of the breadth of the radio station’s programming across the decades.46 Therefore, a primary goal of

“Talking Drum” is to offer a micro-study of WVON’s programming between 1963 and 1983 that provides close readings of the limited primary source material of WVON’s program broadcast recordings and transcripts.

One barrier to serious historical inquiries on WVON is that few primary sources exist. I have learned from conversations with WVON station personnel that while some recordings still exist, many of the station’s program broadcasts were not recorded or have been erased. Financial limitations among African Americans and limited interests in black-oriented radio generally are realities that some scholars point to in order to explain the limited primary source material on mid-

45 Catherine Squires, “Black Talk Radio: Defining Community Needs and Identity,” in The Black Studies Reader, ed. Jacqueline Bobo, Cynthia Hudley, and Claudine Michel (New York: Routledge, 2004). Additionally, Catherine Squires composed a dissertation chapter on WVON that is a significant resource for studies of contemporary black talk radio. See Catherine Squires, “Black Voices in the Black Public Sphere: An Alternative Approach to the Analysis of Public Spheres” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1999). 46 Although Norman W. Spaulding’s 1981 dissertation does not center an analysis on WVON radio in the manner of Squires or Searcy, it offers an important examination of the various styles of disc jockeys in Chicago preceding WVON. See Norman W. Spaulding, “History of Black-Oriented Radio in Chicago, 1929-1963” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana, 1981); see also Norman W. Spaulding, “History of Black-Oriented Radio in Chicago” (M.A. thesis, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1974).

21 twentieth-century black radio stations such as WVON.47 My preliminary research for this project unearthed a few primary audio recordings of WVON programming between the 1960s and the

1980s. In addition to these recordings, this dissertation relies heavily on articles in newspapers such as the Chicago Defender and Chicago Tribune, some transcripts of WVON program broadcasts, and other archival materials.

For instance, WVON station archives consist of thirty-six digital audio recordings of various program broadcasts in 1965 and one in 2014. Included in this archive is the July 1966 Hotline interview with Martin Luther King Jr., which is the focus of the analysis in Chapter 1. In addition to these audio recordings, I obtained several texts from WVON’s archives that have provided significant historical details about the station.48 A second major archive I utilize is the Black Radio:

Telling It Like It Was collection in the Archives of African American Music and Culture (AAAMC) at the Smith Research Center at Indiana University in Bloomington. This archive includes 297 digital audiocassettes and 168 analog audiocassettes, some of which feature interviews with WVON disc jockeys about the station’s programming. I draw upon these oral histories throughout “Talking

Drum.” A third major archive I utilize in this dissertation consists of the Charles Walton Papers in the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature at the Chicago

Public Library. This archive houses several newspaper articles about Bernadine C. Washington as well as an audio recording on which Washington discusses her career in radio. While not containing many documents on Washington, this particular archive offers rarely cited details about

Washington’s WVON programs On the Scene with Bernadine and The Bern Club, which comprise the subject of my analysis in Chapter 2. Further, I rely heavily upon articles in the Chicago Defender and

47 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 13, 15. See Erik Barnouw, A History of Broadcasting in the United States, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966-70), esp. vol. 2. 48 I was provided with copies of Spann with Walker, 40 Year Spann of WVON, and two annotated commemorative calendars for WVON’s fortieth- and fiftieth-year anniversaries. These calendars provided critical historical details about the radio station, including important timelines and biographical information on WVON on-air personalities.

22 Chicago Tribune newspaper archives, as well as magazines like Billboard, Jet, and Ebony. These newspaper and magazine articles supply critical supplemental information about WVON’s history and programming, which are particularly useful in my analysis of Roy Wood’s WVON editorials in

Chapter 3. Finally, I rely upon the African American Police League Records in the Chicago History

Museum. This is the only archive I found that houses transcripts of Lu Palmer’s WVON news program, Lu’s Notebook, which is the subject of Chapter 4. Although the primary source material on

WVON’s programming is limited, “Talking Drum” demonstrates the inventive ways a scholar can approach the study of media history when extant records are sparse.

Despite the limited primary source material, WVON’s contribution to mid-twentieth-century public discourse among African Americans warrants scholarly analysis. A few historical accounts of radio in general provide an important starting point. Erik Barnouw’s three-volume work, The History of Broadcasting in the United States (1966-70), is important for researchers of radio history. However, as

Searcy argues, Barnouw’s “sterilized grand narrative of corporate radio history” does not adequately account for agency among black deejays and audiences.49 A number of historical works on black- oriented radio have emerged within the last thirty years that help provide a starting point for microstudies of black-appeal radio stations such as WVON. Historians Mark Newman and Michele

Hilmes both address the lack of scholarly works on black radio.50 Gilbert Williams explores the connection between black disc jockeys and West African culture.51 A few historians, such as Louis

Cantor, provide a model for scholarly examinations of specific black-oriented radio stations. In

Wheelin’ on Beale, Cantor analyzes the first all-black radio station in the United States, Memphis’s

49 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 15-16. 50 Mark Newman, Entrepreneurs of Pride and Profit: From Black Appeal Radio to Radio Soul (New York: Praeger, 1988), x; Michele Hilmes, Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), xvi. 51 Gilbert Williams, Legendary Pioneers of Black Radio (New York: Praeger, 1998), 3.

23 WDIA, from its beginning in the 1940s to the 1990s.52 Cantor’s micro-historical method of examining a black radio station yields an important foundation for comparative studies that reveal local, geographic, and national trends in black radio.53 My study of WVON is an important next step toward potential comparative studies.

As I stated previously, few scholars have undertaken micro-studies of single black-oriented radio stations in North America. However, several scholarly works on U.S. radio technology and histories of radio have been critical to informing the borders of “Talking Drum.”54 Several monographs explore the use of radio in the mid-twentieth century to construct and circulate positive and negative representations of African Americans and black public life.55 Further, there is an important body of literature I rely upon to understand, construct, and investigate the specific sociological, geographic, and political realities constituting the black public sphere in Cold War

Chicago. Chief among these works is St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton’s Black Metropolis: A

Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (1945), which offers a sociological framework for understanding issues of race, class, and culture in Chicago during the period of time this dissertation covers. Drake and Cayton make a scientific statement about the urban Negro or, more specifically, about the social processes that shape the environments that shape the urban Negro. Their primary position is that

52 Louis Cantor, Wheelin’ on Beale: How WDIA-Memphis Became the Nation’s First All-Black Radio Station and Created the Sound That Changed America (New York: Pharo Books, 1992), 237. 53 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 19. 54 Several important studies exist on WVON. See Squires, “Black Voices”; Squires, “Black Talk Radio”; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro.” 55 In Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938-1948 (1999), Barbara Dianne Savage explores attempts among national network radio outlets to address issues of race in the years surrounding World War II. Tona J. Hangen’s Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America (2003), explores radio as a technology that provided an unprecedented pulpit for American evangelism during the twentieth century. In Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South (2004), Brian Ward explores the influence of black-oriented radio and the black preachers who utilized the industry in the southern United States during the middle of the twentieth century. In Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity (2005), Alexander G. Weheliye offers a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between sonic technologies, black cultural production, and black identity. Finally, Lerone A. Martin’s Preaching on Wax: The Phonograph and the Shaping of Modern African American Religion (2014) provides the most recent analysis of sound technologies and black identity. Describing these works briefly here helps to situate and distinguish my project among other academic projects that also explore intersections of radio, race, religion, politics, and the black public sphere in Cold War North America.

24 the Western world does not see the reality of the dispossessed, such as the lives of African

Americans in Chicago. Therefore, Black Metropolis, and subsequent historical monographs on African

American life in Chicago form a critical backdrop for my project.56 These works help to narrate the impact that the Great Migration had on mediating institutions of the black public sphere, such as radio.57

In addition to historical monographs examining intersections of sound technology, radio, race, politics, and religion in twentieth-century North America, it is worth mentioning four additional bodies of sources that offer a significant contribution to the study of radio’s role in the struggle for racial equality in North America. The first set of sources includes the work of journalists, such as Taylor Branch and Diane McWhorter.58 The second includes published memoirs of black deejays such as Hal Jackson, Herb Kent, Pervis Spann, and Shelley Stewart59; the work of music journalists such Nelson George and Wes Smith60; and writings of radio historians such as

56 See St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1945). For similar historical works, see Richard E. Stamz and Patrick A. Roberts, Give ’Em Soul, Richard! Race, Radio, and Rhythm and Blues in Chicago (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010); Jacqueline Castledine, Cold War Progressives: Women’s Interracial Organizing for Peace and Freedom (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012); Darlene Clark Hine and John McCluskey Jr., The Black Chicago Renaissance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012); Christopher Robert Reed, The Rise of Chicago’s Black Metropolis, 1920-1929 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011); Bill V. Mullen, Popular Fronts: Chicago and African-American Cultural Politics, 1935-46 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015); Rashad Shabazz, Spacializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015); Sonja D. Williams, Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015). 57 Here I have in mind institutions such as black-oriented radio, newspapers, and the African American church. The body of literature outlined above also demonstrates how the waves of black southern migrants cascading on Chicago in the early and mid-twentieth century interacted with media as they expressed their social, political, and religious values and rituals—and as they utilized media to respond to the historical exigencies of Cold War national imperatives of black containment. 58 Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988); Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001). 59 Hal Jackson and James Haskins, The House That Jack Built: My Life as a Trailblazer in Broadcasting and Entertainment (New York: HarperCollins, 2001); Herb Kent, The Kool Gent: The Nine Lives of Radio Legend Herb Kent (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2009); Spann with Walker, 40 Year Spann; Shelley Stewart, The Road South: A Memoir (New York: Warner Books, 2002). 60 Nelson George, Where Did Our Love Go?: The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985); Nelson George, Death of Rhythm and Blues (New York: Penguin Books, 2003); Wes Smith, The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s (Marietta, GA: Longstreet Press, 1989).

25 William Barlow, Louis Cantor, Mark Newman, and Gilbert Williams.61 The third includes the work of scholars of media and communication studies such as Susan Douglas, Michele Hilmes, and

Susan Smulyan.62 Finally, general histories of radio technology offer important contexts for talking about the history of intersections of radio, race, politics, and religion in the United States.63

Many of the studies mentioned above offer useful histories of radio broadcasting in twentieth-century North America and account for radio’s ability to generate rituals of listening that shape black identity. However, a substantive examination of WVON’s programming between the

1960s and 1980s not been undertaken previously. I hope that framing WVON radio programming as alternative sites of popular knowledge and education about black lives and citizenship will offer scholarly and African American communities resources for exploring the use of media innovations to create discursive spaces in the twenty-first century for the successful mobilization and celebration of black lives.

Radio as an Institution of the Black Public Sphere

A study of the use of radio among African Americans between the 1960s and 1980s can provide critical frameworks for understanding radio’s use as a tactic of mobilization amid dominant mediating institutions today. During the 1960s, U.S. print media served as a dominant mediating institution of U.S. public life with which radio had to complete. For instance, at the time of

WVON’s first broadcast in 1963, the Chicago Defender newspaper, founded in 1905, was already firmly

61 William Barlow, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999); Cantor, Wheelin’ on Beale; Mark Newman, Profit and Pride (New York: Praeger, 1988); Smith, Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll; Williams, Legendary Pioneers of Black Radio. 62 Ward, Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South, 3-4. Ward cites Susan J. Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); Susan J. Douglas, Listening In (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004); Hilmes, Radio Voices; and Susan Smulyan, Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920- 1934 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996). 63 See Barnouw, History of Broadcasting in the United States; Philip K. Eberly, Music in the Air: America’s Changing Tastes in Popular Music, 1920-1980 (New York: Hastings House, 1982); and J. Fred MacDonald, Don’t Touch That Dial! Radio Programming in American Life, 1920-1960 (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979).

26 entrenched as a powerful institution of black public life in Chicago. The emergence of black- oriented radio stations such as WVON, then, provides a case for understanding and analyzing radio’s contribution as an alternative mediating institution of public concerns.

Unlike black-oriented newspapers, WVON relied upon and provided black people’s audible voices to circulate those public issues constituting Chicago’s black public sphere. Here is what

Marshall McLuhan observes to be a unique difference between print media and radio: “If we sit and talk in a dark room, words suddenly acquire new meanings and different textures. They become richer. . . . All the gestural qualities that the printed page strips from language come back in the dark and on the radio.”64 Hearing voices—instead of reading printed reports—was the phenomenological experience that WVON provided its predominantly African American audience. The ways that audience members turned to and relied upon WVON and other all-black oriented radio stations for community information, political news, entertainment, spiritual uplift, and recreation represented changes in how the city’s black public sphere was engaging public issues in the mid-twentieth century. Thus, “Talking Drum” presumes that WVON’s programming in Cold War Chicago represents and demonstrates a unique structural transformation of the city’s black public sphere.

Many have written about the power of print media as a mediating institution of the black public sphere.65 However, the social, political, and cultural significance of the galvanizing possibilities and force of black-oriented radio stations that created programming in spite of and in response to systematic efforts to constrain black lives and censor black voices warrants further study. The popularity of black-oriented radio today among fast-emerging live video broadcasting innovations demonstrates both radio’s continued influence as a mediating institution and the value of academic

64 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 264. 65 For instance, see Black Public Sphere Collective, Black Public Sphere; and Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis.

27 inquiries investigating how and why radio remains a competitive alternative source of information about black public life in the United States.

Beyond the unique phenomenological experience black-oriented radio stations offered as aural sites of information and authority, a micro-study of WVON is important because it elaborates on a larger cultural narrative of the U.S. broadcasting industry’s censorship and misrepresentation of minority voices. By the 1930s, owning a radio was a common part of American life, and by 1940, 83 percent of Americans owned a radio. Additionally, by the 1940s local and federal leaders had begun to envision radio as a technology with the capacity to create ideological forums for (re-)constructing ideas of American identity and citizenship. These forums, some concluded, could also be discursive spaces in which ubiquitous minstrel-inspired representations of African Americans could be contested. Standing in the way, however, was a U.S. radio broadcasting industry that practiced systematic discrimination among minority groups in its licensing and selling practices in the early and middle of the twentieth century. As Susan Brinson has demonstrated, the process of licensing a person or institution to broadcast on radio frequencies in the United States was designed to limit minority access.66 In fact, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the institution responsible for regulating the operation of the radio industry, practiced uncontested discrimination in its licensing practices up until the late 1960s. As Jennifer Searcy observes, “by the early 1960s,

African Americans owned fewer than five out of 10,000 American radio stations, and all were Class

Four stations.”67 In 1968, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the

Kerner Commission after its chair, Illinois governor Otto Kerner Jr., released results of an investigation of the 1967 race riots in Newark and Detroit. The commission recognized a common

66 Susan Brinson, “Radio’s Covenant: The Regulatory Failure of Minority Ownership of Broadcast Radio Facilities,” in Radio Cultures: The Sound Medium in American Life, ed. Michael C. Keith (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2008), 10. 67 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 75; Barlow, Voice Over, 245.

28 belief among minority communities that the broadcasting industry represented the perspectives of white Americans while it excluded minorities.68

By 1970 the number of black-owned radio stations rose slightly to sixteen out of eight thousand stations.69 Still, by 1978 less than 1 percent of broadcast facilities in North America were owned by minority groups. “In other words,” Brinson writes, “if you were a media corporation or a wealthy white male who supported free enterprise and democracy, your chances of winning a broadcast license were infinitely better than if you belonged to a minority, were female or openly gay, or were a member of a labor union or the Communist Party.” Thus, members of historically disenfranchised groups were often misrepresented on radio as their values, perspectives, and visions of U.S. citizenship were filtered and constructed through the values and perspectives of the elite, white, heterosexual American male.70 As stated earlier, limited access to the large sums of capital necessary for purchasing radio stations made it difficult for many minority groups, such as African

Americans—who had been systematically denied the same access to financial resources as whites— to control the images or information represented and presented on radio waves. One of the primary issues at stake, then, was access to the radio frequencies, the medium’s available forums through which African Americans could circulate (or make audible) the sonorous beauty and dignity of black lives. This larger cultural drama involving African Americans, the politics of representation, and the

U.S. radio and broadcasting industry helps situate the political significance and immediate social impact of WVON radio from the 1960s to the present day.71

68 Brinson, “Radio’s Covenant,” 10. 69 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 75; Fred Feretti, “The White Captivity of Black Radio,” Columbia Journalism Review 9, no. 2 (Summer 1970): 35-39. 70 Brinson, “Radio’s Covenant,” 10. 71 WVON transformed significantly when the Chess brothers sold the station in 1970 to Globetrotter Communications for nine million dollars. Up until the time WVON was sold, the station broadcast on the 1450 AM frequency. Globetrotter Communications kept the WVON call letters, purchased the 1390 AM frequency (5000 watts), and abandoned WVON’s former 1450 AM frequency (only 1000 watts), since the FCC had ruled that a company could have only one AM and one FM station in the same marketplace. After Globetrotter purchased WVON, major personnel

29 Since its first broadcast WVON radio proved to be an important extension of Chicago’s black public sphere. One primary reason for WVON’s success was the broad and holistic reach of its programming. WVON’s programming from 1963 to 1983—based on published programming lists—yields the following topical areas constituting the station’s primary broadcast subject matter: journalism, breaking news, editorials, fashion, arts, music, education, popular culture, religion, politics, comedy, civil rights, fundraising, promotional games, advertising, and broadcasting. In an effort to capture something of the breadth of WVON’s programming from 1963 to 1983, in this dissertation I analyze four topical areas in four chapters: talk-journalism, fashion-popular culture, news-editorials, and civil rights-politics. These four areas are the most representative of WVON’s broadcast content.

“Talking Drum” consists of four analytic chapters. Chapter 1, “‘Father, Open Our Eyes’:

WVON’s Hotline, Fake News, and Prophetic Discontent,” analyzes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s July

1966 appearance on WVON’s live call-in talk show, Hotline. Hosted by Wesley South, Hotline first aired on April 1, 1963, from 11:00 P.M. to midnight. In particular, this first chapter explores the prophetic function of King’s Hotline interview as it provided an avenue to challenge prevailing media

changes occurred, and some of WVON’s original deejays were replaced. Several remaining and former WVON employees, and other shareholders such as Pervis Spann and Wesley South, purchased WXOL radio station and formed Midway Broadcasting Company in the late 1970s. With the 1450 AM frequency (which WVON used previously) up for grabs, Midway Broadcasting Company applied to purchase the dormant 1450 AM frequency from Globetrotter Communications. Globetrotter sold WVON to Combined Communications on April 12, 1978. Two weeks later Pervis Spann was fired. The FCC eventually granted Midway Broadcasting Company half of the dormant 1450 AM frequency. The other half went to McGowan Communication, which shared time on the frequency with Midway. WXOL’s first broadcast was in August 1979. Midway Broadcasting Company broadcast black programming fifteen hours a day, while McGowan broadcast nine hours during weekdays and all day on weekends. Midway would bring back most of the original WVON deejays on the frequency (1450 AM) on which WVON originally broadcast. See Spann with Walker, 40 Year Spann, 102, 150-52, 156. Spann attributes the April 12, 1978, date of Globetrotter’s sale of WVON to Combined Communications to a Chicago Citizen Weekend Newspaper story dated May 5-7, 1978. See also “Our History,” WVON website. In 1979, Gannett Company and Combined Communications merged in what was then the largest merger in communications history. See “From Then Till Now,” Gannett website, last accessed March 8, 2016, http://www.gannett.com/who-we-are/history/. In 1984, Gannett, whose major holdings were in the print media sector, decided to drop the WVON call letters. Midway Broadcasting filed with the FCC and successfully obtained the WVON call letters, returning the Voice of the Negro to its original 1450 AM frequency. In 1986, WVON radio changed its programming to an entirely talk-radio format, which the station still utilizes today to provide an interactive forum to debate and disseminate issues affecting black lives. See “Our History,” WVON website.

30 myths about correlations between rioting and King-led civil rights demonstrators and demonstrations. During his engagement with callers, King is able to reject such media myths, reconstitute the identity of civil rights demonstrators, and expose latent racism in white communities in Chicago.

Chapter 2, “‘You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby’: WVON’s Bern Club, Foreign Shores, and

Ambassadors of Black Womanhood,” analyzes Bernadine Washington’s fashion and popular culture program, On the Scene with Bernadine, and the social club that her on-air show inspired, the WVON

Bern Club. Washington’s On the Scene with Bernadine discussed fashion tips, politics, and civil rights.

The Bern Club consisted of an estimated 700 to 1,000 women who were fans of Washington’s radio program and desired to be affiliated with WVON. Through charitable work, scholarship luncheons, fashion advice, etiquette training, charm schooling, and travel programs, members of the WVON

Bern Club learned black middle-class ideals of womanhood and citizenship. This chapter focuses its analysis on The Bern Club as an off-air program of WVON that addressed educational and professional inequalities and expanded the political world of African American women.

Chapter 3, “‘Now Run and Tell THAT!’: WVON’s Editorials, Aural Release, and

Soundscapes of Citizenship,” analyzes WVON News Director Roy Wood’s editorials as discourses of resistance that defined citizenship in terms of radical interconnectivity. Wood’s editorials provided a forum for lamenting and confronting traumatic urban realities through thoughtful commentary. In particular, I provide a close reading of Wood’s June 1964 satirical editorial on bigotry. In this editorial, Wood utilizes the African American vernacular practice of Signifyin(g) as he assumes the idenitity of an unrepentant bigot to mock the absurd logic of prejudice. Additionally,

I suggest the ways Wood’s editorial might be a direct allusion to the controversial events surrounding the 1964 presidential campaign.

31 Chapter 4, “‘The Panther with the Pen’: WVON’s Lu’s Notebook, Alternative Sites of

Learning, and the Journey toward Political Literacy,” analyzes Lu Palmer’s popular news program,

Lu’s Notebook, sponsored by Illinois Bell and first aired in 1970. Lu’s Notebook provided important news and information about black life in Chicago and famously began with the sound of African drums that faded into the sound of a typewriter.72 In particular, I argue that Lu’s Notebook and

Palmer’s numerous off-air political activist ventures served as vital educational sites or “affinity spaces” that enhanced the political literacy of African Americans Chicagoans. Here I draw on the work of media scholars who explore affinity spaces such as online gaming communities as unconventional spaces of learning, collaboration, and mentorship.

The conclusion of “Talking Drum” summarizes key insights of the analytic chapters and then suggests ways that WVON’s broadcasts between 1963 and 1983 could inform efforts to mobilize individuals within the twenty-first-century black public sphere. In the midst of the exclusionary trauma—such as police brutality—still perpetrated against African Americans in public spaces within the United States, Chicago’s WVON radio remains an important discursive forum for members of the black public sphere. Listeners’ continued support of WVON’s programming seems to reveal an audacious optimism that the complex sonority constituting black lives might be heard and experienced—and that the resulting sonic envelopes might become liberating spaces in which fuller expressions of freedom, love, and humanity may begin dramatically to transfigure democratic life in twenty-first-century North America.

72 Steve Nidetz, “Wesley South, A Radio Pioneer at 47, Is a Legend at 80,” Chicago Tribune, February 15, 1994.

32 CHAPTER 1

“Father, Open Our Eyes”: WVON’s Hotline, Fake News, and Prophetic Discontent

“The basic condition in the success of any human endeavor is the preservation of law and order.”1

—Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley

“I think it’s very unfair for the critics to say that we cause violence because we are seeking to gain our constitutional rights and somebody in the act is violent toward us. . . . These are the persons who have been the real breakers of the law.”2

—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“If there was anything happening in the Black community, you heard it here first.”3

—Pervis “The Blues Man” Spann

Victor Anderson still remembers the last sounds he heard as a boy each night on

WVON Radio in the 1960s. It was a song, actually, more like a prayer—the Gospel Clefs’

1958 gospel hit on Savoy Records, “Open Our Eyes.” Each night Anderson climbed into bed between his two older brothers while the eldest, who held control of the radio, tuned to

WVON 1450 AM. And each night around 11:00 P.M. the Gospel Clefs prepared Anderson for bed by settling his mind, since it had just been filled with deejay Herb Kent’s terrifying tales of the Wahoo Man, who some mothers complained was “making their kids wet themselves.”4 After Kent’s spooky stories about this fictional scar-faced broken-broomstick-

1 Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1966. 2 Martin Luther King Jr., WVON Hotline, July 1966, https://soundcloud.com/wbez/wvon-call-in-with-martin- luther-king-jr-on-wesley-souths-hotline. 3 Pervis Spann with Linda C. Walker, The 40 Year Spann of WVON (Chicago: National Academy of the Blues, 2003), 15. 4 WVON deejay Herb Kent created the Wahoo Man character to scare his radio listeners. The Wahoo Man was a crazy man with a scarred face covered in runny sores and who also had a black dog. He terrorized people by chasing them with a broken broomstick. During his 7:30-11:00 P.M. segment on WVON, Kent told spooky stories on the air about the Wahoo Man. He sometimes warned listeners not to look underneath their beds while laughing a villainous laugh. Kent got the idea for the character one night in 1964 when he went with two friends to get a midnight snack at the well-known establishment Chili Mac’s in Chicago after a night of

33 carrying crazy man, Anderson looked forward to hearing “Open Our Eyes” to comfort him from what dread might linger in his closet or underneath his bed. He found it encouraging to know the song would greet him each night no matter what the day had brought. In fact, the day’s many experiences—eluding bullies, chasing love, playing with friends, breaking curfew, and other boyhood adventures—guaranteed that Anderson would hear the song anew each night. Different daily experiences inevitably brought new textures, timbres, and testimonies to his experience of listening to the song.5

As a youth Anderson, now Oberlin Theological School Professor of Ethics and

Society at Vanderbilt Divinity School and professor of African American and Diaspora

Studies and Religious Studies at Vanderbilt’s College of Arts and Science, heard “Open Our

Eyes” both as an ending and a beginning. It signaled the day’s end and evoked the morning’s possibilities. Yet the song was more than a musical marker of temporality. It was a message—a dynamic urban ballad—of reassurance amid the swift ebbs and flows of life’s favors and frustrations. Ultimately, though, it offered hope: Hope to be liberated from those dark impulses threatening to vanquish the human body and soul. Hope for that God- inspired vision that alone could comfort hurting souls and ease worldly woes. In this way,

deejaying. After arriving he witnessed two beautiful women running diagonally across the street while screaming. Chasing the women was a muscular man holding a broomstick and accompanied by a black dog. Upon seeing Kent and his friends, the man ducked into a doorway. After Kent and his friends entered Chili Mac’s to order food, the creepy-looking man they had seen on the street burst into the crowded restaurant and walked down the aisle glaring at everyone. He approached Kent and stared down into his chili close enough for Kent to see the pus-filled sores covering his face. After Kent told the man to move on, the man went to the cashier and yelled, “I’ll kill you!” The cashier threatened to get physical, and the man left. When Kent left the diner he and his friends saw the man again, this time singing the blues and holding his broomstick with his black dog by his side. Kent and his friends jumped into his car, and the man rushed toward them holding his broomstick high. Kent flicked his car alarm on and off, and it made a wah, wah, wah sound. The man then hollered, “Wahoo, wahoo, that don’t scare nobody!” and ran off into the night. One of Kent’s friends then suggested the man should be called the Wahoo Man. Kent decided to make a character of the same name to scare his radio listeners. Herb Kent and David Smallwood, The Cool Gent: The Nine Lives of Radio Legend Herb Kent (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2009), 127-32. 5 This anecdote on the song “Open Our Eyes” was obtained in an ongoing conversation I had with Victor Anderson about my dissertation in 2016 in Nashville, Tennessee.

34 “Open Our Eyes” was an opportunity to become more open to settling sacred revelation amid raging secular tempest. The song was a practical theology for more abundant living with God and with the people of God. To live with opened eyes, the song suggests, is to live as embodiments of God’s loving, merciful, just, open-minded, and enlightened nature. Even after half a century, Anderson says, he still hears the Gospel Clefs’ call out to the cosmos on his behalf—and on behalf of all others—as the darkness surrounds him each night. Still the words comfort him from what unknown dread or injustice or fear might linger somewhere near:

Father, open our eyes, that we may see, to follow thee. Oh lord grant us, thy lovin’ peace, and let all dissension cease. Let our faith, each day increase, and Master . . . Lord, please Open our eyes, (ooh ooh ooh ooh open our eyes) (Ooooh He has given us) hills and mountains, he has given us, level plains. (He has given us) food and clothing, (given us shelter) from the storm and the rain (ooooooooh) And with all that he provided, (All he’s provided) We’re (always) always (hurting) hurting each other (hurting one another) Seems that we just can’t (be) be contented (can’t be contented) always arguing (hurting) with each other (hurting one another) But look upon us

35 with compassion And please hear us hear us when we cry and smile down on your helpless children oh and Master and father Lord come on, come on yes and open our eyes (ooh ooh ooh oooh open our eyes)6

As a child, Anderson identified “Open Our Eyes” as WVON’s official nightly sign- off music. For those youth listening to WVON 1490 AM around 11:00 P.M. in Chicago during the 1960s, the song would certainly have been one of the last heard before bedtime.

However, at the time, WVON broadcast twenty-four hours a day. WVON deejay Herb Kent used “Open Our Eyes” as the official musical sign-off ending his 7:30-11:00 P.M. segment, which preceded fellow WVON personality Wesley South’s popular live call-in talk show,

Hotline. Thus, the song was actually transitional music signaling a change in programming.

The fact that some confused “Open Our Eyes” as Wesley South’s official sign-on is evidence the song had become a sonic cue that Hotline—WVON’s scintillating, penetrating, and scandalous public affairs program—was beginning.

Although not meant to be South’s musical sign-on, “Open Our Eyes” was a fitting daily introduction to Hotline. The show’s unique program format, which allowed listeners to talk directly with local and national leaders, provided a critical forum for African Americans, their allies, and their adversaries to discuss pressing political issues affecting black life in and beyond the city. As members of this forum, listeners had the opportunity to learn about and talk back to their social, political, and cultural circumstances. Jennifer Searcy writes, “A

6 The lyrics for this version of “Open Our Eyes” can be found at http://www.lyricsera.com/1090276-lyrics- open-our-eyes.html. The parentheses indicate when back-up vocalists are heard during the song’s performance. An audio version of “Open Our Eyes” can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnOF2g5QrhU.

36 virtual town hall on the air, the show became a place for black Chicagoans to discuss and debate issues of local, national, and international concern.”7 The show was devoted to informing, educating, and organizing its audience. Ultimately, then, Hotline sought to open listeners’ proverbial eyes to the depth and complexities of those realities shaping life in

Chicago. Shortly after its first broadcast on April 1, 1963, Hotline gained prominence for its in-depth discussions on current events, becoming one of the most listened-to radio programs in Chicago. During its sixteen-year run, Hotline welcomed such luminary midcentury men as President John F. Kennedy, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Muhammad

Ali, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, Jackie Robinson, Jimmy Carter,

Dick Gregory, Robert Kennedy, Duke Ellington, and the focus of this chapter, Dr. Martin

Luther King Jr.

In this chapter, I argue that WVON’s broadcast of King’s July 1966 Hotline appearance was prophetic as it provided an avenue to challenge the myths, that is, the fake news, about civil rights demonstrators and demonstrations circulating through local Chicago media outlets. In describing WVON’s use of King’s appearance on Hotline as “prophetic,” I have at least three initial presumptions about the term in mind. First, Hotline provided a constructive avenue for callers to express their anxieties (or what I have termed “legitimate discontent”) about civil rights demonstrations and rioting. Given the limited number of black-owned and black-oriented radio stations in Chicago, African Americans had few avenues through which to vocalize their opinions, frustrations, and experiences fully and freely on radio. Thus, providing an alternative space to broadcast marginalized black voices is prophetic in that it attempts to subvert systematic discrimination of African Americans in

7 Jennifer Searcy, “The Voice of the Negro: African American Radio, WVON, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Chicago” (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University, 2012), 138, Paper 688, http://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/688.

37 the broadcasting industry as well as the racist representations of African American identity in white-owned and operated broadcasting institutions. Second, having King appear on Hotline directly exposed and demystified mainstream myths about King’s civil rights demonstrations in Chicago. In other words, Hotline functioned prophetically during King’s

1966 appearance on the show insofar as it afforded King an opportunity to talk directly back to listeners, critics, and erroneous media reports to clarify misconceptions about his presence and civil rights activities in Chicago. Third, King’s appearance on Hotline was prophetic in that it attempted to raise public consciousness by revealing violence, lawlessness, and latent racism (which King and fellow supporters had often been accused of perpetrating) hiding in plain sight. Similar to the way that, as Andre Johnson argues, the biblical prophets’ penetrating insights revealed “the hidden in plain sight” and stated “the obvious” that others might have been too afraid to articulate, King’s rhetoric on Hotline exposed virulent racial hostility masquerading as reasonable concerns for law and order that many had not yet discerned.8 In short, King’s appearance offered WVON’s listeners new revelation and an alternate vision, illuminating a more accurate account of his civil rights labor and agenda in

Chicago.

My analysis is grounded in the American jeremiad tradition of prophetic discourse, focusing specifically on the African American jeremiad.9 The term jeremiad, meaning “a

8 Here I borrow Andre E. Johnson’s description of the prophet’s unique role as one who engages in “consciousness-raising” work by naming obvious realities others might be too afraid to broach themselves; see Johnson, The Forgotten Prophet: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and the African American Prophetic Tradition (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 2012), 8. Also see Johnson, “To Make the World So Damn Uncomfortable: W. E. B. Du Bois and the African American Prophetic Tradition,” Carolinas Communication Annual 32 (2016): 19. 9 While the African American jeremiad emanated among figures like David Walker, Mary Still, Henry Highland Garnet, Frederick Douglass, and other black abolitionists in the North, where it was comparatively safer to challenge the institution of slavery overtly, not all who utilized the tradition drew upon it in the same way or to the same extent. Some of those espousing more militant and separatist worldviews had all but rejected notions that blacks and whites shared distinct but inherently inclusive messianic myths. Therefore, some scholars argue that individuals like Garnet, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Delany, Henry McNeal Turner, and Edward

38 lamentation or doleful complaint,” derives from the name of the biblical prophet

Jeremiah, who warned of Israel’s future destruction for failing to keep the Mosaic covenant.

The rhetorical tradition of the American jeremiad originated in the seventeenth century when New England Puritans sought to articulate their unique religious identity as a people divinely chosen for “socioreligious perfection” in preparation of God’s coming kingdom on earth. These European refugees fled corrupt religious and social institutions in hopes of establishing a holy society in North America—a “City on a Hill,” in John Winthrop’s famous allusion to Matthew 5:14. American exceptionalism, then, served as a primary philosophical pillar on which the tradition of the jeremiad in America was built. Weaving the nation’s founding narratives into the myth of exceptionalism, the American jeremiad was a tool of social criticism aimed at shaping a unified moral-spiritual identity and exhorting fidelity to the founding fathers’ national covenant.10 The national mission of civil perfection served as the standard by which the American jeremiad assessed whether society was falling short of the founding principles of democracy. Structurally, the American jeremiad had three parts: a covenant promise, a charge of infidelity to the promise, and a resolving prophecy foretelling society’s penitent rededication to the promise. It was the responsibility of each successive generation to reinterpret its inherited conception of the national mission and to redefine its covenantal promise of freedom and democracy.11

During the crusade against slavery in the antebellum North, black abolitionists adapted the jeremiad tradition for black protest and propaganda. The resulting African

Wilmot actually operated outside the jeremiad tradition. In contrast, reformers like Douglass possessed and maintained a stubborn optimism in the essentialist myth of America’s democratic mission as a vehicle and space for the flourishing of all Americas. See David Howard-Pitney, The African American Jeremiad: Appeals for Justice in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005), 12, 19; Frank Thomas, American Dream 2.0: A Christian Way Out of the Great Recession (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2012), 12-13. 10 Howard-Pitney, African American Jeremiad, 3-5; Thomas, American Dream 2.0, 3, 5. 11 Howard-Pitney, African American Jeremiad, 7-9.

39 American jeremiad generally affirmed faith in America’s national democratic covenant while it also expressed belief in blacks’ own missionary destiny in the United States.12

Scholars such as Willie J. Harrell Jr., Christopher Hobson, David Howard-Pitney, Andre

Johnson, Wilson J. Moses, and Frank Thomas have emphasized the jeremiad tradition’s influence on prophetic oratory among African American social reformers in the United

States.13 While some situate the African American jeremiad historically as a pre-Civil War phenomenon, others argue the tradition continued to be a tactic shaping modern prophetic black oratory.14 In particular, Howard-Pitney describes the African American jeremiad as a

“rhetoric of indignation” that was a “leading instrument of black social assertion in

America” among leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. who used it to “censure white

Americans.” King deployed this rhetorical strategy in Chicago to disabuse people who held false ideas about black protest and to persuade residents to embrace nonviolence, which, unlike “anarchistic rioting,” could prompt city leaders to address blacks’ social needs.15

King’s insistence on nonviolent direct action reflected his skepticism about liberalism’s optimism about the inevitability of human progress. However, as David L. Chappell argues,

King believed that human beings and, consequently, human institutions had a natural tendency toward corruption. Thus, King’s jeremiad, in the tradition of the Hebrew Prophets, sought “to instigate catastrophic changes in the minds of whoever would listen.”16 This

12 Ibid., 10, 12. 13 See Wilson J. Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religion Myth (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982); Howard-Pitney, African American Jeremiad; Willie Harrell Jr., Origins of the African American Jeremiad: The Rhetorical Strategies of Social Protest and Activism, 1760-1861 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2011); Christopher Z. Hobson, The Mount of Vision: African American Prophetic Tradition, 1800-1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Johnson, Forgotten Prophet; Johnson, “To Make the World So Damn Uncomfortable”; Thomas, American Dream 2.0. 14 Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms, 30; Thomas, American Dream 2.0, 13. 15 Howard-Pitney, African American Jeremiad, 193. 16 David L. Chappell, Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 3, 45-53. Reinhold Niebuhr’s anthropology, which concluded that no human progress

40 rhetorical tradition helped African Americans to shape national debates not only on racial injustice but also on critical nineteenth- and twentieth-century social and political movements, including temperance, suffrage, socialism, anarchism, unionism, anti- imperialism, and educational reform.17 And while celebrated for its common form as oral discourse, this tradition served a significant purpose in nineteenth-century black literary genres, such as newspapers and pamphlets, which appealed to revolutionary ideology that valorized the fight against tyranny.18

Interestingly, as Edward J. Blum and James Darsey both lament, rhetorical scholars have often neglected the religious aspect of U.S. prophetic rhetoric as an analytic category.

One reason for this, Darsey argues, is that the Hebraic tradition of prophecy found in the

Old Testament “operates in a different mode and is based on different epistemological assumptions than our public rhetorics derived from the Graeco-Roman tradition.”

Additionally, while the Old Testament prophets left behind a substantial archive of

was assured, served as a cornerstone of King’s thought. See Martin Luther King Jr., “Reinhold Niebuhr’s Ethical Dualism,” in The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson, 7 vols. to date (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992-2014), 2:141-51. For an introduction to prophetic preaching in the African American tradition, see William L. Andrews, ed., Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women’s Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); William E. Hatcher, John Jasper: The Unmatched Negro Philosopher and Preacher (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1908); Henry H. Mitchell, Black Preaching: The Recovery of a Powerful Art (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990); and Martha J. Simmons and Frank A. Thomas, Preaching with Sacred Fire: An Anthology of African American Sermons, 1750 to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2010). 17 Philip S. Foner and Robert James Branham, eds., Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787-1900 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998), 11. For other anthologies of African American oratory, see, e.g., Warren J. Halliburton, Historic Speeches of African Americans (New York: Franklin Watts Publishing, 1993); Robbie Jean Walker, ed., The Rhetoric of Struggle: Public Address by African American Women (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992); and Shirley Wilson Logan, With Pen and Voice: A Critical Anthology of Nineteenth-Century African- American Women (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995). 18 Richard Newman, Patrick Rael, and Phillip Lapsansky, eds., Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African American Protest Literature, 1790-1860 (New York: Routledge, 2001), 2-3, 8-9. Black protest pamphleteering between the late eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries belongs to the tradition of African American prophetic rhetoric. Both African American pamphlets and African American prophetic rhetoric share orality in common, since many pamphlets actually began as spoken words that were later published. Black orators often dictated their slave narratives or composed polished sermons and speeches in order for them to be published as pamphlets. Thus, both genres utilized orality as a vibrant form of protest against racial injustice. This orality had tremendous implications for constructing and consolidating national and national black identity.

41 discourse, they provided “no systematic theory of rhetoric” in their writings. Therefore, some scholars have remained skeptical about the viability of using the discourse of religious prophecy found in the Bible to add to dicussions on rhetorical theory.19 Given this skepticism, definitions of prophetic rhetoric are not often uniform or self-evident.

Therefore, I proceed using the following definition, based on that used by Andre Johnson:

Prophetic rhetoric is a discourse of social criticism grounded in a concept of the “divine” or

“sacred,” shaped by a community’s socio-religious experience, and spoken on behalf of the rights of the poor, marginalized, and exploited, in the American case, in order to align citizens with national democratic ideals.20 Such rhetoric assumes that that which national myth has upheld as “divine” must be protected from false authorities, idols, seeking to dethrone the “sacred.” Ultimately, then, prophetic rhetoric endeavors to persuade people to accept a concept of what Abraham Heschel referred to as an ethical God or what Michael

Walzer called a redemptive sacred authority.21 Because of its emphasis on deposing those idols that society has substituted for “divine” or “sacred” authority, prophetic rhetoric, as

Raymie E. McKerrow rightly concludes, is a discourse that “examines the dimensions of domination and freedom.”22 A sense of mission, then, undergirds the definition of prophetic rhetoric informing this study. Therefore, I utilize what Johnson refers to as “mission- oriented prophecy” to examine the prophetic function of King’s Hotline 1966 appearance.

19 James Darsey, The Prophetic Tradition and Radical Rhetoric in America (New York: New York University Press, 1991), 7. 20 Johnson, “To Make the World So Damn Uncomfortable,” 18. Within my definition of prophetic rhetoric, the “sacred” or “divine” does not necessarily have to include exclusively Judeo-Christian conceptions of the sacred or divine. 21 Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 413; Michael Walzer, “Prophecy and Social Criticism,” in Let Justice Roll: Prophetic Challenges in Religion, Politics, and Society, ed. Neal Riemer (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), 33; Johnson, “To Make the World So Damn Uncomfortable,” 18-19. 22 Raymie E. McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis,” Communication Monographs 56, no. 2 (1989): 91; Johnson, “To Make the World So Damn Uncomfortable,” 18-19.

42 My analysis demonstrates how this constitutive rhetoric endeavors to persuade people to participate in a divine mission by reconstituting their perceived identities as criminals and lawbreakers.23

This chapter proceeds in three movements. First, I provide a brief account of the origins of WVON’s Hotline. Second, I discuss some of the historical realities that bred much of the legitimate discontent that callers vocalized during King’s 1966 Hotline appearance. I use the term “legitimate discontent” to refer to Hotline callers’ anxieties about potential causal links between nonviolent civil rights demonstrations and rioting. Additionally, I analyze several of Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley’s public statements, specifically his law and order rhetoric, about riots and King-led civil rights demonstrations. I also analyze local newspaper reports and editorials as well as comments from several local civic leaders about

King and the Chicago Freedom Movement. While some of these reports and statements were published more than a week after King’s July 1966 Hotline appearance, and in some cases even later, they are evidence of the often-racist mainstream media machinery with which King and his supporters contended in Chicago. Third, I analyze segments of the recording of King’s 1966 appearance on WVON’s Hotline. I specifically highlight King’s use of mission-oriented prophetic discourse as a way to call black and white Chicagoans to participate in a mission of nonviolent social uplift amid various forms of racial violence and oppression. The full discussion between King, callers, and Hotline’s host Wesley South encompasses multiple subjects, including rioting, nonviolent direct action, the Chicago

Freedom Movement, Chicago’s corrupt political machine, and King’s political and democratic philosophies. However, I focus my analysis on the prophetic function of King’s

23 For a landmark study on constitutive rhetoric, see Maurice Charland, “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 133-50.

43 Hotline appearance as it confronts mainstream myths concerning rioting and nonviolent black protest. My decision not to examine the entire Hotline interview prevents me from addressing the diversity of subjects discussed and their interactions. Yet in the words of

Houston A. Baker Jr., I hope my necessary selectivity here “will be interpreted, not as a sign of myopic exclusiveness, but as an invitation to inventive play” among those with related but separate projects.24 Since I have found no substantive scholarly accounts of King’s July 1966

Hotline appearance, my particular focus invites future examinations of different contours encompassing this rich historical archive. Such projects could yield important insights today, especially in light of current mainstream “alternative facts” or fake news about Black Lives

Matter demonstrations, for example, and rising concerns about the intersections of media, black public life, civil rights demonstrations, and rioting in the twenty-first century. Equally important projects involve explorations of the uses of fake news undergirding bigoted political machinery within Donald Trump’s presidential administration to justify executive orders that, essentially, criminalize various groups such as Muslims, immigrants, and demonstrators and public dissenters. In short, my study of Hotline during the late 1960s raises important questions today about the power of media myths about race that espouse founding narratives of national unity yet reinforce racial difference and white supremacy.

The Birth of WVON’s Hotline

Wesley Waterford South was born March 23, 1914, to Dr. Elijah and Mayme South in Muskogee, Oklahoma. In 1924, South’s family moved to Chicago, where he grew up in

24 Houston A. Baker Jr., Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 14.

44 the city’s public school system and graduated from Englewood High School.25 During

World War II, South served two years in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.26 After his time in the army, South became one of the first African American graduates of Northwestern

University’s Medill School of Journalism, which graduated its first class in 1922.27 In 1951, he began working for the Chicago Defender newspaper. In December of that year, South joined the editorial staff of Johnson Publishing Company, where he would work for about six years.28 Throughout the 1950s South worked as a reporter and editor for Ebony, Jet, and the

Chicago American. He also worked as a union activist.29

South’s introduction to radio came as a consequence of the Federal Communications

Commission’s (FCC) enforcement of the 1949 Fairness Doctrine. The policy mandated that holders of broadcast licenses provide equal time for opposing viewpoints on controversial issues presented on radio and television. In 1961, South was working as a columnist at the

Chicago American and volunteering his services as a press officer for the Chicago branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He became acquainted with the NAACP’s legal action against television stations WLBT and WJTV in

Jackson, Mississippi, for denying African Americans airtime.30 At this time attorneys had begun to encourage radio and TV station owners to offer airtime to other organizations.31

Illinois Republican congressman Richard Hoffman, who since 1932 had owned WHFC-AM

25 Wesley South, interview by Julieanna Richardson, July 18, 2000, “Media Makers,” The HistoryMakers: The Nation’s Largest African American Video Oral History Collection, http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/wesley-south-39. 26 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 135. 27 Kim Janssen, “WVON Co-Owner a Talk Show Pioneer,” Chicago Sun-Times, January 11, 2010. 28 South, interview by Richardson, HistoryMakers. 29 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 135; Wesley South, interview by Alexis Gillespie, transcript, January 6, 1995, Radio Smithsonian: Black Radio Project Collection, Archives of African American Music and Culture, Bloomington, IN; masthead, Jet, January 7, 1954. 30 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 136; Steven Classen, Watching Jim Crow: The Struggles over Mississippi TV, 1955- 1969 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 50-51. 31 Steve Nidetz, “Wesley South, a Radio Pioneer at 47, Is a Legend at 80,” Chicago Tribune, February 15, 1994.

45 (standing for Where Happy People Congregate and broadcasting to the city’s south and west sides), feared being penalized by the FCC for not having any African Americans on the air. Hoffman contacted the NAACP’s Chicago office to offer anyone airtime on his 1,000- watt station.32 WHFC’s management suggested South as a potential candidate. Already familiar with his newspaper columns, Hoffman invited South to host his own thirty-minute talk show. South’s WHFC show, South’s Sidelights, tackled diverse issues through guest appearances, interviews, and panel discussions.33 As South recalled, “schools, housing, jobs, crime . . . you name it and we discussed it.”34 The show also addressed global issues, such as issues of race in South Africa. South’s Sidelights broadcast an in-studio interview with the

Reverend Ambrose Reeves, a banished South African Episcopal bishop who led an investigation into the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in the Transvaal, when dozens of black protesters were killed by police.35 As the show’s host, South had the opportunity to refine his interview techniques and vocal delivery. He once recalled the embarrassing experience of listening to some of his early shows as host of South’s Sidelights: “They were the worst things

I’d ever heard. And I said, ‘Mr. Hoffman, why, I know you didn’t—why didn’t you tell me so?’ ‘Well, I knew you’d—you’d catch on.’ He said, ‘What you were saying was all right.’ I was doing a lot of stuttering and that type of thing, and I went on and the rest is history.”36

In the spring of 1962, Jewish brothers Leonard and Phil Chess, who were in the market for a radio station to promote artists on their blues label, Chess Records, bought

WHFC from Hoffman for one million dollars.37 The Chess brothers renamed their newly

32 South, interview by Richardson, HistoryMakers. Wesley South discusses his beginnings in radio broadcasting. 33 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 137. 34 South, interview by Gillespie, Radio Smithsonian. 35 “Bishop to Discuss S. Africa’s Racism,” Chicago Defender, May 2, 1961. 36 South, interview by Richardson, HistoryMakers. 37 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 68.

46 acquired AM station WVON (which stood for Voice of the Negro) and hired black deejays and personnel, who became known affectionately as “The Good Guys,” to run the station.38 South’s Sidelights was revamped as Hotline, and on April 1, 1963, South began his sixteen-year run as Hotline’s host. When South began hosting Hotline, the white radio phenom Fahey Flynn was doing a call-in show at WBBM Radio.39 South recognized the significance Flynn’s call-in show had among its predominantly white audience. He saw the importance of creating a parallel institution at WVON for African Americans in Chicago: “I thought it would be a good idea to have one in our community.”40

Not long after its inaugural broadcast, Hotline developed a reputation for attracting political powerbrokers and for fearlessly tackling thorny and complicated polemical topics.

And in times of sorrow, crisis, and chaos Hotline provided a much-needed forum to encourage rational thinking and optimism. For instance, when South’s friend, the activist

Medgar Evers was murdered on Sunday, June 12, 1963—two days after Evers’s June 10

Hotline appearance and just two months after Hotline’s first broadcast—shock, sorrow, and rage washed over black Chicagoans and African Americans throughout the United States. In the aftermath of Evers’s murder, South consoled and challenged his listeners in a savvy in memoriam segment that created constructive dialogue about race, democracy, and citizenship

38 WVON’s deejays became known as “The Good Guys” because of their activist and philanthropic involvement in black communities in Chicago. Spann with Walker, 40 Year Spann of WVON, 5-8. In 1947, Leonard and Phil Chess became affiliated with Aristocrat Records and eventually acquired complete control of the label. They renamed it Chess Records in 1950. The Chess brothers’ vision for WVON radio was to market the musicians on Chess Records. See “Our History,” WVON website, http://wvon.com. 39 Flynn, a popular radio and television newscaster in Chicago, began working in radio part-time in Wisconsin during the late 1930s. He began his Chicago radio career in 1941 and in 1948 won several radio journalism awards for his series “Report Uncensored,” an exposé on conditions at a school for delinquent boys in St. Charles, Illinois. Two years later Flynn won additional fame for his program on race relations, called “The Quiet Answer.” In 1958, Flynn won the first Chicago Emmy award for newscasting and was considered by many to be a news institution in Chicago. See Daniel Berger and Steve Jajkowski, eds., Chicago Television: Images of America (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010), 109-11; June Skinner Sawyers, Chicago Portraits: New Edition (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2012), 115-16. 40 Nidetz, “Wesley South.”

47 in tribute to Evers. Searcy writes: “Upon learning of Evers’ death, South immediately came to the station and along with other disc jockeys, organized a broadcast that included a mix of religious music, audio clips of previous Evers WVON appearances, and callers’ remembrances of the fallen Civil Rights leader.”41

After locating the tape of Evers’s most recent Hotline interview, South announced on the air the Tuesday following Evers’s death that he would replay the tape, this time with

Evers’s widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, calling in to the show.42 The response was overwhelming. South recalled, “When I found out that we had the tape, and we announced it and when we came on the air, all of the lights—all eight of them—were flicking which meant we had people who wanted to talk.”43 Fellow WVON Good Guy deejay Pervis “The

Blues Man” Spann also recalled the black community’s intense reaction. “So many calls came in to ‘Hotline,’ 50,000 plus, to be exact, that the telephone circuits became jammed and

Illinois Bell had to ultimately invent the ‘591’ exchange, still in use today, for radio only.”44

WVON’s response to the torrent of emotions and statements in the wake of Evers’s murder, and to social catastrophes in general, dramatized the station’s ability to mobilize black

Chicagoans, especially in the midst of current or looming crises.

Three years later Hotline would again demonstrate its power to convene members of

Chicago’s black public sphere to address troubling social, cultural, and political realities. By the volatile summer of 1966, many Chicagoans were becoming concerned about possible correlations between civil rights demonstrations and rioting. By interfacing directly with members of Chicago’s black public sphere, Hotline publicized alternate images of black life

41 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 158. 42 Spann with Walker, 40 Year Spann of WVON, 96; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 158; South, interview by Richardson, HistoryMakers. 43 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 158; South, interview by Richardson, HistoryMakers. 44 Spann and Walker, 40 Year Spann of WVON, 96.

48 that often countered circumscribed, stereotyped, racist, and consequently inaccurate representations—fake news—about African American identity and citizenship.

It is important to note that in the midst of malicious racial stereotyping among certain media outlets, some local and national radio programs did attempt to add more accurate representations of African Americans. For instance, two decades earlier the thirteen-month federally sponsored national radio series Freedom’s People, which broadcast on

NBC in 1941 and 1942, actually highlighted black contributions and achievements in U.S. culture. While the series mostly steered away from explicit political discussions about racism or racial segregation, the show attempted to provide an alternative to racist media representations of black life that “told only the worst things about Negroes.”45 Still, during the mid-1960s in Chicago, racial stereotyping of African Americans was a mainstream mainstay among some of the city’s dominant media machines.

During the summers of 1965 and 1966 riots and racial violence erupted in Chicago.

Martin Luther King Jr. held elected leaders and local media responsible to the extent that both ignored the racist policies and practices that generated the poverty and slum conditions

(and consequently the psychic aggression) in and among which many African Americans were forced to live.46 In contrast, Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley and conservative newspapers at the time, like the Chicago Tribune, blamed King, his staff, and civil rights demonstrators for rioting in Chicago. In their public vilification of King and King-led

45 While indeed a federally sponsored program that celebrated African Americans’ contributions to the United States, Freedom’s People was prohibited from expressing substantive political views against racial discrimination. It is too simplistic of an argument to suggest that racism is the sole contributing factor of such censorship (even though there may have been some involved in the program who held racist views). A more nuanced understanding of the muted political voice of Freedom’s People involves an understanding of the importance of advertising revenues to the broadcasting industry at the time. Barbara Dianne Savage, Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Radio, 1938-1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 63, 87; David Bradford, “A New Series of Radio Programs Will Help to Publicize the Achievement of the Negro,” Louisville Courier-Journal, September 30, 1941. 46 Clayborne Carson, ed., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Warner Books, 1998), 299, 302.

49 demonstrations, Daley, local media, other elected leaders, and even black ministers constructed arguments utilizing concepts of law and order to discredit King and the Chicago

Freedom Movement. In the following section I examine this law and order rhetoric in local public statements about rioting, nonviolent direct action, and King’s presence in Chicago. I argue that such rhetoric presented a pernicious representation of black demonstrators as lawless and violent troublemakers and was directly related to the concerted efforts of local leaders to criminalize black protest. Examining this law and order rhetoric reveals one of the primary political stakes of King’s mission-oriented prophecy in Chicago—to reconstitute, reclaim, and rebroadcast an alternate image of African American democratic citizenship.

Black Discontent and the Rhetoric of Law and Order

On January 7, 1966, King announced what he called an unprecedented effort for civil rights in the North.47 The resulting Chicago Freedom Movement was an expansion of civil rights activities in the South and sought to dramatize de facto racial discrimination in housing, education, and employment. The movement, however, was not the genesis of coordinated civil rights campaigns among African Americans who were discontent with discrimination in Chicago. In the 1930s, there were “Don’t shop where you can’t work” campaigns. In the ’40s and ’50s, there were initiatives to integrate restaurants, bars, movie theaters, department stores, and housing projects. In 1960, several “wade-ins” were held at

Rainbow Beach, where blacks were not guaranteed safety to swim without being attacked by whites.48 Additionally, Chicago was home to the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), as

47 Matt Pearce, “When Martin Luther King Jr. Took His Fight into the North, and Saw a New Level of Hatred,” LA Times, January 18, 2016. 48 Don Terry, “Northern Exposure: Nothing He’d Seen in the South Prepared Martin Luther King for the Streets of Marquette Park in 1966,” Chicago Tribune, January 15, 2006.

50 well as the activist group Chicago Area Friends of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating

Committee (SNCC). The Chicago Freedom Movement was an attempt to revitalize past efforts to secure civil rights for African Americans in education, employment, and housing.49

On January 26, 1966, King moved into a four-room, third-floor walkup on 1550 S.

Hamlin Avenue in the West Side Chicago slum of North Lawndale. Shortly after moving in

King observed, “We don’t have wall-to-wall carpeting to worry about. . . . But we have wall- to-wall rats and roaches.”50 King spent a few nights a week in this shabby, small, gray-walled apartment, sometimes talking with street-gang leaders late into the night about the power of nonviolence.51 Many were bitter about the inhumane conditions they endured within the city’s slums and were uncertain about the efficacy of nonviolent direct action as a strategy for improving their living conditions. King recalled witnessing this discontent one evening as he discussed the movement’s aims at a weekly mass meeting. During this meeting he was booed by “some angry young men” involved in the movement.52 It was the only time the

Nobel Laureate recalled ever being booed while speaking. The ugly experience troubled him greatly:

But as I lay awake thinking, I finally came to myself, and I could not for the life of me have less than patience and understanding for those young people. . . . They booed because they felt that we were unable to deliver on our promises, and because we had urged them to have faith in people who had too often proved to be

49 By the time King moved to Chicago in 1966 to launch the movement, Benjamin C. Willis, whom many black Chicagoans blamed for the substandard education afforded to African American students, decided to retire as school superintendent. At that time King led a contingent of Chicago activists whose focus shifted largely to open housing, jobs, and eradicating slums. Terry, “Northern Exposure.” For more on the Chicago Freedom Movement, see James R. Ralph, Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Lewis V. Baldwin, The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Boundaries of Law, Politics, and Religion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 93-94, 98; Robert B. McKersie, A Decisive Decade: An Insider’s View of the Chicago Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013). 50 Ron Grossman, “Martin Luther King Jr. Brought the Fight to Chicago,” Chicago Tribune, April 7, 2013. 51 Terry, “Northern Exposure.” 52 Carson, Autobiography of Martin Luther King, 302.

51 unfaithful. They were hostile because they were watching the dream that they had so readily accepted turn into a frustrating nightmare.53

That experience provided King with important insights into the extent of many black

Chicagoans’ legitimate discontent about urban life in the city and, consequently, the skepticism many shared about his methods. Complicating matters was the fact that images of rioting in cities like Chicago and the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles during the previous twelve months were still fresh in many Chicagoans’ minds. Elected officials, civic leaders, and media outlets in Chicago exacerbated anxieties further as some suggested that civil rights demonstrations in Chicago could incite further rioting and racial violence. A primary challenge before King and other civil rights leaders in Chicago, then, was to demonstrate the efficacy of nonviolent direct action as a strategy for confronting racial discrimination in the North.

By the time King appeared on Hotline in July 1966, leaders in Washington, D.C., had become anxious about the possibility of large-scale rioting in major U.S. cities. Public opinion polls revealed that a large majority of whites favored tough measures to regulate the social disruptions of black protest. As Howard-Pitney observes, “White public response was hostile, and white politicians called loudly for get-tough police measures and firmer enforcement of ‘law and order.’”54 In fact, in early 1965 federal officials invited Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, along with ten other mayors from major U.S. cities, to participate in a secret program to explore riot prevention. Mike Royko, Daley’s biographer, writes,

“Nothing was announced to the public because the White House felt that talking about riot prevention might alarm the public and even provoke riots.” Refusing to believe riots would erupt in Chicago, Daley “rudely rejected the invitation from Washington.” He was the only

53 Ibid., 302. 54 Howard-Pitney, African American Jeremiad, 190, 196.

52 one of the invited mayors not present for the meeting. Despite Daley’s confidence, a volatile atmosphere began to develop in Chicago. During the summer of 1965 comedian

Dick Gregory, along with other demonstrators, marched through Daley’s neighborhood of

Bridgeport waving signs and protesting school segregation and calling for Benjamin C.

Willis’s termination as superintendent of Chicago public schools. Marchers were pelted with eggs, tomatoes, firecrackers, and rocks. Neighborhood women turned on lawn sprinklers, soaking marchers.55 Rhythmic taunts of hate and violence congealed as eerie soundscapes.

Royko reports:

The neighborhood echoed with the chants of “Two-four-six-eight, we don’t want to integrate,” and hundreds of voices joined to sing: “Oh, I wish I was an Alabama trooper, that is what I’d really like to be-ee-ee. Cuz if I was an Alabama trooper, I could kill the niggers legally.”56

Instead of arresting those who were throwing objects at demonstrators and pushing police, officers arrested the handful of peaceful protesters. The police captain on the scene said it was easier to arrest demonstrators for disorderly conduct because they were peaceful than to arrest Daley’s neighbors, who were already disorderly and might fight back. Therefore, the policing strategy for maintaining the peace, Royko recounts, was “to lock up those who were peaceful.” Later, to television audiences, Daley criticized demonstrators for invading his neighbors’ privacy. Additionally, he dismissed his neighbors’ lawless, violent behavior: “They are fine people, hard-working people. And they have no feelings one way or another about all of this.”57 Daley’s multiple unsubstantiated claims about lawless behavior among civil rights organizations were his entry into a battle of words utilizing a rhetoric of law and order to construct participations in civil rights demonstrations in Chicago as threats to public

55 Mike Royko, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1971), 142-44. 56 Ibid., 144. 57 Ibid., 145.

53 peace and security. For instance, Daley once announced that Communists had infiltrated the civil rights movement in Chicago. He also claimed, to the bewilderment of leading

Republicans, that the Republican Party was financing the movement’s “malicious behavior.”58 On June 30, 1965, the Chicago American reported Daley as saying in a press conference, “Many of those who are marching are Communists and the files of the police department show this, as well as the files of a newspaper.”59 Here Daley’s statement links black protest to Cold War-era fears of Communist threats to individual prosperity within the

American capitalist economy. Such ad hominem attacks characterized much of Daley’s rhetoric regarding King-led demonstrations in Chicago.

Rising anxieties about rioting in Chicago were not unrelated to Daley’s public statements about civil rights (or certain policing strategies in the city, for that matter), which helped to criminalize black civil rights activists and activities in the eyes of the public. In particular, it was Daley’s deft deployment of law and order rhetoric to local media in the wake of nonviolent demonstrations and riots that helped to foment this process of criminalization. In 1965, amid civil rights demonstrations in the city, Daley made several explicit statements about law and order. On July 1, 1965, the Chicago Tribune reported Daley saying in his June 30 press conference, “There will always be law and order in Chicago as long as Daley is mayor.” Daley also stated, “Without law we have anarchy.”60 Unfortunately, a month later, large-scale rioting actually occurred in Chicago, exacerbating anxieties about civil rights demonstrations in the city. On August 12, 1965, the day after the Watts riots began in Los Angeles, a major riot erupted in Chicago after twenty-three-year-old Dessie

58 Ibid., 145-46. 59 Peter Yessne, Quotations from Mayor Daley (New York: Putnam, 1969), 113. 60 Ibid., 97.

54 May Williams was killed in an accident involving a city fire engine.61 The accident occurred after a hook-and-ladder fire engine raced out of a station on Chicago’s West Side before anyone realized that the person responsible for steering the rear part of the engine was not on board. The engine’s back end shook from side to side, eventually striking a light pole that fell on top of Williams, killing her. Complicating circumstances was the fact that all the firemen on board the fire engine were white. Civil rights groups had been picketing the firehouse to demand hiring black firemen to serve that community. Such demands were ignored, and on the night of Williams’s death, angry residents gathered in the neighborhood.

Daley ordered the fire commissioner to send in an all-black unit led by a white officer.

Despite these efforts, rioting exploded the following day. In four days of violence, about eighty people were injured. Ironically, the riot came just months after Daley had ignored the federal government’s invitation to explore riot prevention.62

By June 1966, many Chicagoans feared the city was on the precipice of pandemonium. On June 12, a police officer shot twenty-year-old Aracelis Cruz in the leg following celebrations for the city’s first Puerto Rican Day parade. Police battled rioters for two nights along Division Street in the largely Puerto Rican community. One month later,

61 Riots in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles began on Wednesday, August 11, 1965. The riots, which lasted from August 11 to August 17, began after twenty-one-year-old driver Marquette Frye was pulled over blocks from his home. Marquette had been drinking. Marquette’s brother, Ronald, who was in the car, retrieved their mother while Marquette was arrested for drunk driving. When Marquette and Ronald’s mother saw her son being forcibly arrested, she struggled with police, tearing one’s officer’s shirt. An officer then struck Marquette in the head with a nightstick, and all three Fryes were arrested. By this time a crowd of several hundred had gathered. Some hurled stones at cars. Rioting resumed the next day after a failed meeting that the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission had called. Some residents shot at firefighters battling fires. The riots intensified all day Friday. When the rioting stopped after six days, thirty-four people were dead, one thousand were injured, and about four thousand had been arrested. Property damages were estimated at forty million dollars. King arrived in the aftermath of the Watts riots on August 17; See “Watts Rebellion (Los Angeles, 1965), in “Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle,” Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/index.html. 62 After Daley began hearing reports of the deaths that occurred in the wake of the Watts riots, he notified Illinois governor Otto Kerner Jr. that he wanted to deploy the National Guard. However, it was determined the Chicago riot did not warrant such an action. Royko, Boss, 146-47.

55 on Tuesday, July 12, 1966, not many days after King’s July Hotline appearance and two days after his Soldier Field rally, public protests erupted along Roosevelt Road after police turned off a fire hydrant that residents used to cool themselves from the summer heat. Alan

B. Anderson and George W. Pickering note, “Although a city ordinance prohibited turning on hydrants except in emergencies, generations of Chicago children have played in their waters, usually under the indulgent eyes of the police.”63 At the time, Chicago was experiencing a weeklong heat wave, which threatened to lower the city’s water pressure. Fire

Commissioner Robert Quinn ordered all fire hydrants to be sealed. An altercation erupted at the corner of Roosevelt Road and Throop Street after two police officers repeatedly had to turn off a fire hydrant that residents had reopened. As police arrested someone for turning on the hydrant, residents began to protest. Rioting ignited. As Anderson and Pickering describe it,

Rocks and bottles were thrown at the police car; the patrolmen radioed for help. The thirty squads that responded were confronted by a crowd growing larger and angrier by the minute. Five or six teenagers were bloodied when the police used their clubs; bystanders were shoved and beaten by the police in their efforts to clear the street corner.64

On July 12, 1966, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Daley saying in a July 11 press conference:

“When you take law into your own hand, we lose orderly government . . . and this will not be tolerated as long as I am mayor of Chicago.”65 Daley’s statement not only dismisses

African Americans’ rising legitimate discontent about inhumane living conditions within urban slums, but it also ignores city leaders’ complicity in perpetuating systemic injustice

63 Alan B. Anderson and George W. Pickering, Confronting the Color Line: The Broken Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), 210. 64 Ibid. See also Bernard O. Brown, Ideology and Community Action: The West Side Organization of Chicago, 1964-67 (Chicago: Center for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1978), 49-51; Chicago Sun-Times, July 13, 1966; Chicago Tribune, July 13, 1966. 65 Yessne, Quotations from Mayor Daley, 96.

56 against minorities that, as King argued, bred the psychic aggression that ignited rioting.

The following evening, on Wednesday, July 13, violence spread north to West Madison

Avenue (where some rioting had occurred the previous year). Sniper shots rang out from a public housing project. More than twenty stores were vandalized and looted. It took hundreds of police until midnight to quell the violence. Eleven people, including six police officers, were wounded. Thirty-five people were arrested.66

On Thursday, July 14, rioting and violence spread several miles west to Lawndale and Garfield Park, where people looted and firebombed stores. At dozens of locations police and snipers exchanged gunfire. Two people were killed, including a fourteen-year-old pregnant girl standing on her front porch. More than thirty were arrested, and about three hundred were wounded. The looting continued into the morning of Friday, July 15. That day the Sun-Times reported Daley saying the day before, “We will try to enforce law and order in the City of Chicago. Without law and order no gains can be made.”67 In a televised press conference, Daley announced that he had called upon the National Guard to stop the violence. Daley held King responsible for the riot, at least indirectly:

I think you cannot charge it directly to Martin Luther King, but surely some of the people came in here and have been talking for the last year in violence and showing pictures and instructing people in how to conduct violence. They are his staff. They are responsible in a great measure for the instruction that has been given for the training of youngsters.68

Daley’s statement about training youth to be violent is a reference to nonviolence workshops that the Reverend James Bevel and other SCLC staff had provided to youth gang members.

During these workshops SCLC staff played newsreels of the 1965 Watts riots to

66 Anderson and Pickering, Confronting the Color Line, 212-13; Chicago Tribune, July 14, 1966; Chicago Sun-Times, July 17, 1966. 67 Yessne, Quotations from Mayor Daley, 96. 68 Anderson and Pickering, Confronting the Color Line, 213-14; Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1966.

57 demonstrate the costs of violence in hopes of convincing Chicago demonstrators of the value of nonviolent direct action. Still, Daley and other city leaders attempted to discredit

King and SCLC for choosing to partner with local gang members by circulating profoundly unsympathetic and misleading reports that misrepresented King’s agenda in Chicago. The

Reverend J. H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, the chief denominational body governing African American Baptist churches in the United States at the time, participated with Daley in disparaging King’s civil rights activity through public statements to local media that mischaracterized King-led demonstrations in the city: “‘I believe our young people are not vicious enough to attack a whole city,’ he told a press conference. ‘Some other forces are using these young people.’”69

At 6:00 P.M. on Friday, July 15, about fifteen hundred National Guard troops advanced upon Chicago’s West Side with another twenty-four hundred reserve troops mobilized. The frightening scene of public unrest and the spectacle of almost two thousand

National Guardsmen patrolling the streets strengthened existing fears that, as journalist Ron

Grossman puts it, “the city was on the brink of chaos.”70 That same day King and his delegation met with Daley at City Hall. They reached a five-point agreement to attempt to end further violence. The agreement called for “the installation of sprayer attachments on fire hydrants; equal access to parks and swimming pools enforced by the park district and police; precinct captains to urge residents to stay off the streets in the riot area; construction of more swimming pools and playgrounds in the area; and appointment of a citizens’ advisory committee on police-community relations.” While Daley’s rhetoric in the wake of the riot ignored the systematic racism that bred black aggression, the negotiated agreement

69 Anderson and Pickering, Confronting the Color Line, 213-14; Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1966. 70 Grossman, “Martin Luther King Jr. Brought the Fight to Chicago.”

58 acknowledged, even if implicitly, that the rioting that had taken place was rooted in

African American Chicagoans’ legitimate discontent about their social, economic, and political disenfranchisement. In all, the rioting left two residents dead, sixty-one police injured, and five hundred thirty-three citizens arrested.71

The day after Daley and King’s five-point agreement, the Chicago Tribune published editorials attempting to discredit King by emphasizing Daley’s accusations of SCLC’s responsibility for the rioting. As was the case with Daley’s public statements, these editorials evoking concepts of law and order ignored the conditions that originally incited the riots: frustrated black communities already choked with poverty denied even the relief of cool water on a hot day. Anderson and Pickering write:

Editorially, the Tribune rejected all charges of police brutality and reasserted its own “white man’s” version of law and order. The rioters should be sentenced “to get out of the city within thirty days and never to come back,” the Tribune intoned. “If a judge regards this as too tough a penalty, he doesn’t deserve to be on the bench.” If that was not possible because of “legal objections,” the Tribune urged that police take matters into their own hands and “pick up known rioters whenever and wherever they are seen, making life so unpleasant for them that they will be forced to leave town of their own volition.” Calling for “railroading” and harassment, the Tribune editorial page was as inflammatory as anything that had been said on the streets of the West Side.72

In the wake of these editorials, King, in a savvy rhetorical reversal, criminalized local media outlets for their barbarity in dismissing the injustices of Chicago slums that incubated black aggression in the first place. In particular, King argued that the Chicago Tribune was one of the primary perpetrators of lawlessness and violence in Chicago. “I have seen nothing worse in southern areas than the Chicago Tribune editorials,” King lamented. “Their

71 Anderson and Pickering, Confronting the Color Line, 214; Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1966; Chicago Sun-Times, July 27, 1966; Royko, Boss, 150-51. 72 Anderson and Pickering, Confronting the Color Line, 214-15; Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1966.

59 implications [are] for the white community to rise up in violence.”73 In his autobiography,

King further described efforts among Chicago media outlets to fuel hostility after the July

1966 riots through “scare headlines” that circulated inflammatory, erroneous information:

There was a concerted attempt to place the responsibility for the riot upon the nonviolent Chicago Freedom Movement and upon myself. Both of these maneuvers were attempts to dodge the fundamental issue of racial subjugation. They represented an unwillingness to do anything more than put the lid back on the pot and a refusal to make fundamental structural changes required to right our racial wrongs.74

To Daley, King was merely an eloquent agitator. One insider recalled that in private Daley called King “a dirty sonofabitch, a bastard, a prick,” who was “a rabble rouser, a troublemaker.”75 In a press conference the following year, Daley described King as a disturber of the peace. “He comes up here for one purpose—to create trouble here and in every city he has visited.”76 Myths conflating black civil rights activists and black rioters circulated steadily through Mayor Daley’s office and local media outlets. Unfortunately, these myths persuaded some Chicagoans, black and white, to confuse the former for the latter.

Even as late as 1968, Tom Keane, the “city’s most powerful alderman,” suggested that talk of nonviolence was merely a “front for violence.” And on April 1, 1968, just days before

King was assassinated, the Chicago Tribune published an editorial in response to King’s announcement that he was going to Memphis to support striking black garbage workers.

King, the editorial argued, was “the most notorious liar in the country” who pretended to

73 Anderson and Pickering, Confronting the Color Line, 219. 74 Carson, Autobiography of Martin Luther King, 304. 75 David Farber, Chicago ’68 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 139. The Daley quotation is from Royko, Boss, 50. For more on Daley and King in general, see Royko, Boss, 149-58. 76 Yessne, Quotations from Mayor Daley, 115; also see Farber, Chicago ’68, 139.

60 champion nonviolence “while clandestinely conspiring with the most violent revolutionaries in the country.”77

Daley’s public statements about civil rights demonstrations and rioting in Chicago in

1965 and 1966 are evidence of a politics of representation aimed at mobilizing support against a movement for civil rights in Chicago. Again, the rhetoric of law and order that

Daley, elected leaders, and media outlets utilized in the wake of civil rights demonstrations and rioting often conflates black activists and black rioters as violent criminals. Additionally, such rhetoric absolves whites from their responsibility for precipitating anarchy and violence in the city. In short, this law and order discourse creates inaccurate criteria for interpreting civil rights activities as lawless behaviors that breed violence. It is not surprising that many black and white Chicagoans were anxious about possible correlations between King-led demonstrations, disrespect for the law, and rioting in the hot summer of 1966.

It is necessary here to highlight a subtle complexity encompassing Daley’s rhetoric on civil rights. Certainly, Daley castigated civil rights demonstrators directly. However, much of his contempt for black protest was expressed in more indirect, less inflammatory language. For instance, three weeks after King and demonstrators were attacked in early

August 1966 while marching through white neighborhoods in Chicago, Daley publicly evoked themes of constitutional rights and personal safety to justify a temporary injunction to standardize civil rights protests. The injunction, he insisted in a televised address, was not to stop but, rather, to “regulate to a reasonable degree the street demonstrations.” He appealed for his audience to consider how unannounced protests, especially during inconvenient times like during rush hour and at night, caused a significant “drain on police

77 Farber, Chicago ’68, 122, 138; Chicago Tribune, April 3, 1968.

61 manpower.”78 Daley assured viewers of the extent he had gone both to address African

Americans’ concerns and to ensure the personal safety of all Chicagoans:

I have appealed to the civil rights leaders to take the issue out of the streets and onto the conference table. I pointed out to them that the reduction of police protection resulting from the demonstrations strikes particularly at those areas where there are the most families—the most children.79

Daley said he had reminded civil rights leaders that much of the violence was being perpetrated by rightist and leftist extremists who lived outside the city, county, and state. “I said that a continuance of these kinds of demonstrations would only serve as a magnet to the hate groups whose only desire is to stir up racial violence, and disorder.” Daley resolved that most of the people of goodwill in Chicago who wanted to see racial discrimination eliminated “do not want to see the great issue of civil rights reduced to the level of street fighting and the collapse of law and order.” Additionally, Daley pressed, civil rights demonstrations were impinging upon the thousands of hardworking people traveling to and from jobs at which such people were working for real change and progress. “The rights of these people must be protected. They have constitutional rights to protection and so have their families.”80

Daley confessed the difficulty of finding a balance between protecting the constitutional right to petition and ensuring the right to personal safety. “It cannot be answered in the streets,” he argued, “nor by executive order or emotional outbursts—it can only be answered in a court of law.” Buttressing this argument, Daley proclaimed that the success of “any human endeavor is the preservation of law and order.” In his concluding remarks, Daley quoted one of Illinois’s most famous historical figures, Abraham Lincoln,

78 “Here Is Text Urging All to End Disorder,” Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1966. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid.

62 when he exhorted Chicagoans to let their “reverence for the laws” that secure law and order “become the political religion of the nation.” Such statements demonstrate the rhetorical sophistication of Daley’s political machine. Not only do his arguments sound reasonable, but they also draw upon long-standing democratic principles to justify his actions. This was both the danger and efficacy of Daley’s civil rights rhetoric, which veiled virulent prejudice in rational arguments about law and order.81 In this regard, Howard-Pitney argues, Daley “was not the perfect foil that Bull Connor had been.” Rather, Daley regularly outmaneuvered King and his efforts to dramatize overt racism and brutality against black

Chicagoans. “Mayor Richard Daley was a far more powerful and wily foe than the stereotypical racist villains encountered in the movement’s Southern heyday.”82

Unfortunately, little scholarly attention has focused on how King confronted media myths about his activities in Chicago. The following analysis of King’s July 1966 Hotline interview attempts to fill this research gap. Hotline was a hub for civil rights leaders visiting

Chicago. South recalled King appearing on the show four to five times, including several times during his residency in Chicago to promote and clarify the nature of the Chicago

Freedom Movement and to mobilize support against racist factions within the city’s political structure.83 The Hotline interview I analyze below demonstrates how the program provided opportunities for African Americans to talk about, and back to, mainstream media’s often circumscribed and erroneous representations of black identity, black public life, and struggle

81 Ibid. Daley’s quotation from Abraham Lincoln was taken from a speech Lincoln gave on January 27, 1838, before the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield. In the speech, Lincoln cited examples of passionate mob actions throughout the nation that had been chosen as alternatives to law and order. Lincoln concluded that reverence for the law was the antidote for such deeds. On the use of Lincoln’s words for varied purposes in U.S. history, see Angela G. Ray, “Learning Leadership: Lincoln at the Lyceum, 1838,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 13, no. 3 (2010): 351-52. 82 Howard-Pitney, African American Jeremiad, 195. 83 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 141; Christopher Lehman, A Critical History of Soul Train on Television (New York: McFarland, 2008), 18.

63 among African Americans, and black Chicagoans in particular, to secure the full rights and privileges of democratic citizenship.

Chicago’s Black Public Sphere and the Efficacy of Nonviolent Direct Action

The explosive events that erupted in Chicago in June 1966 only intensified the fears of many Chicagoans about potential large-scale rioting in the city. In particular, many worried that civil rights demonstrations like King’s scheduled Soldier Field rally on Sunday,

July 10, could spark rioting. Howard-Pitney writes, “The climate of opinion among blacks and whites amid widespread race riots was not propitious for King’s direct action campaign.”84 In this environment, King appeared on Wesley South’s Hotline. In the thirty- minute, thirty-one-second recording of the appearance, four of the ten people who call in to the show express questions or concerns about riots and nonviolent direct action.85

Additionally, South asks King one question about his critics’ claims that civil rights demonstrations bred disrespect for the law. These questions are evidence that some

Chicagoans had serious concerns about the possible correlations between civil rights activities, anarchy, and riots in the summer of 1966. In total, the questions and responses about rioting and nonviolent direct action amount to sixteen minutes and fifty-seven seconds, more than half of the Hotline interview.

Here I provide my own transcriptions and analytic close readings of callers’ questions and King’s responses about nonviolent direct action and rioting. I examine callers’ questions in the order in which they are asked in order to convey how the discussion about

84 Howard-Pitney, African American Jeremiad, 195-96. 85 The recording is available at Martin Luther King Jr., WVON Hotline, July 1966, https://soundcloud.com/wbez/wvon-call-in-with-martin-luther-king-jr-on-wesley-souths-hotline. All transcriptions from this recording are my own.

64 rioting unfolds during the interview. Guiding this methodological choice is the presumption that “textual context” is integral to close critical interpretation of rhetorical works. Textual context presumes that “texts” unfold in time and that material which comes early on creates the context for interpreting later passages. In other words, as Stephen Lucas argues, the concept of textual context assumes a text “creates its own internal context as it unfolds in time and is processed by a listener or reader.”86 My methodology here, then, presupposes that rhetorical texts are temporal phenomena that occur within a larger context of historical events or developments. While they emerge in time, Michael Leff concludes,

“they are conditioned by other discourses and by the progression of events, but they are also constructed things that occupy a span of time.” Textual analysis alone, therefore, cannot account for the interaction between the rhetorical structure of a particular message and its impact on receivers.87 For this reason my analysis of King’s Hotline interview presumes that time functions as an intrinsic influence on the production and reception of a rhetorical text.88

In sum, examining the questions chronologically during King’s Hotline appearance provides a context that offers insights into the possible ways callers were interacting with the message about civil rights demonstrations and rioting. More specifically, my analysis incorporates a reading of the first, fourth, seventh, and ninth questions posed to King. Between the eighth and ninth callers, South poses his question to King about his critics’ views. King’s responses to callers offer a striking contrast to the negative conflations of civil rights activities with the lawless behavior of rioters described in the previous section. King talks back to and against

86 Stephen E. Lucas, “The Renaissance of American Public Address: Text and Context in Rhetorical Criticism,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 74, no. 2 (1988): 249. Here Lucas borrows from Michael C. Leff, “Textual Criticism: The Legacy of G. P. Mohrmann,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 72, no. 4 (1986): 384. 87 Phillip K. Tompkins, “The Rhetorical Criticism of Non-Oratorical Works,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 55, no. 4 (1969): 438-39; Leff, “Textual Criticism,” 384. 88 Leff, “Textual Criticism,” 384.

65 negative representations of his supporters as criminals and his civil rights activities as those that breed violence and disrespect for the law. Using a mission-oriented prophetic rhetoric, King reconstitutes these negative identities into those defined in terms of a divinely ordained, nonviolent journey to secure full democratic citizenship. Again, mission-oriented prophecy calls people to participate in a divine mission by reconstituting perceived identities found to be problematic. In other words, this constitutive rhetoric offers people “a new vision or identity” to fit a particular sacred call. Thus, mission-oriented prophecy is a discourse that calls people into being. In the transcripts that follow, King grounds his mission-oriented rhetoric in both religious and secular concepts of the sacred. Therefore, while he affirmed the sacredness of a loving and just God, King also affirmed the sacredness of the democratic freedoms that allowed human personality and citizenship to flourish.89

Host Wesley South opens each conversation with a caller by stating, “This is the

Hotline,” and he usually ends conversations with the phrase, “Thank you for your call.” The first caller is a male who asks King two questions.90 The caller’s second question, most likely alluding to King’s upcoming rally at Soldier Field, suggests that civil rights demonstrations might evoke emotional reactions that could incite rioting. The caller asks:

Caller: Secondly, Mr. King, I would also like to know, if, in the event, after one of your rallies, which must certainly play upon the emotions of the people, and I have the Watts riot in mind when I ask this question. Do you think you would be able to control the masses in the event of a riot?

King: Well, I certainly don’t feel that we’re going to have any riot after the rally. We’ve had numerous marches all over the nation, both North and South, and I don’t know a situation where a riot has yet developed during a civil rights march or a civil

89 Johnson, “To Make the World So Damn Uncomfortable,” 24; Johnson, Forgotten Prophet, 13. 90 The caller begins by asking King if he has seen a letter and newspaper article apparently about King and a man named Lucius Casey, the leader and prophet of the Israelite Bible Class, a local African American religious group that believed Chicagoans were living in the end times. King answers that he has not seen the letter or article. See Jason George, “Promised Land, Promise Fading: One Man’s Dream for a Utopian African- American Community Crumbles after His Death, Leaving Little but Memories,” Chicago Tribune, July 7, 2008.

66 rights demonstration. We must distinguish between a riot, like the riot that took place in Watts, which had nothing to do with the civil rights movement. I mean it was not a civil rights demonstration sponsored by any civil rights organization or any civil rights leader. We must distinguish between this and a nonviolent demonstration as we plan to have on Sunday. And I don’t think we have to worry at all about a riot. I think the people that assemble there on Sunday will be people concerned about freedom and gaining it in a nonviolent manner.

Caller: Well, I was thinking in terms of the aftermath of such rallies. You know, the people have become, will have become emotionally high-strung you might say.

King: I would rather think of it the other way. They will certainly become high- strung, to use your phrase. And I think it’s necessary for people to become emotionally involved and emotionally aroused over the condition of injustice. But I think you will find that riots usually develop when people see no way out. They see life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign. They see no hope around and so they begin to lash out in a misguided sense against the whole society. But as soon as they see a way out, as soon as they have a channel of expression, as soon as they organize then you will find people less prone to violence. And I think demonstrations of this nature serve the purpose of giving oppressed people an opportunity to express their legitimate discontent in a creative and constructive manner.

South: Thank you very much for your call, sir. [South gives King brief instructions about the recording equipment.]

The caller’s reference to the Watts riots reveals that some Chicagoans do not think of civil rights demonstrations and rioting as mutually exclusive events. For some, the former is a contributing factor to the emergence of the latter. In response, King first appeals to his personal experience leading demonstrations in the North and South, declaring, “I don’t know a situation” where a riot has ignited “during a civil rights demonstration.” While the caller seemingly conflates civil rights rallies with riots, King takes the opportunity to distinguish between the two. Here King utilizes a rhetorical strategy known as dissociation.

Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca have described dissociation as a technique for separating elements undergirding a particular notion or system of thought. In other words, dissociation challenges the assumptions comprising a single notion by identifying a source of

67 incompatibility between the elements designating that notion.91 Deploying this strategy allows King to separate the conflation between rioters and nonviolent protesters. Riots, King clarifies, are the violent, misguided embodiments of legitimate discontent that has no constructive avenue for psychological and physical release. In contrast, nonviolent direct action rallies are peaceful, constructive embodiments of legitimate discontent. Unlike riots, nonviolent demonstrations are physical evidence of the successful political organizing of peaceful collective action against negative social forces. It is an important distinction that mainstream media in Chicago too often neglected.

As the caller presses King further that “emotionally high-strung” people in the

“aftermath” of a nonviolent rally might be led to riot, King rejects the implicit argument that emotion is an inherent liability among civil rights demonstrators. The implication is that emotion robs individuals in crowds of their capacity for rational thought.92 King impresses upon the caller that a person who is “emotionally high-strung” is not inherently prone to irrational, violent, or destructive behavior. The real danger, King argues, is when a person feels intense emotions (for him, legitimate discontent) but has no constructive avenue for self-expression. King’s response invites the caller to consider a more complex understanding

91 Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965), 411-12; Andreea Ritivoi, “The Dissociation of Concepts in Context: An Analytic Template for Assessing Its Role in Actual Situations,” Argumentation and Advocacy 44 (Spring 2008): 186, 190. For an introduction to dissociation as a rhetorical strategy, see Edward Schiappa, “Dissociation in the Arguments of Rhetorical Theory,” Journal of the American Forensic Association 22, no. 2 (1985): 72-82; David Goodwin, “Distinction, Argumentation, and the Rhetorical Construction of the Real,” Argumentation and Advocacy 27, no. 4 (1991): 141-58; David A. Frank, “Dialectical Rapprochement in the New Rhetoric,” Argumentation and Advocacy 34, no. 3 (1998): 111-26; Sara Rubinelli, “Comments on ‘Strategic Maneuvering with Dissociation,’”Argumentation 20 (2006): 489-93. 92 It is worth mentioning briefly that concern about potential threats of crowds of emotionally high-strung people has been the focus of significant theoretical research among scholars dating as far back as Plato, who felt the masses should have no role in politics. These concerns produce fear-based myths about emotion as an inherent liability to human experience. For an introduction to theories of crowds and emotion, see Plato, The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Vintage Books, 1991); E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, no. 50 (1971): 76-136; Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002); Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist Papers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

68 of emotion. More specifically, King reframes demonstrators’ emotions as critical assets to the Chicago Freedom Movement. King argues that, in order to achieve lasting change, it is necessary for people to become emotionally invested in committing themselves to confronting injustice. Yet for King such emotional response should be commensurate with the intended nonviolent end. Here, King’s conception of emotion resembles Aristotle’s conception of pathos, the emotional state or “frame of mind” a speaker evokes in audience members as he or she “stirs their emotions.”93 However, this stirring of emotions is particular to the message of the speaker, whose task it is “to bring the audiences’ emotions into alignment with the arguments they are making.”94 In other words, King’s response to the caller clarifies a fundamental alignment between the internal logic of his nonviolent message and the intended nonviolent emotional and physical response he intends for his audience. King views his upcoming Soldier Field rally as an opportunity to align his audiences with his nonviolent message, not to rouse them to violence. Therefore, King concludes that his rally is an invitation to pursue peaceful and constructive alternatives to violence, rioting, or disrespect for the law.95

Other Hotline callers express related but different concerns about nonviolent direct action. For instance, the fourth caller questions the viability of nonviolence as a political strategy for achieving social change in Chicago. King’s exchange with this caller marks a transition from the initial discussion about the potential correlation between nonviolent

93 Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. W. Rhys Roberts (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2004), 7. 94 William M. Keith and Christian O. Lundberg, The Essential Guide to Rhetoric (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008), 39-40. Pathos can be thought of as a means speakers use to persuade audiences to adopt fundamental precepts. Aristotle suggested the audience’s feelings or pathos frame how it understands a speaker’s arguments. In other words, in order for a speaker to be effective, Aristotle argued, the audience has to care about the evidence a speaker provides. Otherwise, the speaker’s evidence, no matter how strong, will not be persuasive. In short, pathos involves using emotion to reinforce the fundamental logic undergirding a particular argument. 95 See Keith and Lundberg, Essential Guide to Rhetoric, 39-40; Dan O’Hair, Hannah Rubenstein, and Robert A. Stewart, A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking, 5th ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016).

69 direct action and rioting to a discourse about the effectiveness of nonviolent direct action in confronting the particular political realities in Chicago:

South: This is the Hotline.

Caller: Hello?

South: Yes.

Caller: Yes, Dr. King?

King: Yes.

Caller: Hello, how are you?

King: Fine, thank you.

Caller: I’d like to say that I’m glad to see that you’re in Chicago. I’ve been following the activities of SCLC since they’ve been here for over a year now. And I’d like to ask you just one question briefly and I’d like to hang up and have you answer it. And that is this—that although direct action has proven to be one of the major ways of combating segregation and injustice in the South, don’t you think that the main key to freedom for Negroes in Chicago lies in a larger involvement in political activity?

King: Yes, I would absolutely agree with you. I don’t think there’s any one way to solve the problem. I think we have to face the fact that the problem in the North is so complex and it does have many different points from the South. And because of the complexity of the problem, it means that we must use a diversified approach. I think direct action can be very helpful, and powerful, in calling attention to the problems, in dramatizing the injustices. I still feel that there’s nothing more powerful in exposing a social evil than the tramp, tramp of marching feet. On the other hand, if we stop there we may not consolidate the gains necessary to move ahead. And therefore, I believe firmly that political action is absolutely necessary to solve the problem. And this is why I feel that many more Negroes should be registered to vote in Chicago than we presently have. And not only registered, but after registering, every Negro should vote. The problem is that only about 60 percent of the Negroes eligible to vote in Chicago are registered, and only 50 or 55 percent actually vote. We need to work hard to get everybody registered and once they are registered to use that ballot meaningfully for this is the only way to gain political power.

Caller: Dr. King, Mayor Daley and some other city officials have said that demonstrations do not bother them. In other words, what they’re saying is that with the large police force that they have and the other measures which they have to subvert the motives and the activities of direct action groups that demonstrations and whatnot can go on forever. But unless something, unless we, Negroes, take some

70 other tack which will make a direct and incisive impact on the power structure in this city, don’t you feel that direct action even though it might be ever so dramatic will not change the root of the problem?

King: Yeah, well, as I have said, I don’t think direct action, in terms of a particular demonstration, will solve the problem. I think it serves the purpose of calling attention to the issue and to the problem, mobilizing support and really kind of stimulating people to take a stand. This is the purpose of the demonstration. Now, there are some forms of direct action which I think can be very effective in the North, and this is what we are trying to do by organizing the unorganized so to speak, organizing the ghetto dwellers, organizing into units of power so that through economic withdrawal programs, if industries do not give jobs, as we’ve been doing through Operation Breadbasket. Also, being able to build unions, tenants’ unions so that they can negotiate with landlords and, if landlords refuse, engaging in rent strikes. I think these things can be very powerful in the North along with political action and demonstrations to call attention to it.

South: Thank you for your call, sir.

The caller’s initial question seems to presuppose that nonviolent direct action and local political involvement are not necessarily mutually inclusive strategies.96 King shares the caller’s sentiments about the importance of African Americans’ increased political involvement. However, he clarifies the unique purpose of nonviolent direct action to expose injustice in the struggle for civil rights in the North. For King, nonviolent direct action is but one strategy among many necessary to dismantle African Americans’ social, economic, and political disenfranchisement. Nonviolent direct action, King argues, is merely a first step in transforming systemic injustice.

Despite King’s affirmation of the importance of political involvement, the fourth caller seems unconvinced about the efficacy of nonviolent direct action in Chicago. He

96 Civil rights leaders’ intense voter registration efforts in the South complicate the caller’s presupposition that nonviolent direct action is a distinctively southern strategy. King’s civil rights activities since leading the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott reveal the leader’s recognition that larger political involvement among African Americans is necessary and is in fact a primary part of King’s civil rights agenda in the South. Additionally, key initiatives such as the 1963 March on Washington, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 each demonstrate how larger political involvement among African Americans has been a long-standing hallmark of King’s civil rights agenda in the United States. King clarifies this fact in his response to the fourth caller.

71 remains skeptical that such a strategy can succeed against the city’s political elites, who have the means and resources to wait out civil rights demonstrations. King challenges this skepticism as he argues that the larger political engagement the caller advocates is possible only after first exposing and unmasking unjust powers and principalities at work in a given context. Rather than being a short-term goal, King explains, nonviolent direct action is an initial objective that must be accomplished before any long-term sustained political action can be achieved successfully.97

Later in this Hotline interview King receives a question from the seventh caller, who is also skeptical about the efficacy of nonviolent direct action, but for a different reason from the fourth caller. The seventh caller is a teenage girl in high school who is concerned that her participation in local civil rights demonstrations has not accomplished concrete results. Unsure of the particular role she has actually played as an ally in African Americans’ struggle for civil rights in Chicago, this caller expresses lost enthusiasm and wavering faith in

King’s methods. The exchange between the seventh caller and King marks another transition in the discourse. The discussion, which details a demonstrator’s concrete frustrations after having participated in nonviolent direct action events, adds further nuance to some Chicagoans’ skepticism about the tactic as a strategy for social change in Chicago:

South: This is the Hotline.

Caller: Hello. May I please speak with Dr. King?

South: Yes, go right ahead.

97 For a discussion about the intersection of social, political, and theological implications of theories of powers and principalities, see Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984); Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992); and Charles L. Campbell, The Word before the Powers: An Ethic of Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002).

72 Caller: Dr. King, this is Paulette (ph) calling. I have several questions to ask you and, I guess in story form. Last summer a friend of mine, Bobby Johnson (ph), and I marched and we got arrested and we were thrown in jail and I was very eager and enthusiastic and inspired about all the stuff going on and I was fighting with all my friends trying to get them to go downtown and march all this and they wouldn’t do it because they were in private schools. However, I was in a public school, so was Bobby, but we were still enthusiastic and eager to do something ’cause we really thought that we were going to accomplish something. So I went back to school and I told all this stuff to all my friends and they went jumping down my throat and they were asking me well what did I accomplish, and the more I thought about it I really couldn’t figure out that I had accomplished anything. I really don’t mean it disrespectfully, but I really can’t see what there is tangible, you know, that we’ve done . . . [King interrupts]

King: Well, I think . . . [the caller continues speaking]

Caller: Maybe there is more done in the South that I can see, like registering people to vote, etcetera, etcetera. But when we march and when we get thrown in jail and when I’m trying to convince more of my friends to do the same thing and they ask me what am I accomplishing and I even really can’t tell them anything except I’m accomplishing something that I feel deep down inside of myself and which really isn’t very much to tell anybody or set any example for anyone else. And, I hate to tell you, and it’s nothing to do with any personal feelings for you or any other of the leaders, but I think I’ve sort of lost enthusiasm for what I once was doing . . . [inaudible].

King: Well, let me say that you did accomplish something. And I hope you won’t be discouraged. First, you accomplished the great task of committing your own life and your own body and soul to a cause that is destined to win. That personal commitment itself was an accomplishment. Secondly, the movement last summer, while not bringing immediate tangible results, did bring the whole question of segregation in the schools, inadequate schools, out in the open and caused the Chicago community to look at this issue in a way that it had never looked at it. And if there had not been a movement last summer, the conditions in the schools would continue without anybody raising a question or raising a voice against it. And that movement last summer said a great deal about inadequate administrative procedures. It talked a great deal about the insensitivity of Mr. Willis to the grave problems in the public school system. And Mr. Willis, as you know, is no longer, or will no longer in a few days, be over this great school system. Now, I’m sure that the movement itself created the atmosphere, which finally led to the removal of Mr. Willis. So that itself is an accomplishment. Often you are accomplishing much more than you can see at the moment because you are in the heart of the situation. But those of us who were not here last summer, and who happen to be here now, see that a great deal was accomplished. And many of the things that we are going to be able to do now, and I believe we are going to be able to do them, we will be able to do them because the

73 atmosphere was created last summer for the building of a vibrant movement to end discrimination, injustice, slums, and slumism in the city of Chicago.

Again, the seventh caller’s question pushes the discourse about nonviolent direct action beyond either a possible correlation with rioting or its efficacy against Chicago’s political machinery. Rather, what emerges is a substantive discussion of the actual philosophy of nonviolent direct action. In language similar to that of the fourth caller, the seventh caller questions whether such demonstrations can yield tangible, measurable results in Chicago.98

King reassures the seventh caller by reframing her participation in the movement as a tangible accomplishment. Additionally, King situates the caller’s individual sacrifices within the larger narrative of the collective sacrifices of others within the Chicago Freedom

Movement that have led to one significant, measurable change—Willis’s departure as school superintendent. Still King empathizes with the discouraged young demonstrator. He acknowledges the difficulty for those on the front lines fighting against injustice to measure the value of their contributions. King invites the caller to look upon her commitment, labor, and sacrifice not as culminating acts with immediately discernible results. Instead, he counsels the caller to see her participation as something that—together with the participation of others—will in time culminate in discernible ways. In this sense, King’s rhetoric becomes apocalyptic in character. This mode of thought and discourse, Barry

98 This caller’s testimony and confession help illuminate a difference between the fight for civil rights in the North and South. Demonstrators in the South were battling overt racism, which often took the form of police dogs, fire hoses, segregated public facilities, barriers to voting rights, and other explicit discrimination tactics. Demonstrators in major northern cities were often battling the more covert racism of restrictive housing covenants, redlining in real estate and the public school system, and the elite white male patriarchal machine politics that often co-opted black civic and religious leadership. R. Drew Smith and Frederick C. Harris describe the particular political circumstances in Chicago during the mid-1900s that prompted some of the city’s black civic and religious leaders to forge relationships with politicians in exchange for certain financial incentives. The financial precariousness of many black congregations as they expanded to accommodate newly arriving southern migrants often motivated some of these relationships. See R. Drew Smith and Frederick C. Harris, eds., Black Churches and Local Politics: Clergy Influence, Organizational Partnerships, and Civic Empowerment (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 120.

74 Brummett argues, “empowers its audience to live in a time of disorientation and disorder by revealing to them a fundamental plan within the cosmos.” It is a discourse that attempts to restore order “by revealing the present to be a pivotal moment in time.”99 More precisely, this apocalyptic aspect of King’s mission-oriented prophetic rhetoric attempts to encourage the caller by pointing toward the promise of future victory over present injustice. In other words, King invites the caller to refigure her perception of time in relationship to a future, discernible, tangible justice. He implies that the moment of one’s participation in nonviolent direct action is an apocalyptic moment of in-breaking of the not-yet-present justice being sought in the present. This in-breaking, King argues, helps to create an atmosphere that over time births the future hopes that inspired participation in demonstrations in the first place.

Embedded implicitly in King’s response is his rejection of the optimistic liberal belief that human nature would voluntarily embrace progress in time. Rather, King believed it was only through coercive nonviolent direct action that unjust systems could, and would, change.

Here is the foundation of King’s mission-oriented prophetic rhetoric on civil rights: that unmerited suffering, self-sacrifice, is redemptive—something King no doubt saw at work in the life of Jeremiah, the other Hebrew Prophets, and, of course, Jesus.100 Not only does

Hotline provide an opportunity for King to demystify mainstream myths about his civil rights activities in Chicago, but Hotline also enables King to encourage discouraged supporters and to inspire sustained political participation as he reconstitutes concepts of justice and time, and nonviolent demonstrators’ identities and relationship to both.

After twenty minutes, Hotline’s host prompts King to talk further about rioting. After the eighth caller, who asks King about his general feelings about Chicago, South asks King

99 Barry Brummett, Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric (New York: Praeger, 1991), 9. 100 Chappell, Stone of Hope, 46-49; for an introduction to the liberal optimism that King’s philosophy of nonviolent direct action rejected, see 1-49.

75 to respond to critics of the civil rights movement who say that nonviolent civil rights demonstrations breed violence and anarchy. It is important to note that South’s question comes after King has already spent considerable time discussing myths about rioting and nonviolent direct action. Compared with his responses to the four questions that callers asked King about rioting and nonviolent demonstrations, King’s response to South is his longest answer (three minutes, twenty-four seconds) as he discusses the potential relationship between nonviolent civil rights demonstrations, rioting, and anarchy:

South: Dr. King, I’d like to ask a question here. And this is, many critics of the civil rights movement contend that such demonstrations breed violence and disrespect for the law. What is your answer to that?

King: Well, I have two or three answers [to] that. First, the demonstrations that we have had, by and large, have been amazingly disciplined. They have been carried out with great dignity and a great sense of responsibility. And the demonstrators have not been the violent ones. They have often been the recipients of violence. But they did not initiate violence. So I think it’s very unfair for the critics to say that we cause violence because we are seeking to gain our constitutional rights and somebody in the act is violent toward us. This is the same way of saying that we ought to condemn the robbed man instead of the robber merely because the robbed man may have some money in his pocket and it precipitates the evil act of robbery. Or it’s like saying we should condemn Jesus Christ because his commitment to God and to truth and to love caused his crucifixion. I think we must condemn those who crucified Christ rather than condemning Christ for standing up, and I think this can go right on through our struggle. The other thing is this. The real persons or forces that have committed civil disobedience in this country have not been Negroes, but they have been those who have perpetuated the system of segregation, those who have perpetuated economic injustice, those who have perpetuated slums, those who have refused to allow the Constitution of the United States and the moral laws of the universe to pervade the social situation. These are the persons who have been the forces creating violence, these are the persons who have been the real breakers of the law. Finally, I must say that when these situations exist, when persons exist in our society who constantly deprive the Negro of his constitutional rights, Negroes have no alternative, and all people of goodwill, have no alternative but to rise up against that unjust system. Now it may mean engaging in an act of civil disobedience in order to point out the evil. But I say that the person who engages in an act of civil disobedience openly, cheerfully, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty in order to arouse the conscience of the total community on an issue is at that moment expressing the highest respect for law. And nobody would complain, for instance, if a house was on fire and somebody ran in that house to aid those victims of the fire, even though it is

76 going into private property and trespassing. And I contend that millions of Negroes over this country are the victims of a psychological and sociological fire and somebody must put the fire out, somebody must come to their rescue. And it may not be in the most neat and tidy way but they have a moral obligation to do it in order to be true to the moral principles of the universe.

By pointing out that the demonstrators during King-led nonviolent demonstrations have been the recipients and not the perpetrators of violence, King confronts fears and unsubstantiated claims that his scheduled rally might incite violence or disrespect for the law.

As demonstrated earlier, Mayor Daley, other elected officials, and Chicago media outlets often represented King and his followers as troublemakers and violent lawbreakers.101 In his response to South, King evokes particular metaphors (i.e., blaming the “robbed man” and blaming “Jesus Christ crucified”) to challenge claims that he and his supporters are the cause of violence in Chicago. Here King joins black prophet figures like W. E. B. DuBois, who,

Blum argues, “used religious idioms to wrestle control of black selfhood away from whites.”102 This dramatic rhetorical reversal enables King to reconstitute those who embrace nonviolent direct action as law abiders and those who oppose nonviolent direct action, justice, and equality as the real breakers of the law, and not merely the terms of human law but “the moral principles of the universe.”

An additional concern about rioting is heard in the ninth caller’s question. The caller is a woman who asks King if he thinks particular age groups are inherently more violent than others. Next the caller asks if King thinks the shooting of James Meredith in Mississippi a month earlier, on June 6, 1966, could have sparked rioting. However, King does not entertain the caller’s preoccupations with hypothetical questions about civil rights demonstrations and rioting. Instead, he refers the caller to the facts of the case. Meredith’s

101 Farber, Chicago ’68, 139. Also see Royko, Boss, 50. 102 Edward J. Blum, W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), 7.

77 shooting, he exhorts, “did not lead to any riot in Mississippi nor over the nation.” King’s response to the ninth caller, much like his response to the first caller, implicitly calls attention to the danger of entertaining myths or hypothetical scenarios that ignore the facts of a given situation. King concludes his response to the ninth caller’s question by defining participation in nonviolent direct action as an act of bravery. Here, King frames himself and fellow nonviolent demonstrators as brave heroes. The implication is that those who commit to nonviolence as a strategy for social action are displaying significant courage. In contrast, those who choose violence as a means of social action are cowards. These categories of bravery and cowardice were similarly evoked among WVON deejays to inspire and persuade listeners’ political engagement. For instance, Roy Wood, then news director at WVON, often appealed to masculine notions of bravery to persuade men to participate in various initiatives to improve black life in the city. The caller’s question about an event that did not occur is further evidence of some Chicagoans’ anxieties about rioting. As King argued after the Chicago riots that erupted more than a week after his Hotline appearance, dominant news outlets contributed to heightening such anxieties.103

In August 1966, one month following his Hotline appearance, and after being assaulted by a white mob during a peaceful march, King’s conclusion that those who perpetrated violence against nonviolent protesters were the real lawbreakers proved to be a shockingly accurate revelation as the virulent racism hiding in plain sight became visible. On

103 Photographs of Meredith on the pavement reaching out toward the camera in agony after being struck by a sniper’s bullet added violent images to a U.S. imaginary already traumatized from rioting and violence during the previous twelve months. Meredith was shot just a day into his March Against Fear from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, to encourage African American voter registration. Meredith was thrust into the national spotlight in September 1963 after he became the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi. Hearing of Meredith’s shooting, King and other prominent civil rights leaders arrived to march on Meredith’s behalf. “James Meredith Shot,” This Day in History: June 6, History Channel, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/james-meredith-shot; Anderson and Pickering, In Confronting the Color Line, 219.

78 August 5, 1966, King led a march through Gage Park and Marquette Park, both predominantly white communities, to expose housing discrimination. The march through

Marquette Park was especially tense. Between five hundred and seven hundred nonviolent demonstrators joined King there. However, a gathered group of about five thousand white agitators outnumbered the demonstrators ten to one, and only about twelve hundred police were on hand to keep the peace. Some of the young white men had roused themselves with alcohol before the march. Some of the mobsters threw “bricks, bottles, eggs, pails of water, apples, cherry bombs,” and some spit at the demonstrators.104 One poster read: “King would look good with a knife in his back.”105 Some whites waved Confederate flags while chanting,

“Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate,” as residents of Bridgeport had shouted in

1965.106 At one point one person threw a knife.107 In the midst of this chaos a rock catapulted through the air, striking King in the head. King was one of about thirty people injured during that march.108 After the melee King lamented that in all his experiences in the racist South he had never “seen anything so hostile and hateful” in his white brothers and sisters “as I’ve seen here today.”109 Twenty-two-year-old Prexy Nesbitt, a former football star at the North Side private school Frances W. Parker, was part of King’s security detail during the march. Nesbitt remembers the hostility vividly. “Nobody had any idea of the depth of hate until that summer,” he recalled.110 Similarly, the Reverend George Clements, then thirty-

104 Terry, “Northern Exposure.” 105 Frank James, “Martin Luther King in Chicago,” Chicago Tribune, last updated May 5, 2016. 106 LeeAnn Trotter, “Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial to Commemorate Marquette Park March,” NBC 5 Chicago, January 18, 2016, http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-Memorial-to- Commemorate-Marquette-Park-March-365695331.html. On the 1965 events, see Royko, Boss, 144. 107 Howard-Pitney, African American Jeremiad, 194. 108 James, “Martin Luther King in Chicago.” 109 Howard-Pitney, African American Jeremiad, 194; King quoted in “Dr. King Felled by Rock,” Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1966. 110 Terry, “Northern Exposure.”

79 four years old, remembers a bizarre encounter he had with an elderly white woman who followed him as he marched wearing his clerical collar:

“Nigger priest, nigger priest,” she shouted, working herself into a frenzy. Then she fell silent. Clements turned to see where she was but at first couldn’t see her. Then he spotted her, on her knees, vomiting into a gutter. “I said to myself, ‘God, this is really some hate.’”111

Father Michael Pfleger, longtime priest of St. Sabina Catholic Church on the city’s South

Side, was sixteen when he attended the march through Marquette Park. “I saw this hate,”

Pfleger remembers. “I had never seen them, my neighbors, like that. I’d never seen that side of white people.”112

In the wake of these violent, hateful scenes, King’s remarks on Hotline the previous month can be read as prophetic, foretelling and exposing the identity of Chicago’s true lawbreakers. Despite efforts of elected officials, civic leaders, and local media to absolve whites of wrongdoing and to criminalize African American activism by conflating it with rioting, the secret was out. The extent of the hate and violence visited upon marchers in

Gage and Marquette Parks in August 1966 confirmed that King was not lying when he said on Hotline that the real lawbreakers were not those engaged in nonviolent direct action. Such prophecy, mediated through WVON, was part of the process of opening many Chicagoans’ eyes to the harsh reality that violence, lawlessness, and latent racism were firm fixtures in white Chicago communities. “Yet,” journalist Don Terry writes, “it was King and the freedom movement that dominated the headlines and exposed a sad truth about American life—then and now. Racism was not just the South’s problem.”113

111 Ibid. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid.

80 Conclusion

During a time when the U.S. broadcasting industry denied African Americans equal access to radio, Hotline’s brand of news journalism gave its predominantly black audience a public forum to debate, interpret, and draw conclusions about the issues shaping their daily lives. The show not only provided a “tool to gauge public opinion” about various social issues, but Hotline also offered alternate portraits of and for black public life in Chicago and beyond.114 Such labor, Catherine Squires argues, has defined the role of black-oriented media in the United States in showing “more sides of the story where race was involved” in order to affirm the dignity of African Americans “but also aiming at Whites to challenge their views.”115

The diversity of voices on Hotline became important loci for critiques that helped to redefine black public life for “wider public spheres.”116 Martin Luther King Jr.’s July 1966 appearance on the show provides a compelling case for examining Hotline’s prophetic function as it invited listeners’ legitimate discontent to confront particular myths about nonviolent civil rights demonstrations and their participants. As my analysis demonstrates,

King’s appearance afforded him the opportunity to confront and challenge these myths while engaging listeners in a sustained discussion on more open-minded, progressive views of race, democracy, and U.S. citizenship. Thus, Hotline cultivated a niche, clarifying complex political issues while educating its audiences, often on the subject of race. More specifically,

Hotline provided a stage on which efforts to misrepresent black public life could be exposed and interrogated. In this sense, Hotline demonstrated what media theorist Marshall McLuhan

114 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 276. 115 Catherine Squires, “Black Audiences, Past and Present: Commonsense Media Critics and Activists,” in Say It Loud! African American Audiences, Media and Identity, ed. Robin R. Means Coleman (New York: Routledge, 2002), 46. Though white-owned, WVON was operated by all-black staff. See Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 48, 80. 116 Squires, “Black Audiences,” 46.

81 long ago described as radio’s power to create a “classroom without walls.”117 King’s

Hotline appearance, in particular, illustrates McLuhan’s theory of radio’s capacity to educate

(and re-educate) audiences, opening their minds to new information and insights.

While radio has lost much of its cultural force in the wake of modern innovations in television, the Internet, and, more recently, live video-streaming social media technologies,

King’s Hotline appearance in 1966 has important implications for future projects examining the intersections of race, civil rights, and media. A host of current public issues offer potential topics for such examinations. For instance, after Dakota Access Pipeline protesters blocked roadways in 2016 to oppose the pipeline’s construction, North Dakota lawmakers proposed a bill that would legalize accidentally running over protesters in the road.118 Also, in November 2016, Washington state senator Doug Ericksen, a Republican, revealed plans to prepare a bill for the 2017 legislative session to criminalize anti-Trump protests.119 Finally,

Tomi Lahren, a commentator for the conservative right-wing media firm The Blaze, has often conflated Black Lives Matter protesters with militant and overly aggressive behavior.

Incorrectly identifying violent individuals during Black Lives Matter demonstrations as acting on behalf of the larger movement, Lahren has stated, “The minute that protesting turned into rioting, and looting, and burning, and militant actions that’s when I lost respect for

Black Lives Matter.”120 These public issues are a few of many that reveal the present challenges among marginalized U.S. citizens and communities engaged in nonviolent

117 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet Books, 1964), 298; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 7. 118 Eric Levenson and Carma Hassan, “Proposed Laws Would Crack Down on Protesters Who Block Roadways,” CNN.com, January 26, 2017. 119 Melanie Eversley, “Wash. Legislator Wants to Criminalize Anti-Trump Protests,” USA Today, November 17, 2016. 120 “Exclusive: Tomi Lauren Extended Interview,” The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, November 30, 2016, http://www.cc.com/video-clips/m9ds7s/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-exclusive---tomi-lahren-extended- interview.

82 demonstrations to secure the full extent of their democratic rights.

Just as Hotline offered a strategy for resisting, refiguring, and rebroadcasting racist misrepresentations of the struggle among members of the black public sphere, modern technological innovations can potentially offer similar political interventions. Amid exclusionary traumas still being perpetrated against African Americans, recovering the history of Hotline in 1960s Chicago raises important questions about the role of alternate discursive forums today in tearing the weighty veils of bigotry blinding too many from looking upon radically diverse others with enlightened, caring, and—to follow the example of an impartial, loving God—open eyes.

83 CHAPTER 2

“You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby”: WVON’s Bern Club, Foreign Shores, and Ambassadors of Black Womanhood

“The only way we can progress is by educating our young. Without doing so, we are lost.”1

—Bernadine C. Washington

Living in a society that sought to render them as dependent and powerless as possible, they acquired a new source of power over their lives—information that a better alternative not only existed but beckoned.2

—James R. Grossman

“Young ladies, many who never dreamed of seeing a foreign shore, have traveled to countless parts of the world. Anyway, that’s what the WVON Bern Club is all about.”3 —Doug Akins

The fair-skinned radio executive and mother of two walked briskly toward her office at WVON. She was a full hour late for her first morning appointment. But Bernadine

Carrickett Washington had a good excuse, at least for one of Chicago’s leading fashion authorities. The general manager of WVON radio had been trying on dresses, which her mother preferred to pants. After appraising herself in three dresses, Washington finally decided on a knit-and-leather pantsuit before arriving at her office tardy.4 That was Bern, as colleagues and fans affectionately called her, ever busy, always moving. In a September 1974

Chicago Tribune article, reporter Marilynn Preston used a dominant theme of forward movement to characterize the eleven-year radio personality’s career as a radio broadcaster and community leader:

1 Bernadine C. Washington quoted in Eleanor Page, “Paging People: It’s High Style to Raise Money,” Chicago Tribune, June 15, 1974. 2 James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 97. 3 Doug Akins, “The Club Set,” Chicago Defender, May 29, 1971. 4 Marilynn Preston, “Black Radio Exec Tuned into Community Cause Wavelength,” Chicago Tribune, September 25, 1974.

84 And when she’s not taking calls from faithful listeners, or doling out advice on everything from black politicians to white gloves, or broadcasting 1,000-watt editorial blasts, or hosting a luncheon, or reading announcements at her church, or charming the advertisers, there’s always Christmas to think about and the 1,000 baskets for the needy Bern helps dispense thruout the community.5

Washington was promoted to the position of WVON’s vice president in 1967 and general manager in 1970. As the first African American woman to hold either position at a U.S. radio station, Washington contradicted the many negative stereotypes about black women saturating popular media in the late 1960s. When black women were represented in media at all, bell hooks observes, their “bodies and being were there to serve—to enhance and maintain white womanhood as objects of the phallocentric gaze.” Such portrayals negated

“black female representation” and served to confine African American women to passive, subservient societal roles.6

Perhaps no one was prouder of Washington’s professional journey than her mother,

Mrs. Ethyl A. McGee. After all, McGee had witnessed every moment of her daughter’s long climb up the professional ladder. “You’ve come a long way, baby,” her mother exclaimed joyously in April 1970—quoting a popular cigarette ad of the time—when Washington

5 Preston, “Black Radio Exec,” 2. 6 hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 119-20. See also bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminism, Thinking Black (Boston: South End Press, 1989). During the mid-1900s several popular radio programs were reborn on television and reinforced stereotypical images of African Americans. For instance, the character Sapphire from the television version of radio’s Amos ’n’ Andy and the character Beulah from the television show Beulah (which ran on ABC from 1950 to 1953) both reincarnated the mammy stereotype and mischaracterized African American womanhood as inferior, docile, and working class. Major television sponsors representing white-owned companies feared offending white consumers and key market groups like southern whites and thus refused to fund programs featuring African Americans. African Americans rarely appeared on entertainment programs before the mid-1960s. In 1952, only 0.4 percent of television performances featured black actors and actresses. Popular shows like Lassie and Bewitched portrayed ideal white families who lived in a world in which blacks did not exist. Hollywood also circulated racist representations of black women with the film Imitation of Life (1959), which reinforced mammy stereotypes. See Kevern Verney, African Americans and US Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 2003), 52-53, 57, 67; and hooks, Black Looks, 119.

85 returned home after being promoted to WVON general manager.7 Yet Washington’s professional influence in Chicago extended far beyond her radio career. By 1975 Washington was serving as vice president of South Side Bank, vice president of the board of directors of the Chicago chapter of the NAACP, and a member of the boards of the Joint Negro Appeal and of Operation PUSH.8 In her roles as the head of WVON and as an influential civic leader, Washington had certainly traveled a great distance, both literally and figuratively.

Washington was just seven years old in 1928 when she migrated with her mother from New Orleans to Chicago. She spent her childhood, teenage, and adolescent years living with discriminatory policies that attempted to inhibit or, rather, to contain African American mobility in the city. By 1940, when Washington was just nineteen, most African American

Chicagoans were working-class menial laborers. Black women made up almost half the women working as domestic servants in the city.9 Yet Washington made swift professional inroads, parlaying her interest in fashion into various jobs—first as a furrier’s secretary, then as a department store fashion consultant—that eventually led her to a full-time career in radio.

In 1963, WVON hired Washington as the station’s women’s director and host of her own show, On the Scene with Bernadine. The show featured fashion and household tips, domestic advice, and news commentary targeting an audience of mostly black women. These

7 “Bernadine Washington First Black Woman Radio GM, VP,” Jet, May 1, 1975. Although McGee quoted the slogan without irony, many scholars and commentators have condemned the cigarette company for co-opting the notion of feminist liberation for commercial gain while exploiting and damaging women’s health. See Susan Okie, “Smoking Now Worst Threat to Women’s Health: Women’s Longevity Edge Going Up in Smoke,” Washington Post, November 11, 1985; Charles Green-Knight-Ridder Newspapers, “Sports Boycott of Tobacco Urged Health Secretary Asks Athletes to Shun Cigarette Firms’ Events,” Orange County Register, February 24, 1990; “Tobacco and Women: Rebellion or Oppression?” Hera, February 28, 1998; Timothy Dewhirst, Wonkyong B. Lee, Geoffrey T. Fong, and Pamela M. Ling, “Exporting an Inherently Harmful Product: The Marketing of Virginia Slims Cigarettes in the United States, Japan, and Korea,” Journal of Business Ethics 139, no. 1 (November 2016): 161-81. 8 “Among the Year’s Priorities,” Chicago Defender, April 5, 1975. 9 St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 242, 256, 295-96.

86 vignettes, along with her work behind the scenes as a civic leader, Jet magazine observed, endeared her to both “a faithful listening audience” and “Black community leaders in

Chicago.”10 In 1965, seeing various injustices, such as discrimination in education, constricting life for African American women in Chicago, Washington created the WVON

Bern Club, a social club for her women listeners and fans. Open to African American females, membership generally ranged between teenagers and middle-aged adults pursuing middle-class values and lifestyles. Members could affiliate with the club through its various meetings, social outings, educational forums, fundraising events, and travel excursions. It is not immediately clear whether members paid dues or even how the international trips were subsidized. However, the club’s regular fundraising events served as its primary revenue stream and likely defrayed members’ expenses during the club’s overseas travels. A prosthetic extension of WVON’s sensorial and intellectual powers, the social club was designed to empower black girls and women through educational programming and activities. The Bern Club not only publicized positive images of African American womanhood through the national black newspaper the Chicago Defender, but it also provided black women access to news, information, and resources to nurture their personal, professional, and political mobility. Through various activities, including etiquette workshops, scholarship events, and local and transnational excursions, the WVON Bern

Club sought to address the social, cultural, and economic inequalities inhibiting life for

African American women. The Bern Club focused much of its efforts on organizing fundraisers for scholarships earmarked for African American high school girls interested in attending college. Those members who participated in the club’s travel activities were exposed to exciting new arenas where they were challenged and inspired to embrace their

10 “Bernadine Washington First Black Woman Radio GM, VP.”

87 personal, professional, and political power. This was Washington’s primary vision for the

Bern Club: to help black girls and women living among white-imposed imperatives of black containment to move far from where they started, just as she had done.11

In this chapter, I argue that the WVON Bern Club provided African American women a forum that creatively confronted educational and employment inequalities in

Chicago and, consequently, expanded members’ social, cultural, intellectual, and political worlds. Yet it would not be accurate to characterize the Bern Club exclusively as a black counterpublic. The club certainly embodied characteristics of a counterpublic. However, unlike counterpublics as Catherine Squires defines the term, there is no record that the Bern

Club utilized coercive force or nonviolent direct action tactics to initiate social reform.

Neither does the Bern Club fit neatly into other categories that black public sphere theorists use to describe the nature and function of the black public sphere in the United States. For instance, in addition to the black counterpublic, Squires’s concepts of the black enclave and satellite public spheres, which I explore in more detail below, are not sufficient alone to analyze the unique contours and contributions of the WVON Bern Club. In addition to being a forum for disseminating black feminist philosophies, a place for retreat and refuge, and an institution for engaging a dominant white public, the Bern Club was an institution that nurtured self-esteem, stimulated self-direction, and encouraged members to embark upon fantastic adventures into larger worlds within and beyond Chicago and the United

States.

11 For an introduction to national imperatives of black containment between the early and mid-twentieth century, see Barbara Dianne Savage, Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Radio, 1938-1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Nikhil Pal Singh, Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Ann Meis Knupfer, The Chicago Black Renaissance and Women’s Activism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Dayo F. Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War (New York: New York University Press, 2011); Baldwin L. Davarian and Minkah Makalani, eds., Escape from New York: The New Negro Renaissance beyond Harlem, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).

88 Given the breadth of its activities as an off-air affiliate of WVON, the Bern Club provides a unique case for reexamining the contemporary relevance of public sphere theory.

Jürgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, Stuart Hall, Robert Asen, Daniel C. Brouwer, Catherine R.

Squires, Michael Warner, and Frank Farmer have contributed significantly to the study of public culture and the public sphere as analytic categories.12 While I build off these insights, my analysis of the Bern Club in this chapter is grounded in theories of the black public sphere and its mediating institutions. In other words, I draw upon the theoretical contributions of black public sphere theorists to interpret the particular purpose, function, and contribution of WVON’s Bern Club as an extension of Chicago’s black public sphere. I am indebted especially to those scholars whose works appear in The Black Public Sphere

(1995).13

I rely primarily upon Catherine R. Squires’s conception of the black public sphere as consisting of multiple heterogeneous black publics that have had a tendency toward three unique general responses to oppression: the black enclave public sphere, the black satellite public sphere, and the black counterpublic sphere. Black enclave spaces form when African

Americans convene and circulate discourse in spaces beyond the surveillance and racial violence or retaliation of the dominant white public and the state. The black enclave is a space of retreat and survival in which African Americans nurture oppositional consciousness

12 For an introduction to the study of public culture and public sphere theory, see Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989); Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text, no. 25-26 (1990): 56-80; Stuart Hall, “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture,” Social Justice 20, nos. 1-2 (Spring-Summer 1993): 104; Robert Asen and Daniel C. Brouwer, eds., Counterpublics and the State (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001); Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2005); Frank Farmer, After the Public Turn: Composition, Counterpublics, and the Citizen Bricoleur (Boulder, CO: Utah State University Press, 2013); Catherine R. Squires, “Black Talk Radio: Defining Community Needs and Identity,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 5, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 73-95; Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere: An Alternate Vocabulary for Multiple Public Spheres,” Communication Theory 12, no. 4 (November 2002): 446-68. 13 Black Public Sphere Collective, ed., The Black Public Sphere: A Public Culture Book (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

89 and resistance strategies. Slave quarters, for instance, served as such enclave spaces in which enslaved African Americans forged collective identity and hidden communication networks. The black satellite public forms when sufficient institutions exist to transport the hidden transcripts of opposition forged in black enclaves into wider spheres. The black press, for example, allowed African Americans’ discourse about racism to travel between enclave spaces and the political world that whites inhabited. Finally, black counterpublics emerge when African Americans transform the oppositional discourses nurtured in enclaves and circulated through satellite spheres into sustained public confrontation to end their subordinate status. Civil rights rallies, marches, and sit-ins are familiar but not exhaustive examples of institutions of black counterpublics. While sharing features with the categories of the black enclave, satellite, and counterpublic spheres, the Bern Club demonstrates unique points of departure.14 For instance, rather than being a space of retreat like the black enclave, or a pivot point to facilitate partial immersion into the wider political world like the black satellite public sphere, or a forum for polemical arguments challenging members of a dominant white public like the black counterpublic, the Bern Club provided a means of propelling women into the larger world with strategies for sustained political engagement achieved through savvy diplomacy. Through strategic community service projects and no small measure of ambassadorial acumen, members of the Bern Club brokered relationships with allies of diverse ethnic backgrounds as a means of empowering black women politically.

Given the limited historical record of radio-affiliated social clubs in Chicago between the 1960s and mid-1970s, a study of the WVON Bern Club can provide new ways of thinking about how African American women organized themselves against the limits of

U.S. democracy in the Cold War era. In my analysis, I demonstrate how the social club defies

14 Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere.”

90 categorization within Squires’s theoretical models of enclave, satellite, and counterpublic spheres. I argue the Bern Club is best understood as an intercessory or ambassadorial public sphere that advocates on behalf of and seeks out allies with shared goals. Through the Bern

Club’s many activities, and especially its travel program, club members became emissaries who represented the diversity of experiences in black womanhood within and beyond Cold

War Chicago. As my analysis demonstrates, this collective effort to represent group ideals for the purpose of brokering unconventional coalitions with allies is the defining characteristic of the ambassadorial or intercessory formation of the black public sphere. My analysis also extends the discourse on black public sphere theory to provide new ways of approaching institutions of the black public sphere. Much scholarship exists on the intersections of race, education, employment, social and political clubs, civil rights, and private life and public culture in the United States between the early 1900s and the Cold War era. St. Clair Drake, Horace R. Cayton, Elaine Tyler May, Lizabeth Cohen, Wallace D. Best,

Dayo F. Gore, and Mary Helen Washington have explored these intersections extensively, often with particular emphasis on Chicago. With the exception of the scholarship of Gore and Washington, however, few scholarly works exist on black women’s political participation within various social clubs in post-World War II Chicago. And while radio-affiliated black women’s social clubs in Chicago are critical to understanding African American women’s

Cold War activism, neither Gore nor Washington focus on them.15

15 For more on the intersections of race, gender, politics, and U.S. policies of black containment in the twentieth-century United States, see Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis; Roi Ottley, The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert S. Abbott (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1955); Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, rev. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage Books, 2003); Wallace D. Best, Passionately Human, No Less Divine: Religion and Culture in Black Chicago, 1915-1952 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Nikki Brown, Private Politics and Public Voices: Black Women’s Activism from World War I to the New Deal (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Ann Meis Knupfer, The Chicago Black Renaissance and Women’s Activism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Melina Abdullah, “The Emergence of a Black

91 Almost no scholarship exists on African American women’s radio-affiliated social clubs in Chicago. Consequently, significant methodological obstacles arise amid studies exploring the converging discourse of radio, African American womanhood, and racial politics in Cold War Chicago. In response to these challenges, I rely upon articles and columns in Chicago newspapers, primarily the Chicago Defender, since it provided the most extensive coverage of black social clubs. In particular, I utilize columns between the mid-

1950s and the late 1970s that chronicle the activities of both Bernadine C. Washington and the WVON Bern Club. This archive contains some of Washington’s own descriptions and interpretations (in the form of quotations and guest columns) about the Bern Club’s purposes and activities. Ultimately, this chapter seeks to extend historical scholarship on the programming of African American women’s radio-affiliated clubs during the Cold War generally and scholarship on WVON’s programming for women in particular. It also extends rhetorical scholarship by exploring discursive practices related to social forums affiliated with black-appeal media. This chapter, then, offers public sphere theory new methods and terminology for studying how marginalized communities utilize media innovations to confront various forms of social injustice.

One key source guiding my method of analysis in this chapter is Caryl Cooper’s 2014

Journalism History article, “Selling Negro Women to Negro Women and to the World:

Rebecca Stiles Taylor and the Chicago Defender, 1939-1945.”16 In her article, Cooper explores

Feminist Leadership Model,” in Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds, ed. Kristin Waters and Carol B. Conaway (Burlington: University of Vermont Press, 2007), 328-45; Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads; Cheryl Mullenbach, Double Victory: How African American Women Broke Race and Gender Barriers to Help Win World War II (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2013); Caryl Cooper, “Selling Negro Women to Negro Women and to the World: Rebecca Stiles Taylor and the Chicago Defender, 1939-1945,” Journalism History 39, no. 4 (Winter 2014): 244; Mary Helen Washington, The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). 16 Cooper, “Selling Negro Women,” 241-49. In 1937, Chicago Defender publisher Robert S. Abbott hired Taylor, then fifty-seven, to help develop the newspaper’s women’s pages and gain female readers.

92 themes that Chicago Defender columnist Rebecca Stiles Taylor used to describe, interpret, inspire, and facilitate black women’s struggle against social and political disenfranchisement through education and intellectual development between 1939 and 1945.17 Taylor emphasized the gender-related issues her male colleagues at the Chicago Defender did not address, once stating,

The white woman has only two battle fronts—rousing her women and educating her men. The Negro woman has a harder fight to arouse her women, a harder fight to inject manhood into her men while she educates them, and the hardest of all fights to educate her government and the entire world to see her as a HUMAN BEING deserving of the rights and privileges accorded her under the constitution of the government.18

While Cooper’s article does not cover the post-World War II years, she emphasizes the intersection of black feminist philosophies and the political function of Chicago and national black women’s clubs. Not only does Cooper’s focus on black women’s clubs represent the most recent analysis I have found on this subject, but it also addresses the key themes of education, political empowerment, and black middle-class values that Washington emphasized as host of her WVON show On the Scene with Bernadine and as organizer of the

WVON Bern Club. My approach, like Cooper’s, depends upon the Chicago Defender for primary source material. My project also involves a history of the black press. Unlike

Cooper’s project, however, my work here does not emphasize the black press as a historical institution.19 Historians have written extensively on how black publishers, reporters, and columnists have substantively engaged the issue of segregation and its institutions in the

17 Cooper, “Selling Negro Women,” 242. 18 The clipping appeared in RST, “European Women Admit Blindness, Defeat and Bow Heads in Shame,” Chicago Defender, November 25, 1939. No date was given for the original publication. Cooper, “Selling Negro Women,” 242. 19 For an introduction to the historical significance of the African American press in the United States, see Armistead S. Pride and Clint C. Wilson II, A History of the Black Press (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1997); Lauren Kessler, The Dissident Press: Alternative Journalism in American History (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1984); and Roland E. Wolseley, The Black Press U.S.A. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1971).

93 United States.20 Yet scholars have not yet substantively explored how the intersection of radio and black social clubs expanded the social, cultural, and political lives of African

American women after World War II. My analysis of Washington’s work at WVON and her leadership within the Bern Club is significant, therefore, because it provides a scarcely documented account of how African American women in conjunction with Cold War radio stations adapted to social, economic, and political exigencies. And while the Bern Club enjoyed an eighteen-year existence between 1965 and 1983, this chapter focuses on the club’s activities between its founding and the mid-1970s since the available source material I examine is from this period.

This chapter proceeds in three movements. First, to establish the historical context out of which Washington and consequently the Bern Club emerged, I provide a brief account of education discrimination within Chicago’s public schools between the early 1900s and the first decade following World War II. Specifically, I explore how poor and middle- class black girls and women endured the doubly harsh burden as students and employees who were both women and black. Additionally, I discuss the tradition of the Chicago

African American women’s club movement during the early and mid-twentieth century and show how black women’s clubs helped to mitigate educational disparities in the city. Second,

I provide a historical account of Bernadine C. Washington’s professional career before radio, her journey to WVON, and the births of her radio program On the Scene with Bernadine and

20 On the black press in the struggle against racism in the United States, see Patrick Scott Washburn, A Question of Sedition: The Federal Government’s Investigation of the Black Press during World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Earnest L. Perry Jr., “A Common Purpose: The Negro Newspaper Publishers Association’s Fight for Equality during World War II,” American Journalism 19, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 40; Jinx Coleman Broussard and John Maxwell Hamilton, “Covering a Two-Front War: Three African American Correspondents during World War II,” American Journalism 22, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 33-54; and Earnest L. Perry Jr., “We Want In: The African American Press Negotiation for a White House Correspondent,” American Journalism 20, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 31-47. On World War I, see John D. Stevens, “From the Back of the Foxhole: Black Correspondents in World War I,” Journalism Monographs 27 (February 1973): 1-61; Cooper, “Selling Negro Women,” 242-43.

94 her off-air social club, the WVON Bern Club. Third, I examine the particular role the

WVON Bern Club served for working-class African American girls and women in Chicago and surrounding states between 1965 and the mid-1970s. Here I examine accounts of the

Bern Club’s various local, national, and overseas activities published in the Chicago Defender. I then situate the Bern Club within each of Squires’s three analytic models of the black public sphere: the enclave, satellite, and counterpublic spheres. By identifying points of convergence and departure with each analytic category, I demonstrate how the WVON Bern

Club responded to and critiqued the limits of democracy in the Cold War United States. I conclude this chapter by exploring how the differences revealed in each comparison point to new ways of thinking about and analyzing the black public sphere and its institutions.

Systematic Containment in Chicago’s Public Schools

Migrating from New Orleans to Chicago with her mother in 1928 at the age of seven, Bernadine Carrickett McGee’s family was among many black southerners seeking greater opportunities in the city. Most African Americans arriving in Chicago in the early

1900s had few skills that transferred to Chicago’s urban-industrial economy. According to the 1910 census, 63 percent of all employed African Americans in the South were agricultural workers.21 Fewer than one in twenty black men and almost no black women worked in managerial, professional, or proprietary occupations in Chicago. Many worked as domestic laborers, personal servants, mechanics, car washers in garages, and unskilled laborers in restaurants, stores, and transportation. Thus, at the time, St. Clair Drake and

Horace R. Cayton argue, African Americans working in menial jobs in Chicago became

21 Grossman, Land of Hope, 183; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negro Population, 1790-1915 (Washington, DC, 1918), 517-23.

95 “accepted as a normal part of the workaday population.”22 Many African Americans had hopes that education would afford them greater professional opportunities. However, rampant educational disparities proved formidable obstacles to black mobility in Chicago, especially among women. Therefore, to grasp more fully the political significance of the Bern

Club as an educational forum for black women in the mid-1960s and 1970s, it is necessary to situate the club’s creation within the larger historical context of systematic discrimination against African Americans, and women in particular, within Chicago’s public schools.

Many African American parents believed that Chicago’s public school system, integrated formally since 1874, would be a means of social mobility and would offer a more stable future for their children. Educational prospects among black youth in the South were poor at best. “Committed to an economy powered by an unskilled labor force,” James R.

Grossman argues, “the South had little to gain from educating black children.” Many white southerners even believed that schooling made black youth unfit for work within the southern economy. Also, the demands of sharecropping in the early 1900s often required black families to pull their children out of school to help work their white employers’ farms.

Additionally, since few families residing in southern states lived near a high school, migrant children in Chicago had previously limited access to quality schooling. According to the liberal definitions of the 1910 census, a third of all African Americans in the rural South

22 Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 195, 223-24, 228. The Chicago job ceiling was not only a consequence of discrimination. Many black migrant farmers bypassed skilled and semi-skilled labor for jobs in domestic or personal service. However, systematic racism certainly forced many black Chicagoans, even those with professional skills, into service occupations. Those black migrants with businesses or professional experience in the South often had difficulty continuing careers in Chicago because limited capital made it difficult to compete with established vendors or ventures downtown or in ghettos. Disparities in education also limited opportunities. For instance, elementary school teachers had to have the equivalent of a Chicago high school diploma. High school teachers had to have a college degree. Such requirements prevented most migrant teachers from even applying.

96 were judged illiterate. However, for many black southerners Chicago’s schools symbolized northern opportunity.23

Upon arriving in Chicago, black migrants experienced significant challenges within the city’s school system. Grossman writes: “At the time of the first wave of migration in late

1916, even schools in the black ghetto had at most one black teacher. . . . Indeed, it was not unsual for schools with black children to have no black teachers, as some principals stood fundamentally opposed to hiring them.” Additionally, significant disparities existed between schools in white and black neighborhoods. By 1920 schools in black neighborhoods were mostly older and not well equipped. Almost immediately, black migrant children in Chicago suffered prejudice and embarrassment in school. Statistics from black Chicago schools designated three-fourths of migrant students as “retarded.” These students were enrolled in schools in lower grades than peers their own age, with classmates younger than themselves.24

Even worse, school officials devised elaborate schemes to separate “retarded” youth from other students by placing them into subnormal rooms, which doubled between 1915 and

1924. The majority of these rooms were in black schools, nearly all of which had these rooms by 1924. These subnormal rooms, Grossman states, further reinforced many teachers’ beliefs that black children were “less ambitious, less self-disciplined, and less intelligent.”25

Many students in these classrooms complained that teachers played with them instead of teaching them. Additionally, teachers often used curriculum designed to prepare black students only for unskilled and semi-skilled labor. Such practices had serious impacts on the

23 Grossman, Land of Hope, 36, 183, 246-50. For samples of notices in the Chicago Defender about southerners visiting relatives in Chicago, see local columns on August 11, September 1, and November 24, 1917. 24 Grossman, Land of Hope, 254, 246-47, 251-52. 25 There were certainly exceptions, but few. For instance, one secondary school, Wendell Phillips High School, had a “special division” created specifically serve migrant needs. At Wendell Phillips Night School adults could enroll in any elementary or high school grade for one and two dollars respectively. Most migrants entered the elementary grades. By 1921, about four thousand African American Chicagoans were enrolled at Wendell Phillips Night School, with about two thousand attending nightly; Grossman, Land of Hope, 251, 255.

97 employment prospects for black women in Chicago and in northern cities more generally.

For instance, one qualitative study of high school education among blacks in Pittsburgh during the early 1900s concluded: “Despite their ambitions for white-collar employment, 56 percent of the graduates of a black girls’ high school” in the city “ended up as domestic servants.” In Chicago at the start of the twentieth century, black women in the city spent most of their day working, balancing household chores with jobs outside the home, often as domestic servants.26

In a speech entitled “The Problem of Employment for Negro Women,” delivered at the Hampton Negro Conference in 1903, Fannie Barrier Williams lamented the limited employment opportunities for African American women in Chicago. Williams exhorted: “In the city of Chicago domestic service is the one occupation in which the demand for colored women exceeds the supply.” Williams went on to indict white North American women housewives for presupposing that their black women domestic employees were inherently

“inferior and servile by nature” and lacked any “womanly instincts and aspirations.”27 The

Depression years found many African American women in the North so desperate for work that some utilized so-called slave markets, which, journalist Marvel Cooke explained, consisted of street corners where groups of black women waited for white housewives to

“take their pick and bid wages down” for a day’s work in white homes.28 Cooke described these despairing scenes vividly in her investigative articles on slave markets in the Bronx,

New York. Cooke’s 1935 piece, “The Bronx Slave Market,” coauthored with Ella Baker, exposed black women’s struggles working as day laborers—long hours, low pay, and often-

26 Ibid., 254-58, 131. 27 Fannie Barrier Williams, “The Problem of Employment for Negro Women,” in The Rhetoric of Struggle: Public Address by African American Women, ed. Robbie Jean Walker (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), 195-96. 28 Quoted in Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 233, 245-46.

98 abusive employers—during the Great Depression. Cooke drew striking comparisons between modern domestic labor and chattel slavery in the nineteenth century.29 In Chicago, the situation for black women was similar. More than half of African American women worked in service occupations in the city during the Depression years compared to only twelve out of every hundred white women who worked in such jobs. It was not uncommon for black domestic workers to receive $1.50 for a week’s work.30 And by 1940, black women made up almost half the women working as domestic servants in the city.31

In addition to racist education policies, black youth in Chicago public schools faced the agonizing reality that education did not necessarily secure the better future they desired.

In fact, many black teens questioned the value of education. “Not surprisingly,” Grossman states, “few blacks finished high school in Chicago, despite their tenacity in remaining in school well into their teenage years.”32 However, racist narratives clouded the underlying causes of blacks’ dropping out of high school. For instance, Charles Perrine, principal of

Wendell Phillips High School until 1920, remarked to a local pastor that black teenagers dropped out of school because they lacked ambition and were “temperamentally . . . fitted for special lines of work.”33 Thus, the problem was not, as some school officials claimed,

29 In the 1930s, Cooke famously dramatized this picture of U.S. employment options for African American women. Sometimes the only black journalist (and only black woman journalist) at the newspapers for which she worked, Cooke in her investigative reporting exposed the exploitation of black women and made public the ugly underside and dehumanization of black domestic labor. Cooke helped to expose the ways white women were involved in and benefited from the systematic exploitation of black women. Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads, 106-10. 30 Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 220, 243-44. 31 African Americans did mount organized pressure against job discrimination during the Depression years, launching the “Spend Your Money Where You Can Work” campaign between 1931 and 1932, along with various picketing and boycotting all the way up to the early years of the Second World War. Ibid., 242, 256, 295-96. 32 Grossman, Land of Hope, 257-58. 33 Ibid., 256. Also see Charles H. Thompson, “A Study of the Reading Accomplishments of Colored and White Children” (Master’s thesis, University of Chicago, 1920), 21, 35-36; Ione M. Mack, “The Factor of Race in the Religious Education of the Negro High School Girl” (Master’s thesis, University of Chicago, 1927), 39; Jane P. Cook and John T. McManis, “Fourth Grade Geography,” Educational Bi-Monthly 11, no. 2 (December 1916): 98-

99 that black youth were inherently inferior and predisposed for menial labor. Not only were many black youth tormented with the social and psychological trauma of being labeled

“retarded” and inferior, but they also “faced the recognition that education would not open the doors they had anticipated.”34 In fact, a 1940 study conducted by the United States

Office of Education found that the more schooling African Americans achieved, the less satisfied they were with their jobs.35

Few resources existed in Chicago public schools to prepare black students for middle- and upper-class professional careers. During the 1920s Chicago high schools in particular were highly segregated. In those schools where administrators did admit black students, white students often resisted, transferring schools or excluding blacks from clubs or social activities. Thus, as Chicago educators adopted John Dewey’s concept of the high school as a citizenship training ground that emphasized participation in extracurricular activities, black students were disenfranchised as second-class citizens. Black students often chose not to form their own school clubs because doing so would imply acceptance of racial separation. Yet black social and political clubs and agencies existed and emerged outside the city’s school system to serve the various needs of migrant children and their families. These organizations provided spaces where black youth and adults could receive training and support not available in Chicago’s public school curriculum. These institutions were especially important for African American girls and women. While most white teachers in

101; Chicago Commission on Race Relations, Negro in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922), 250-51. 34 Grossman, Land of Hope, 257. 35 David B. Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, MA, 1974), 222. Also see Grossman, 258. For a summary of one of the few quantitative analyses of the value of a high school education during this time among blacks in a northern city, Pittsburgh in particular, see Stanley Lieberson, A Piece of the Pie: Blacks and White Immigrants since 1880 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 238.

100 Chicago then viewed black students in general as intellectually inferior, some held negative views about black girls in particular.36

Some of the early black women’s clubs and agencies were founded by middle-class

African Americans who were already established in Chicago by the early 1900s. Concerned that migrants’ rural southern agrarian sensibilities would embarrass the race, members of the city’s black middle class created organizations to socialize migrants into respectable citizens.

By teaching newcomers “acceptable forms of behavior,” the black middle class could protect its respectability. For instance, the Phillis Wheatley Association, founded in 1896 as a women’s club, changed its focus in 1906 to protect migrant women from being led unknowingly into “disreputable homes, entertainment and employment.”37 Agencies established after 1910 to meet migrant needs included the black YMCA and YWCA, the

Club Home for Colored Girls, and the Julia Johnson Home for Working Girls. Ida B. Wells-

Barnett’s Negro Fellowship League had an especially grand vision for meeting migrants’ needs. Created in 1910, the organization had a fifteen-cent per night lodging house, employment agency, and reading room with newspapers from the North and South. In 1917, the organization placed a representative at the Illinois Central depot to give “proper information” to migrants arriving in the city.38

Black migrants in Chicago also created institutions that connected them with people from their former homes in the South. By 1921, black migrants from at least nine southern states could join clubs made up of people from their home states. Such clubs often set respectability as the primary membership requirement. They introduced migrants to business owners and professionals from their home states, required loyalty pledges to their

36 Grossman, Land of Hope, 254-55. 37 Grossman, Land of Hope, 139-41. 38 Ibid., 134, 140-41.

101 birthplaces, and helped migrants integrate into Chicago’s social and political world.

Often populated by those who arrived in the city prior to the early 1900s, these state clubs met regularly, held social affairs, and mobilized support for black politicians. Thus, while fulfilling social service needs and offering recreation, these organizations also served as vital training grounds for local leadership.39

Local and nationally federated political organizations and clubs provided African

American women in the early twentieth century with opportunities to participate in politics despite their not being able to vote.40 By the 1920s, Caryl Cooper argues, organizations like the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) offered black women outlets to address “the unifying issues of the black female public consciousness” and helped to cultivate leadership strategies for lasting change.41 Rebecca Stiles Taylor’s body of work as a

Chicago Defender columnist yields important insights about the significance of local and national black women’s clubs during the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. Beginning her career as a columnist with the Defender in 1937 at the age of fifty-seven, Taylor believed the goal of such clubs should be to embrace a vision of black womanhood that championed educating women about national and international affairs so they could see themselves as valuable contributors to the nation’s political process. Thus, Chicago black clubwomen’s leadership during the mid-twentieth century provided important avenues for women’s intellectual and political development.42

39 Ibid., 156, 173. 40 Cooper, “Selling Negro,” 244; Gloria Wade-Gayles, “Black Women Journalists in the South, 1880-1905: An Approach to the Study of Black Women’s History,” Callaloo 9 (February-October 1981): 138-52. 41 Cooper, “Selling Negro Women,” 244. For more on early black women’s clubs, see Brown, Private Politics and Public Voices, 160; and Abdullah, “Emergence of a Black Feminist Leadership Model,” 328-45. 42 It is important to note the significant role black women leftists in Communist Party (CP) institutions played in laying a foundation of radicalism between the 1930s and post-World War II era that shaped civil rights activism in the mid-1960s. The CP-affiliated clubs and organizations in which these women worked served as centers for organizing, constructing, and publicizing black women’s theoretical and philosophical

102 By the eve of World War II, black social clubs had become pillars upholding black middle-class life in Chicago. Placards in Bronzeville store windows displayed numerous notices of social club activities. Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender captured photos from club events and printed information about past or upcoming meetings.43 Activities at these meetings did not vary much between clubs. Members usually conducted club business, played cards, broke bread, and enjoyed periods of general “unorganized conversation and hilarity.” Some of the more formal clubs used strict parliamentary procedures. These club activities helped foster black pride, transmit middle-class values, and support the education of black youth and adults. The average black Chicago social club in the 1940s usually had only about ten members. While the average club’s membership turnover was high, most groups constantly replaced members they lost. At least a third had had a life span of more than five years by the late 1930s. Because these clubs were institutions for expressing and reinforcing black middle-class ideals of restrained public behavior and respectability, many had rigid membership requirements. For a woman to become a member of Model Matron, for instance, she had to have a high school education, be married, and have been a resident of Chicago for at least five years. Clubs were careful to select members they were confident would not violate their codes of respectability. Frequent “interclub visiting” also helped to encourage good behavior among club members who did not want a bad reputation.44

understandings of the intersections of race, class, and gender in critiques of American capitalist-colonialist practices. These black women radicals actively challenged Cold War imperatives of black containment at a time when the role of women was imagined to be confined to domesticity. Sharing critiques of the exploitative and oppressive dimensions of U.S. capitalism and white supremacy, these women fought for women’s equality, anti-lynching, fair labor, and basic civil rights for African Americans. Their organizing efforts reframed leftist politics in the early Cold War years in the United States and provided a foundation for civil rights activists during the 1960s. See Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads, 1-15. 43 Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 688-89. 44 Ibid., 689-91.

103 Most black women’s social clubs during the 1940s were expected to hold several dances each year as fundraisers and at least one elaborate formal dance to which they invited guests—whom clubs wanted to honor, or gain favor with—and members of other clubs considered of equal status. Dances served several important functions. They were the most popular means of earning revenue. They were also vehicles for standardizing black middle- class public behavior and for disciplining deviations through sanctioned mannerisms, dress, and social protocols. Like dances, fashion shows were also popular events. For instance, the

Amethyst Girls, among Chicago’s most popular black women’s social clubs on the eve of

World War II, usually held two fashion shows annually. During one of these shows in 1938 the club brought in $1,173. The Amethyst Girls took pride in the popularity of its social activities. However, by the mid-1940s, the club was, Drake and Cayton argue, “anxious to earn a reputation for an interest in civic problems and racial advancement.”45 For middle- class teenagers and adult women, the Amethyst Girls embodied the ideal work to which a social club should be devoted: “skill in entertaining, co-operative relations with other clubs, and some civic work.” And while many young black women felt constrained in churches, they found social clubs to be places where they could more freely explore their interests and participate in recreational activities, such as dancing or card playing, which some churches denounced. Thus, social clubs catered to members who desired to emphasize both a

“serious” and a “frivolous side.”46

By the late 1930s, between eight and nine hundred social clubs reported activities in the Chicago Defender and had between ten thousand and twelve thousand members

45 Ibid., 691-94, 696-98. 46 Ibid., 699, 686-87. The Amethyst Girls also hosted bridge parties, held elaborate dinners, contributed to charity, and held formal dances. At one dance in the closing years of the Great Depression, a guest list boasted around four hundred people.

104 collectively. While some younger members of middle-class families were not “club- centered,” they still viewed membership in such clubs as “normal” behavior for people of their social class, which often involved “an above-average educational and economic status.”

By the 1940s, the majority of the city’s African American population was predominantly working class, with 65 percent of black adults in Chicago earning a living through manual labor in stockyards, steel mills, factories, kitchens, and other places requiring menial labor.47

Thus, the high-status club cliques became social arbiters of the community that provided important training grounds and encouraged social mobility. In the case of black women in the city, Drake and Cayton write,

Girls with a mobility drive have to fight an almost physical battle against the lower- class world. Even those who reach the high school level do not always succeed in developing an integrated pattern of middle-class behavior. During the Depression years, there was a tendency for lower-class girls to stay in school since jobs were scarce.48

Participation in social clubs, then, became a means that African American women (and men) used during and after World War II to distinguish themselves from the black lower class in their pursuit of middle-class professional lives.49 However, these nonfamily social units also provided a space that celebrated black womanhood amid psychological traumas inflicted by racist and patriarchal cultures within white and black institutions.

Writing for the Chicago Defender during World War II, columnist Rebecca Stiles Taylor theorized that many black women had accepted dominant culture’s presumptions of white

47 Ibid., 689, 702, 523. Like World War I, the start of World War II created opportunities for many African American Chicagoans temporarily to penetrate the job ceiling in semi-skilled and skilled labor. Thousands found work in electrical and light manufacturing industries, and increasing numbers found managerial and clerical positions. To help bolster the war effort, the Illinois State Legislature in 1941 passed legislation making it a misdemeanor for industries engaged in war production to discriminate against applicants based on race, color, or creed. As of May 1945 there had been no convictions under this bill. See Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 288, 292, 511. 48 Ibid., 656. 49 Ibid., 699.

105 superiority. Consequently, Taylor lamented, many had developed an “inferiority complex” that often robbed them of the “inner strength which . . . permits them to be in any degree the captains of their own souls and masters of their own fates.”50 In 1940, Taylor wrote: “The Race woman . . . has NOT been taught as a child to accept a successful life or that she is born to develop the divine gifts bestowed upon her, even as the acorn is destined to become an oak.”51 The American social and political structure, Taylor concluded, had attempted to limit black women’s expectations of expansive lives that were socially and professionally successful. “Nor were they given practical instructions for developing strategies to unify themselves for collective empowerment or to avoid trivial matters that sabotaged their efforts.”52 However, Cooper states, Taylor believed this mental slavery could

“be broken through intellectual, spiritual, political and economic freedom.”53 It was each black woman’s responsibility to become “mentally emancipated and poised for success.”54 In

1941, Taylor wrote that it was time for black women “to pool their interests for representation” and acknowledgment by the U.S. government.55 She exhorted black women to become well versed in the political process as a means of empowering themselves to initiate change.56 The feminist philosophies found in Taylor’s columns resembled those

50 Cooper, “Selling Negro Women,” 246-47. Taylor alludes to the 1875 poem “Invictus” by English poet William Ernest Henley. 51 Rebecca Stiles Taylor, “Women Take Stock: Learn Inferiority Complex Greatest Menace to Freedom,” Chicago Defender, December 21, 1940. Taylor’s sentiments are part of a long tradition of black feminist thought and rhetoric. See Patricia Hill Collins, “The Politics of Black Feminist Thought,” in Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions, ed. Waters and Conway, 393-94; Cooper, “Selling Negro Women,” 246. 52 Quoted in Cooper, “Selling Negro Women,” 246. 53 Ibid., 245-46. Also see Adele Oltman, Sacred Mission, Worldly Ambition: Black Christian Nationalism in the Age of Jim Crow (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008), 101-2. 54 Cooper, “Selling Negro Women,” 246. 55 Rebecca Stiles Taylor, “Women in Government Establish New High,” Chicago Defender, July 14, 1945; Cooper, “Selling Negro Women,” 246. 56 Rebecca Stiles Taylor, “Ample Economic Life and Social Relationship Are Vital Cogs in Democracy,” Chicago Defender, February 17, 1945; Taylor, “Accumulated Buying Power of Race Women Needed to Establish Economic Stability,” Chicago Defender, January 17, 1942; Taylor, “Race Women Face New Social Order Militant Leaders in Great Demand,” Chicago Defender, February 8, 1941; Cooper, “Selling Negro Women,” 246.

106 guiding Washington’s work at WVON as host of On the Scene with Bernadine and as the founder of the WVON Bern Club.57

By the early 1960s, frustrations over the problem of inadequate education for

African Americans in Chicago Public Schools reached a boiling point among many concerned parents and activists. Schools in predominantly African American neighborhoods had become severely overcrowded. Thus, students in these schools attended classes in half- day shifts in mobile classrooms erected in playgrounds or empty lots. Journalist Don Terry explains, “Meanwhile, maybe just eight blocks to the west or south, there were empty classrooms in predominately white schools.” Community members named these mobile classrooms Willis Wagons after the Chicago superintendent of schools, Benjamin Willis.

Rosie Simpson was a thirty-two-year-old mother of six in 1963, and she recalled the indignity of the mobile classrooms for black students. “Wherever the black community went,”

Simpson says, “the Willis Wagons followed.”58

57 Cooper, “Selling Negro Women,” 247. 58 Don Terry, “Northern Exposure: Nothing He’d Seen in the South Prepared Martin Luther King for the Streets of Marquette Park in 1966,” Chicago Tribune, January 15, 2006. The seeds of a successful boycott of Chicago’s segregated schools and Willis Wagons were planted one rainy morning in 1963 when several women activists and parents, including Simpson, used their bodies as human shields to prevent construction of a fleet of Willis Wagons. At 5:00 A.M. one morning Simpson got a call that bulldozers were on their way to clear a vacant lot at 73rd Street and Lowe Avenue for a school of eighteen Willis Wagons, including one for an office and library. Simpson and other brave parents rushed to action, blocking the bulldozers. Soon members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) joined the mothers. The handful of demonstrators grew to a few dozen. Eventually, police began making arrests. Simpson wasn’t released from jail until 10:00 P.M. that evening. Several days later when the bulldozers returned, parents again greeted them. After this initial showdown, the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO) and a coalition of twenty civil rights groups and organizations, including CORE, the NAACP, and the Urban League, organized a large-scale boycott of Chicago’s school system in October 1963. The Chicago Defender reported that about twenty thousand demonstrators joined the boycott, while the Chicago Tribune estimated that about eight thousand demonstrators participated. The Tribune announced the efficacy of the one- day boycott with the headline: “224,770, or 47 Pct. of All Pupils, Miss Classes.” A little more than a year later, demonstrators staged another school boycott, which WVON played a significant role in organizing. See Dionne Danns, Something Better for Our Children: Black Organizing in Chicago Public Schools, 1963-1971 (New York: Routledge, 2003), 57; Terry, “Northern Exposure”; Pervis Spann with Linda C. Walker, The 40 Year Spann of WVON (Chicago: National Academy of the Blues, 2003), 63-65.

107 Growing up within Chicago’s segregated public school system, Washington likely witnessed many glaring injustices constricting life for black women. She did not shy away from discussing the destructive consequences of denying quality educations to black youth. For Washington, African Americans’ forward progress was ultimately at stake. “The only way we can progress is by educating our young,” she once exhorted to a Chicago Tribune columnist. “Without doing so, we are lost.”59

Bernadine C. Washington

Bernadine Washington was born Bernadine Carrickett McGee in New Orleans on

September 17, 1921. Her father, Jake A. McGee, was a laboratory technician at the Flint-

Goodrich Hospital.60 When she was seven, just a few years before the Great Depression, she moved with her mother, Ethyl A. McGee, to Chicago where her grandmother lived. She attended Burke Elementary School and was a four-year honor student at DuSable High

School, where she was voted best-dressed girl. After graduating fourth in her high school class in 1938, she won a scholarship to Fisk University, where she attended for two years.

She returned to Chicago and married Eugene Washington. The pair later divorced.61

Washington began her professional career in 1941 as a furrier’s secretary. After the start of the world war she worked as a parts inspector in a factory busy with wartime labor.

During this time she also started working as a commentator at local fashion shows. A downtown shop recognized Washington’s talents and hired her as a fashion coordinator and assistant buyer. After the store purchased time on radio and television, Washington appeared regularly on both mediums and, as Chicago Tribune reporter Roi Ottley observed, developed a

59 Washington quoted in Page, “Paging People.” 60 Roi Ottley, “Stylist Picks Fashions on S. Side: 1st Negro Woman in Field,” Chicago Tribune, March 4, 1956. 61 Cameron McWhirter, “WVON Radio Exec Bernadine C. Washington,” Chicago Tribune, September 26, 1993.

108 “considerable following with her crisp descriptions of women’s apparel.” By the late

1940s, Washington leveraged her popularity into her own bi-weekly quiz show that aired on

Al Benson’s show, the Country Fair, on WGES.62 Her employer’s competitors also witnessed

Washington’s aptitudes in the field. After working three years at the downtown shop,

Washington resigned to accept a job as a fashion coordinator and clothes buyer at the South

Center Department Store.

Washington was believed to be the first and only African American woman in the mid-1950s to serve as a clothes buyer for a department store in Chicago.63 As a fashion buyer, Washington traveled to New York and Los Angeles every six weeks to purchase the latest styles. During one of these excursions, Ebony magazine’s New York photographer and writer accompanied Washington, and the result was a five-page feature in the national magazine.64 As of 1956, Washington had a clientele of about fifty “socially prominent women” who bought the unique clothing styles that she acquired during her business trips to

New York and Los Angeles. As a general rule Washington advised her clients that the style- conscious matron should spend between $40 and $125 each year to acquire ten dresses and two suits.65

Washington amassed a substantial following through her work at the South Center

Department Store. By the mid-1950s, her authority as a style counselor to South Side women wishing to wear the best in fashion was firmly established. In particular, Washington gained prominence hosting her semi-annual fall and spring fashion shows at the department store.

62 Ottley, “Stylist Picks Fashions”; “Mostly About Women,” Chicago Defender, July 2, 1949, 10. Also see Jennifer Searcy, “The Voice of the Negro: African American Radio, WVON, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Chicago” (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University, 2012), 106, Paper 688, http://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/688. 63 Ottley, “Stylist Picks Fashions.” 64 “Living Legends Hall of Fame,” Living Legends Foundation web site, 2016, http://livinglegendsfoundation.com/halloffame.html. 65 Ottley, “Stylist Picks Fashions.”

109 Ottley wrote, “Her style shows have done much to extend her reputation as a selector of unusual costumes.”66 Her work part-time throughout the 1950s as an apprentice disc jockey, a “satellite jock,” with a broadcasting focus on fashion and etiquette helped her gain prominence.67 Additionally, the Chicago Defender’s frequent coverage of Washington’s fashion shows played a significant role in constructing her image as a fashion authority among

Chicago’s African American community.

Marion B. Campfield’s column, “Mostly about Women,” which detailed the activities of prominent black women in Chicago, did much to publicize Washington’s professional accomplishments and exploits. In a 1957 Chicago Defender column, Campfield described

Washington as “an envoy of smart fashion.”68 Two years later, Campfield promoted

Washington’s fall fashion show at the South Center Department Store as a trendsetting season event:

FALL’S FASHION DECREE will be portrayed in smartest and most flattering manner Saturday, Sept. 19 when BERNADINE CARRICKETT (fashion’s her business) WASHINGTON presents her collection of ’round the clock attire in South Center’s Woman’s Wear salon on store’s 2nd floor.69

Earlier in the same year, Campfield had described Washington’s growing influence as a fashion authority. “If those followers of Bernadine Carrickett Washington’s semi-annual premieres of ultra chic fashions increase by huge numbers as they have each year, South

Center’s 2nd floor Woman’s Wear department will have to be extended to include the entire floor, so large and so ultra ultra is the gathering of femmes fashions alert.”70

66 Ibid. 67 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 106. 68 Marion B. Campfield, “Mostly about Women,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), November 9, 1957. 69 Marion B. Campfield, “Mostly about Women,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), September 19, 1959. 70 Marion B. Campfield, “Mostly about Women,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), March 21, 1959.

110 Writing of Washington’s fall fashion show in September 1960, Campfield described the growing popularity of these shows: “South Center’s fashions’ dream walking:

BERNADINE CARRICKETT WASHINGTON’s dancing on Cloud 9 these days, she’s just that elated over Fall Fashions Showing which will jam-pack store’s 2nd floor Woman’s

Ready to Wear Department comes Saturday, Sept. 17 at 6 pe-em promptly.”71 Campfield also kept track of Washington’s regular excursions to New York. In a November 1960 column,

Campfield wrote: “BACK FROM recent buyer’s jaunt to N’Yawk and showing some lush and stunning fashions in her 2nd floor Woman’s Ready to Wear salon at South Center is chic ‘Madame Fashions’ herself, BERNADINE C. WASHINGTON.”72 It is interesting to note the rhetorical style Campfield often deploys to convey Washington’s fashion prowess.

In particular, Campfield’s intense tone, florid sentence structures, and effervesent language resemble the electrifying discourse and vibrant energy she attributes to Washington. Instead of just reporting facts, Campfield seems to mimick or at least reproduce the flamboyant style she perceived Washington embodied as a fashion personality.

The Chicago Defender’s announcements of Washington’s excursions to acquire the latest styles in fashion helped create anticipation between her fall and spring fashion shows.

In a September 1961 column, Campfield wrote: “Bern, who’s in New York City this week stocking up the smartest in Fall and Winter attire for her Sept. 16 showing in the 2nd floor woman’s Dress Salon at the E. 47th st., emporium, promises the usual capacity crowd of

‘femmes fashionable’ will be enchanted by this year’s trends in color, fabrics and designs.”73

The Chicago Defender’s descriptions of Washington as the “PROUDEST AND most thrilled femme in these parts” were not uncommon. Such statements serve as evidence that by the

71 Marion B. Campfield, “Mostly about Women,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), September 17, 1960. 72 Marion B. Campfield, “Mostly about Women,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), November 26, 1960. 73 Marion B. Campfield, “Mostly about Women,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), September 2, 1961.

111 time Washington began working for WVON in the early 1960s she was already a local celebrity.

While often praising Washington’s fashion prowess, Chicago Defender columnists seemed even more fixated on her ability as a public orator. As early as the mid-1950s, black

Chicagoans had either witnessed in person or read in the Chicago Defender Washington’s proficiency in delivering scintillating commentary during her annual fashion shows at the

South Center Department Store. A brief examination of several Chicago Defender articles and a rarely cited interview reveals how Washington’s education and training in broadcasting enabled her to achieve significant mobility in her career in fashion and radio. In 1955, nearly a decade before she began working for WVON, the Chicago Defender’s description of

Washington as a “public relations sparkplug” is among the earliest references to

Washington’s skill as a communicator.74 Washington often provided her talents as a fashion commentator to other women’s social clubs and organizations in the city. In 1957, for instance, she served as a host and commentator for the Sophisticated Socialites’ fast-paced fashion dance. Performing to a near-capacity crowd in Chicago’s Grand Ballroom,

Washington was “doing her usual sparkling job of commentating,” according to the Chicago

Defender. 75 Three years later Campfield praised Washington’s performance at a fashion event benefiting Parkway Community House (of which Washington was a board member and where future WVON personality Lu Palmer would host some of his off-air educational programs). Guest models donned “eye-catching, enchanting and elegant attire” while

Washington provided “glowing descriptions” of the models’ clothing.76 In an April 1962 column, Campfield’s description of Washington’s commentating during a fashion event

74 Marion B. Campfield, “Mostly about Women,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), May 28, 1955. 75 Marion B. Campfield, “Day by Day,” Chicago Defender, September 24, 1957. 76 Marion B. Campfield, “Mostly about Women,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), February 13, 1960.

112 further reveals the Chicago Defender’s preoccupation with her way with words:

“Incidentally, BERNADINE C. WASHINGTON . . . was at her superlative best in describing the Royalites’ fashion parade.”77 In a 1968 Chicago Defender column, Doug Akins also called attention to Washington’s communicative power, saying, “Whether the gal is talking or writing, her symphonious flow with words is breathtaking.”78 As their own words testify, Chicago Defender columnists were enamored with Washington’s public communication.

And similar to their descriptions of Washington’s status as a fashion authority, columnists’ language about Washington’s rhetorical abilities matched the eloquent structure and delivery for which they praised Washington. Their gratuitous praise and admiration is evidence of

Washington’s skill in public oratory. Though the fact was not mentioned in the Chicago

Defender columns, Washington had professional training in communication.

An often-overlooked detail of Washington’s career is the particular rhetorical education she received prior to her work in fashion and at WVON. Some time in the 1950s

Washington enrolled in classes at what is now Columbia College.79 While a student there

Washington learned communication techniques and cultivated professional skills for broadcast media.80 In a rarely cited interview, Washington identified her education and training at the Chicago School of Radio Technique as a contributing factor to her professional mobility from a style consultant and fashion commentator to a full-time radio personality:

77 Marion B. Campfield, “Mostly about Women,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), April 28, 1962. 78 Doug Akins, “The Club Set,” Chicago Defender, August 24, 1968. 79 In 1890, the Columbia School of Oratory, named in honor of the upcoming Columbian Expedition of 1893, was established. On May 5, 1905, the school was incorporated as the Columbia College of Expression, a nonprofit institution. In 1934, Columbia established a Radio Department. In 1944, the school changed its name to Columbia College. See “The History of Columbia College Chicago,” http://about.colum.edu/archives/college-history/timeline.php. 80 Bernadine Washington interview, Charles Walton Papers, box 5, folder 15, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, Chicago Public Library, Chicago, Illinois (hereafter cited as Walton Papers, CPL).

113 Interviewer: So how did you happen to get into radio?

Washington: I was at—I don’t have much time [laughter].

Interviewer: Okay. All right. You know—the time that you have—

Washington: All right, I’ll—I’ll tell ya. I was chosen as a replacement for Jesse Owens when he was at W—He was on WCFL. And he was with Leo Rose. And at the time Leo Rose had a radio program. So when Jesse left to go on to bigger and better things, rather than replace him with another man, whom they thought might not be as, um, you know, as enticing or interesting to the public, they chose a woman. And they chose me because of my, I guess, ability in commentating fashion shows. Because that’s where I met Leo Rose and, his buyer, Elaine Stein (ph). They called me and asked me to come down and asked me if I wanted to work with them as their fashion coordinator. In so doing it also entailed acting as the replacement on the radio program. That’s why—where I met Lloyd Webb, who was the first general manager and vice president of WVON. And when he, and Mr. Chess were going to open the radio station they were looking for me. And I was just at the store one day and the call came in—in December—and asked me if I wanted, you know, work at a radio station and I said I didn’t know anything about it. So in the meantime I went to, it was called the School of Radio Technique, which is now Columbia—I went to school—well, I had taken some courses prior to that, before commentating. Then when they found me at the store I would not quit because the fact that I knew that the store was going to be sold to Mr. Fuller. And I didn’t want people to feel that I couldn’t work for a black man. So I stayed. I stayed at the store for a year. But in the meantime I was also at WVON. So I was working in two places. That’s how it all started.81

Washington identifies her skill as a fashion commentator as the reason she was invited into a career as a radio personality. However, as her testimony above confirms, Washington’s strength as a public orator was not unrelated to her training at Chicago’s School of Radio

Technique. Washington reveals that she enrolled in classes learning radio technique before she began commentating for fashion shows. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that

Washington at least in part honed her skills in vocal performance through formal training in broadcast communication. Washington’s enrollment in Chicago’s School for Radio

81 Bernadine Washington interview, Walter Papers, CPL. Leo Rose owned Leo Rose Clothing Company and sponsored Jesse Owens’s WCFL program Round Up.

114 Technique demonstrates her recognition that communication could be an important way to expand her audience, influence, and professional mobility.

By the early 1960s Leonard and Phil Chess decided that access to Washington’s platform would enable their newly acquired radio station WHPC (what became WVON) to target working- and middle-class black women within its broader African American listenership. In 1963, Washington was hired as WVON’s women’s director and host of her own program, On the Scene with Bernadine, which was interspersed throughout WVON’s daily programming. Especially popular among black girls and women, On the Scene with Bernadine catered to Washington’s professional strengths and fan base, featuring short vignettes on fashion, style trends, and household tips. Washington also featured the latest in news, politics, civil rights, and popular culture, and she provided editorials on current events.82

Fellow WVON personality Pervis Spann recalled that the On the Scene with Bernadine show offered “everything you wanted to know from fabulous fashions to fantastic fantasy.”83

Although each episode of On the Scene with Bernadine was only a few minutes in duration, the show became “immensely popular.”84 Chicago Defender columnist Doris Saunders highlights the extent of authority that African American listeners conferred to Washington in their homes, quipping: “When Bern tells you to put toothpaste in the wall where the plaster is cracked, what do you do? Put toothpaste in the cracks, of course.”85 The show’s influence on black women in Chicago was significant. Years later Washington boasted: “And there are many young women coming along today who have—who are now trying to emulate the kinds

82 Beverly Jensen, “Black and Female, Too,” Black Enterprise, July 1976. 83 Spann with Walker, 40 Year Spann of WVON, 16. 84 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 106. 85 Doris E. Saunders, “Confetti,” Chicago Defender, May 17, 1967. Also see Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 107-8.

115 of things that I started—with the, ‘On the Scene with Bernadine,’ with all the little tips, household hints, fashion tips, and thoughts of the day.”86

Just a year after starting at WVON, Washington began receiving speaking invitations at schools, churches, and community organizations eager to learn from her experience as a black professional woman. For instance, in February 1964, Dr. Marjorie F. Mills, then principal of Lucky Flower High School, invited Washington, who was also still working at

South Center Department Store, to speak to junior and senior girls one afternoon about

“Careers in Retailing.” In a promotional plug for the event, Chicago Defender columnist

Theresa Fambro Hooks highlighted Washington’s professional expertise and commitment to expanding career opportunities for young black women: “She’s well versed in that field as ever-capable women’s wear buyer for Fuller’s South Center Department Store. The charming femme is also women’s director of WVON radio station.”87

It is important to note that Washington inherited a tradition of intrepid and influential African American women radio broadcasters in Chicago and the United States who made names for themselves among black women listeners. By the time Washington began working for WVON in 1963, female radio broadcasters, albeit few in number, had been on the scene for about twenty years. Prior to the 1940s, the first roles both black and white women had on radio were as entertainers.88 For African American women who dreamed of radio stardom, Jennifer Searcy writes, both gender and race worked in tandem as formidable barriers. “Scarce opportunities existed beyond occasional vocalist positions and

86 Bernadine Washington interview, Walton Papers, CPL. 87 Theresa Fambro Hooks, “Teesee’s Topics,” Chicago Defender, February 11, 1964. 88 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 164; Robert Pruter, Chicago Soul (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 103.

116 roles defined by racial stereotypes such as Beulah or Sapphire.”89 However, with the significant growth of black-appeal radio programming beginning in the mid-1940s, more opportunities came along for black women in radio. Between 1946 and 1955, the number of radio stations in the United States with at least some black-appeal programming increased from twenty-four to six hundred. Radio station owners quickly saw the profitability of developing programming that targeted African American women.90

During the 1940s, African American women gained ground in radio by hosting

“homemaker shows” on black-appeal stations.91 These weekly shows targeted middle-class women while creating more intimate settings in which, Searcy writes, “a trusted female figure” shared information with women including “recipes, fashion tips, society news, and occasional soft ballads from artists.”92 A prominent African American homemaker show host was Memphis radio station WDIA’s Martha Jean “The Queen” Steinberg, who hosted the Tan Town Homemaker Show. Steinberg endeared herself to listeners as a “savvy and trusted confidante,” and in the late 1950s she leveraged her popularity “into other female-focused broadcasting opportunities at the station,” as when WDIA gave Steinberg her own rhythm and blues show, Premium Stuff. In Chicago, Gertrude Cooper, wife of legendary radio broadcaster Jack L. Cooper, hosted homemaker shows for local radio stations. During the

1950s, the most prominent African American female disc jockey in Chicago was Vivian

Carter. A protégé of radio legend Al Benson, Carter, who in 1948 won one of Benson’s disc

89 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 103; William Barlow, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), 147. 90 Catherine Rose Squires, “Searching Black Voices in the Black Public Sphere: An Alternative Approach to the Analysis of Public Spheres,” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1999), 262, 264. 91 Radio broadcasters often recruited the hosts of homemaker shows to serve as directors of women’s programming at radio stations. Thus, while African American women were still largely prevented from securing ownership, management, and sales positions in radio during the 1950s, homemaker shows at black appeal radio stations were initial forays for women into deejay roles. See Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 103-4; Barlow, Voice Over, 123; “Wife of Jack L. Cooper Tops Radio Announcer,” Chicago Defender, January 21, 1959, 17. 92 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 103; Barlow, Voice Over, 121.

117 jockey contests and became one of his satellite disc jockeys on WGES, was a forerunner for black women broadcasters like Washington.93 In 1950, Carter was given her own show on WGRY in Gary, Indiana. Three years later, Carter and her husband, Jimmy Bracken, started Vee-Jay Records. During the 1950s, Vee-Jay became one of the largest U.S. independent labels. As Vee-Jay grew, Carter had a “diminished” role on radio, which, Searcy argues, created “a vacuum for an African American female radio personality like Washington to fill in the Chicago area.”94 With its focus also on fashion, current events, editorials, and political issues like civil rights, Washington’s On the Scene with Bernadine deviated from traditional homemaker shows. However, her success resembled the successes of black women homemaker show hosts who used their popularity to build separate but related professional ventures.95

Washington rose quickly through the ranks of WVON. By the mid-1960s, she had developed a reputation for having her proverbial finger on the pulse of black life in Chicago.

In 1966, Akins identified Washington as “the very heart of the ‘Club Set’ and other social and civic events.”96 In 1967, Washington was promoted to vice president of the radio station. The promotion made her the first ever African American woman vice president of a radio station in the United States.97 The same year Washington became part of the merchandising team for Coca-Cola as Chicago’s “voice of the world-famed soft drink.”98 Just three years later Washington became the station’s general manager, another first for an

93 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 104-5. 94 Ibid., 104; Barlow, Voice Over, 149-50. 95 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 104. 96 Doug Akins, “The Club Set,” Chicago Defender, October 22, 1966. 97 “Bernadine Washington First Black Woman Radio GM, VP”; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 111. 98 Doug Akins, “The Club Set,” Chicago Defender, June 3, 1967.

118 African American woman employed at a U.S. radio station.99 “She kept all the ‘Good

Guys’ together,” Spann recalled, “and she was definitely the lady in charge, the matriarch. If she told you something, she had solid logic for it, and was correct 99.9% of the time.”100

The numerous awards Washington received not long after becoming WVON’s general manager confirmed the extent of her influence as a Chicago radio personality and civic leader. In 1973, the National Association of Radio and Television Announcers named

Washington “Woman of the Year.” During Chicago State University’s commencement on

July 17, 1974, the Chicago Defender reported, Washington was awarded the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree “for her outstanding work with young people and for her role in helping solve community problems.”101 Washington was the first woman ever to be awarded the honorary degree by the university.102 The honor was appropriate given Washington’s efforts through her off-air social program, the WVON Bern Club, to support African

American high school girls interested in attending college. Incidentally, almost a week after receiving her honorary doctorate for her service to black youth, Washington presented her third annual “Fashions in Grand Manner” at the Arie Crown Theatre at McCormick Place to raise money for the WVON Bern Club College Scholarship Fund “for deserving high school girl graduates from the inner city.”103 This fundraiser was one of many activities that exemplified the Bern Club’s mission to confront those injustices threatening the mobility of

African American women in Chicago. Through their participation in the Bern Club, members benefited from educational programming, civic and political engagement, and

99 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 111-12; “Among the Year’s Priorities,” Chicago Defender, April 5, 1975; “Bernadine Washington First Black Woman Radio GM, VP.” 100 Spann with Walker, 40 Year Spann of WVON, 16. 101 “Broadcasting Exec and Educator to Receive Honorary Degrees,” Chicago Defender, July 6, 1974. 102 “Among the Year’s Priorities,” Chicago Defender, April 5, 1975. 103 “Bern Presents ‘In Grand Manner,’” Chicago Defender, June 15, 1974.

119 numerous travel experiences all aimed at personal and professional development. And while the Bern Club empowered African American women to respond to dominant racist and patriarchal public cultures, it defies categorization as a black counterpublic exclusively.

In fact, the Bern Club cannot be categorized exclusively within any of Squires’s three analytic categories of the black public sphere—the black enclave sphere, the black satellite sphere, and the black counterpublic sphere. Thus, an examination of the WVON Bern Club’s birth and activities provides an opportunity to expand existing scholarship on the black public sphere that might inform future projects on black public life in the United States.

The WVON Bern Club and New Institutions of the Black Public Sphere

While On the Scene with Bernadine was an instant success, Washington recognized the need for more WVON-related programming that confronted challenges inhibiting African

American women’s civic, professional, and political mobility. In 1965, she created the

WVON Bern Club, an off-air social club composed of her black female listeners to facilitate black women’s personal and professional success. Through charitable work, scholarship luncheons, fashion events, etiquette training, charm schooling, and travel programs, the Bern

Club celebrated black womanhood and sought to empower black women. Searcy writes,

“While it focused on etiquette, personal beauty, and genteel cultural outings, the Bern Club also allowed its members a space in which to assert their agency and promote the development of African American women in Chicago during the 1960s.”104

The WVON Bern Club met for the first time in early February 1965. The “modest affair” included a ladies luncheon at the Southmoor Hotel in Bronzeville featuring two guest speakers, fellow WVON Good Guys E. Rodney “Mad Lad” Jones and Ed “Nassau Daddy”

104 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 107.

120 Cook (Washington’s future husband).105 While no records appear to exist indicating how many attended that first meeting, by 1968 the Bern Club boasted an estimated membership of 130.106 And though the Chicago Tribune estimated the club had about seven hundred members in 1974, some commentators estimate that during the course of its eighteen-year history the Bern Club’s membership was as high as one thousand.107 In any case, the Bern

Club was unique among past Chicago women’s and men’s social clubs, which during the

1940s often averaged just over ten members each.108

Through their participation in Bern Club events and activities, members built important social and professional relationships. Additionally, membership was one way to connect with WVON and its work advocating for African Americans in general. As Spann recalled about the impact of Washington’s club,

Part of the WVON frenzy was to be affiliated with the station in some way and this ultimately led to the development of her club. One thousand Chicago women did charitable work, traveled, and exchanged ideas and style. They used to meet at Carrie’s Chateau on E. 75th where they’d learn how to walk, how a lady got in and out of a car, and other socially enhancing skills in a lady-like manner. Ms. Washington was supreme elegance. She touched the women listeners in a way no good guy could, and the men loved her. . . . She knew even back then, women were the true power. Her glamorous sophistication took her a long way in radio.109

From the start the Bern Club emphasized “lifting up” African American teenage girls.110 By late 1965, the club’s repertoire of activities included a variety of respectable cultural activities, such as beauty pageants, lectures, college scholarship drives, and dance and music recitals. In

105 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 107; Theresa Fambro Hooks, “Teesee’s Topics,” Chicago Defender, February 10, 1965. 106 “Bern Club Sets Annual Showcase,” Chicago Defender, May 18, 1968. 107 Preston, “Black Radio Exec”; Spann with Walker, 40 Year Spann of WVON, 95; “Bernadine C. Washington,” Living Legends web site, http://livinglegendsfoundation.com/halloffame.html#halloffame-3. 108 Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 689. 109 Spann with Walker, 40 Year Spann of WVON, 95. 110 Interestingly, the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, founded in 1896 in a merger between the National League of Colored Women and the National Federation of Afro-American Women, adopted the motto “Lifting as We Climb.” The Bern Club’s core mission of “lifting up” African American women certainly seems in keeping with that spirit.

121 July 1965, six months after its first meeting, the club hosted a beauty pageant to crown the WVON Bern Club Cotton Queen. The event was held at the grand Trianon Ballroom on

62nd Street and Cottage Grove Avenue in Chicago. Not only was the event a successful affair held in a stately venue, but it also increased WVON’s advertising revenues through new corporate sponsorships from Butternut Bread and May Sons department stores.111

A special event early in the Bern Club’s existence was a luncheon for the club’s teenage members in 1966 at the Swedish restaurant Kungsholm, then located downtown in the old McCormick Mansion. After the luncheon, in one of the restaurant’s rooms, the girls attended a puppet opera performance of Madame Butterfly by the Chicago Miniature Opera

Theater. This refined experience was new for many of the young women. Revealing that some of the club’s teenage members were not accustomed to such middle-class luxuries,

Chicago Defender columnist Thelma Hunt Shirley wrote, “The girls are still talking about the sumptuous smorgasbord luncheon and entertaining puppet opera that they enjoyed, many for the first time.”112 By 1967, the Bern Club had organized both its membership and leadership into groups representative of the city’s South and West Sides. Additionally, standard officer positions as well as a charm instructor served as the club’s administrative foundation.113 The Bern Club’s fundraising efforts, in particular, yielded important dividends for black teenage girls. By April 1972 the club had presented seven one-thousand-dollar scholarships to high school graduates.114 By 1974, the Bern Club had raised over $32,000 in academic scholarships for teenage girls.115

111 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 107; “Beauty, Regalia, Mark Crowning,” Chicago Defender, July 10, 1965. 112 Thelma Hunt Shirley, “Confetti,” Chicago Defender, May 25, 1966; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 108. 113 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 109; “A Bahamian Visit,” Chicago Defender, September 11, 1967. 114 “Radio Executive Is Sunday Guest,” Chicago Defender, April 15, 1972. Also see Chicago Defender, July 3, 1971; “Bern Presents ‘In Grand Manner,’” Chicago Defender, June 15, 1974. It is worth noting that both the 1971 article and the 1974 article identify the Bern Club as raising $32,000 for African American high school graduates. 115 See Preston, “Black Radio Exec.”

122 In addition to its many educational and cultural activities, regular travel excursions exposed Bern Club members to exciting new social, professional, and political experiences in other cities, states, and countries. Thus, through its travel program, Searcy writes, the Bern Club sought to “expand the political world for Chicago African American females.”116 In 1966, just one year after the Bern Club’s first meeting, Washington arranged a weekend trip to Washington, D.C., for club members.117 In a Chicago Defender guest column celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s rally at Soldier Field a week earlier, Washington announced her excitement about the Bern Club’s upcoming trip:

Although the summer slogan is “beat the heat,” WVON Bern Club will probably not be able to abide by it, for we’re off to the nation’s capital for a weekend of interesting tours. . . . Sound exciting? I’m sure it will be. And we are definitely looking forward to the occasion.118

The Bern Club’s itinerary for the excursion in the nation’s capital included a luncheon with

African American Democratic congressman William L. Dawson hosted by Christine Ray

Davis, staff director of the Committee on Government Operations, as well as a reception hosted by Emily Taft Douglas, a political activist, former actress, and one-term Democratic congresswoman at-large from Illinois (1945-47). Douglas was married to Illinois Democratic senator Paul Douglas, a former Chicago City Council member who fought Chicago corruption and had attempted amid great resistance to reform the city’s public education system. The Bern Club’s adventure continued as members gathered with Charlotte Hubbard, deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs, in the John Quincy Adams Room of the

116 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 109; “Bahamian Visit.” 117 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 109. 118 Bernadine C. Washington, “King’s Dream Shared by Thousands,” Chicago Defender, July 16, 1966.

123 Diplomatic Suite before they enjoyed a “VIP tour” of the White House with Bess Abell,

Lady Bird Johnson’s social secretary.119

The experience demonstrated that membership in the Bern Club afforded black girls and women more than instruction in fashion, charm etiquette, and middle-class ideals of black womanhood. The club also brokered new experiences and relationships between members and social reformers and elected leaders within and beyond Chicago. As Searcy writes, “The goals of the club transcended merely showing its membership the popular tourist sites of the locales it visited, but to introduce the ladies to the prominent white and black political and cultural ‘movers and shakers’ of the day.”120 And the Bern Club soon extended its benefits to African American women outside of Chicago. In 1968, L&P

Broadcasting Corporation, the company that Leonard and Phil Chess used to purchase

WVON, successfully acquired WFOX 860 AM in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for $260,000 and transformed the station into WNOV (standing for Wisconsin Negro’s Own Voice).

Adhering to the Chess brothers’ winning formula at WVON, WNOV also broadcast rhythm and blues, soul and gospel music.121 After forming WNOV in Wisconsin, the station established its own local branch of the Bern Club.122 Members of WNOV’s Bern Club sometimes traveled to Chicago to participate in club activities with fellow club members in the city. In an April 25, 1970, photo in the Chicago Defender, Washington is pictured with three members of the WNOV Bern Club who had traveled from Wisconsin “to join their

Chicago counterparts at the Annual Spring Festival.”123

119 Ibid. 120 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 109. 121 Ibid., 287. 122 “Living Legends Hall of Fame,” Living Legends Foundation web site, 2016, http://livinglegendsfoundation.com/halloffame.html. 123 “‘Bern’ Greets Milwaukee Guests,” Chicago Defender, April 25, 1970.

124 In addition to travel excursions within the United States, Bern Club members also embarked regularly upon annual international adventures. Just two years after the group’s first meeting in February 1965, Bern Club members were networking overseas.

“Despite the costliness of international travel,” Searcy observes, “Bern Club members remained undaunted and flocked to sign up for the trips.”124 Again, it is likely the case that fundraising revenues subsidized the costs of these trips. In late July or early August 1967,

Washington wrote to the Chicago Defender while she and eighty-one members of the Bern

Club were in Nassau, Bahamas. The number of participants on this trip is significant since it represented more than eight times the number of people who usually belonged to the average black social club in Chicago during the mid-1940s.125 In her correspondence with a

Chicago Defender employee about the club’s experience in the Bahamas, Washington wrote,

“Can understand why you enjoyed this picturesque island. The Bern Club and I are enthralled!”126 While in the Bahamas five Bern Club members met with the country’s acting premier, the Honorable Arthur Dion Hanna, Minister for Education. On this occasion travel not only exposed Bern Club members to another country’s shores, but it also allowed them to socialize and network with international leaders, further demonstrating the club’s commitment to education and expanding the political world of African American women.

On September 11, 1967, the Chicago Defender published a photo of Bern Club members from the Bahamas trip. The photo, which also included Hanna, publicized for African Americans

124 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 109-10. 125 Theresa Fambro Hooks, “William Joneses Mark 50th Year at Anniversary,” Chicago Defender, August 5, 1967. For the average size of African American Chicago social clubs in the 1940s, see Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 689. 126 Hooks, “William Joneses Mark 50th Year at Anniversary.”

125 in Chicago the extent of the privileges Bern Club members enjoyed while traveling internationally.127

In 1968, the Bern Club traveled to Mexico, where J. Herbert King, who did public relations work for the African American intercollegiate fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha, bumped into club members while also vacationing there. King sent news of the Bern Club’s Mexico trip to the Chicago Defender. Hooks confirmed King’s correspondence in a column, writing,

“While there he also ran into Bernadine Washington with her Bern Club members.”128 In an

August 10, 1968, Chicago Defender column, Akins also referenced the Bern Club’s Mexico trip and announced Washington’s plans for an upcoming trip to Jamaica:

AND BY THE WAY, Lady Bern (veep of radio station WVON) who recently returned from a pleasure jaunt down in Ol’ Mexico is now packing about 20 pieces of luggage for an extensive stay in Jamaica. And dig! Bern wanted to know from me just which is the best place to stop on the island Kingston, Montageo [sic] Bay or Port Antonio. Darling, when you’re in Jamaica, you’re are [sic] in Jamaica. WOW!129

Akins’s enthusiastic report that Washington had asked for his recommendations for recreational activities in Jamaica conveys a sense of the extent of Washington’s influence among black Chicagoans. Additionally, Akins’s statement has a tone of pride as he announces that the veteran fashion femme and WVON vice president had solicited his advice.

The Bern Club’s initial overseas trips were immensely popular among members. For instance, 81 women went on the club’s 1967 Bahamas trip, and the club’s total membership in 1968 was 130 women. Thus, during its first trip abroad, the majority of Bern Club members were in attendance.130 And members’ participation in these international trips

127 “Bahamian Visit.” 128 Theresa Fambro Hooks, “A Fabulous Weekend in the Bahamas,” Chicago Defender, August 3, 1968. 129 Doug Akins, “The Club Set,” Chicago Defender, August 10, 1968. 130 “Bern Club Sets Annual Showcase,” Chicago Defender, May 18, 1968.

126 continued to increase. During the summer of 1969, Akins received a postcard from

Washington, who was “sun-soaking in the enchanting isles of Bermuda” with 91 Bern Club members.131 In a September 13, 1969, column in the Chicago Defender, Akins printed the contents of a postcard Washington sent while on that Bermuda trip:

Hi Doug: The WVON ‘Bern Club’ invaded this beautiful isle, and it really opened its heart to 91 of our members. Bermuda will never be the same. See you soon, Bernadine.132

Akins, obviously impressed with the Bern Club’s turnout in Bermuda, celebrated the news in his column, writing, “Ninety one? . . . Wow. Bern, I believe you.”133 Washington’s playful quip that “Bermuda will never be the same” seems to convey pride in African American womanhood, which, Washington suggests, has left a lasting imprint on the country.

Washington also appears to have sent a postcard from Bermuda to Hooks, who mentioned

Washington’s postcard briefly in a September 6, 1969, Chicago Defender column: “Received a post card from Bernadine C. Washington . . . who’s in Bermuda with 91 members of her

Bern Club.”134

Such correspondence between the Bern Club and the Chicago Defender continued. In late July or early August 1970, Washington was in Jamaica with Bern Club members when she sent a letter to the newspaper. In an August 3, 1970, Chicago Defender column, Hooks informed readers that Bern Club members were, quoting Washington, “enjoying the wonderful hospitality of this lovely island.”135 Five years later, in a May 24, 1975, Chicago

131 Doug Akins, “The Club Set,” Chicago Defender, September 13, 1969. 132 Ibid. 133 Ibid. 134 Theresa Fambro Hooks, “DuSable Forty-Niners Plan Reunion Dance,” Chicago Defender, September 6, 1969. 135 Theresa Fambro Hooks, “Librarian Holds Membership in 67-Year-Old Club,” Chicago Defender, August 3, 1970.

127 Defender column, Hooks announced Washington’s preparations for a two-week vacation in Martinique and then a one-week trip with the Bern Club in Jamaica.136

The Bern Club’s many activities, events, and local and international travel experiences provided black girls and women with vital educational resources and expanded members’ social, cultural, and political horizons. Again, the club offered members more than fun social or recreational outings. Through their participation in the club, African American girls and women were introduced to people, places, and opportunities many would not have otherwise experienced. The Bern Club became a forum through which working- and middle- class black women could explore the intersections of race, gender, education, employment, and politics. In this sense, Washington and her Bern Club provided new figurative and literal space for members to construct alternative visions of their lives as black women. Or as

Doug Akins once concluded, Washington “with the assistance of radio station WVON, has inspired a countless number of youthful black women from all walks of life to reach for higher grounds.” This work of enlarging perspectives and empowering new ventures forward into new places and spaces, Akins exhorted, was the Bern Club’s defining characteristic. “Under personal supervision of Mrs. Washington, young ladies, many who never dreamed of seeing a foreign shore, have traveled to countless parts of the world.

Anyway, that’s what the WVON Bern Club is all about.”137 In short, the Bern Club sought, in all ways, to bring black women far from where they each had started.

Given the limited historical record of radio-affiliated social clubs in Chicago in the

1960s and 1970s, studying the WVON Bern Club can provide new ways of thinking theoretically about the black public sphere. In particular, the Bern Club provides a unique

136 Theresa Fambro Hooks, “Teesee’s Town,” Chicago Defender, May 24, 1975. 137 Doug Akins, “The Club Set,” Chicago Defender May 29, 1971.

128 case for reevaluating, or at least extending, Squires’s theoretical model characterizing three aspects of the black public sphere—the enclave, satellite, and counterpublic spheres.

While the Bern Club shares characteristics of each, it also deviates from all three in important and interesting ways. Consequently, the club defies exclusive categorization in

Squires’s model. A brief analysis of the points of convergence and departure between the

Bern Club and Squires’s concepts will extend both scholarship on the black public sphere and research on how African American women mobilized in response to the limits of democracy in the Cold War United States. In the brief analysis below, I situate the Bern Club within each of Squires’s three models of the black public sphere and identify key similarities and differences. I conclude by exploring how the differences revealed in each comparison suggest new ways of thinking about the black public sphere.

According to Squires, enclaved public spheres form when legal, social, and physical sanctions threaten to punish marginalized groups from openly protesting various forms of oppression.138 In particular, black enclaves are spaces of retreat that Africans and African

Americans in North American created in which they could communicate, strategize, and mobilize beyond the dominant white culture’s surveillance. Within such spaces, survival and identity formation are emphasized. For instance, enslaved blacks confined to shabby slave quarters utilized drums, coded songs, sermons, and figurative vernacular expressive culture to convene clandestine meetings, circulate hidden discourse, and coordinate resistance beyond their white overseers’ surveillance. Additionally, free African Americans living in the antebellum North created social institutions such as newspapers, reading rooms, debate

138 In his work on the history of African American churches in the United States, Black Church Beginnings, Henry H. Mitchell describes practices among enslaved Africans and African Americans in the United States that are identical to Squires’s notion of the enclave public sphere. Thus, a strong argument can be made that the enclave period of the black public sphere in the United States began much earlier than 1820. See Mitchell, Black Church Beginnings: The Long-Hidden Realities of the First Years (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004).

129 societies, schools, and churches to foster various skills, initiatives, and movements to mobilize political opposition. A more recent example includes the mass meetings that civil rights leaders in the 1960s held in churches and other black institutions to rally support and strategize responses to racial discrimination.

The dominant characteristic of black enclaves, then, is that they serve as clandestine spaces where the black public sphere nurtures and circulates hidden transcripts of collective oppositional consciousness. And while black enclaved publics will at times have contact with dominant publics, the pressure to conform to those social behaviors normalized within a dominant culture’s public scripts quells impulses to challenge oppressors directly. Mindful of times past when violent responses have occurred after hidden transcripts were leaked to wider publics, care is taken among members of black enclaves to keep information secret.

Thus, as Squires argues, the black enclave public sphere “requires the maintenance of safe spaces, hidden communication networks, and group memory to guard against unwanted publicity of the group’s true opinions, ideas, and tactics for survival.” Black enclave spaces have been and remain necessary venues for African Americans’ ideologies of resistance and autonomy. “Enclave spaces, in a sense, provide a bedrock for marginal publics even when they benefit from increased political rights or friendlier social relations.”139

The Bern Club shares two primary similarities with the black enclave public. First, the club served as a safe space for uplift and empowerment. As club members, African

American women could retreat from racist and patriarchal institutions and access alternative educational, professional, and psychic resources that celebrated and supported black womanhood. Second, the Bern Club was exclusively designed for the identity formation of

139 Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere,” 458-59. Also see Squires, “Searching Black Voices,” 51-52, 75, 105-6, 109.

130 African Americans, here women. The club facilitated members’ growth through internal discussions about race and gender and, consequently, cultivated self-esteem and self- direction.140 The primary difference between the Bern Club and the black enclave is that the club was not solely a space for survival or internal discussions of the common good. The

Bern Club’s activities often brought members to predominantly white areas, such as when, in

1966—a year when racial tensions in Chicago were especially volatile—the club ventured downtown for a Chicago Miniature Opera Theater puppet performance at the Swedish restaurant Kungsholm in the old McCormick Mansion. Unlike members of black enclaves,

Bern Club members regularly engaged in their events and activities in the view of whites, sometimes while also patrons of white establishments.

Satellite public spheres are collectives of people who seek separation from other publics. Like black enclaves, black satellite public spheres do not desire regular communication or mutual relationships with other publics. “Satellite publics aim to maintain a solid group identity and build independent institutions,” Squires writes. However, unlike black enclaves, black satellite publics do engage broader public publics when interests intersect or when their activities generate tension with other publics. Still, satellite publics only irregularly overlap with other publics. The Nation of Islam is one prominent example of a black satellite public sphere. While this public certainly engages wider discussions, it does not aim to integrate itself with other publics. Rather, as Squires argues, it seeks to offer its members “separate spaces and worldviews.” In short, satellite public spheres are defined

140 For more on the theory that communication strategies can facilitate growth in self-esteem and self-directed rhetorical action, see Squires, “Searching Black Voices,” 222; Aprele Elliott, “Ella Baker: Free Agent in the Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of Black Studies 26, no. 5 (May 1996): 593-603.

131 in terms of their desire to resist integrating themelves among other publics while embracing a broader identity in harmony with other groups.141

The Bern Club shares two primary similarities with the black satellite public sphere.

First, the club served as a conduit that transmitted African American identity and imagination between club members and members of both white and marginalized public spheres. The club’s 1966 meeting in Washington, D.C., with activist-politician Emily Taft

Douglas and its 1967 meeting in Jamaica with Arthur Dion Hanna, for instance, demonstrate the club’s engagement with spheres of influence that occurred within and extended beyond white and black publics in the United States. Second, like members of the black satellite public sphere, the Bern Club also utilized the black press as a central means of publicizing news about black lives rarely found in the pages of white newspapers except when such news was related to crime. Such erasures and misrepresentations in white media outlets not only deemphasized black concerns and decontextualized issues undergirding black protest during the 1960s, but, Carolyn Martindale argues, they also suggested that “blacks were aggressive and demanding.”142 However, the Bern Club’s faithful correspondence with black newspapers like the Chicago Defender while traveling overseas, for instance, enabled African

Americans in Chicago to engage images of black womanhood not bound by dominant racist constructions circulating within white media institutions. Rather, the Bern Club’s transnational communication helped to redefine black womanhood in terms of social, financial, political, and geographic mobility.

141 Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere,” 463-64. Also see Squires, “Searching Black Voices,” 107, 114, 136, 142, 148, 157, 188, 191. 142 Carolyn Martindale, The White Press and Black America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986), 96; Squires, “Searching Black Voices,” 235-37.

132 The primary difference between the Bern Club and the satellite black public sphere is that correspondence and interactions between the club members and wider spheres did not contain the explicitly polemical arguments and political critiques often characterizing the rhetoric within institutional extensions of the black satellite public sphere as Squires defines it. In other words, none of the primary source material suggests that interactions between the Bern Club and various state and federal apparatuses involved arguments for black resistance, public debates about gender and race, or direct forms of political protest.

Rather, the defining characteristic between Bern Club members and wider publics seems to have been nonconfrontational experiences with like-minded allies in pursuit of shared goals.

Squires views counterpublics as responses to decreases in opposition or increased access to resources. Thus, black counterpublic spheres emerge when African Americans transform the oppositional discourses nurtured in enclaves and circulated through satellite spheres into sustained public confrontation with their oppressors to end their subordinate status. Unlike both the black enclave and satellite public spheres, members of a black counterpublic sphere utilize coercive force to impinge upon the interests of the dominant white public and its power brokers. The aim of such confrontation is to create a crisis that forces the dominant public and the state to respond. Squires observes, “The black counterpublic is signified by increased public communication between the marginal and dominant public spheres, both in face-to-face and mediated forms.” Counterpublics provoke responses from wider publics in hopes of reforming dominant public perceptions and securing solidarity with other disadvantaged communities. The mass civil rights demonstrations during the 1950s and 1960s—sit-ins, marches, rallys, boycotts, and voter registration drives—are each examples of confrontations black counterpublic spheres

133 initiated to induce reform. As might be expected, the increase in independent media institions facilitates counterpublicity. Greater distribution channels achieve more exposure to wider publics and participation in broader discussions.143

The Bern Club shares one primary similarity with the black counterpublic sphere.

The Bern Club organized members beyond constricting local and national sanctions of racial and gender discrimination. In this way Washington’s work resembled the countercultural labor of black women civil rights activists, such as Ella Baker, who felt that organizations led by black men were wasting too much energy on mobilizing events like marches rather than on organizing communities for sustainable, everyday liberating action. For Baker, mobilizing only informed people of a problem, whereas organizing taught people how to solve problems and think proactively to avoid other problems in the future.144 In an August 1976 article in Jet magazine, Washington discussed her perception of male attitudes toward black professional women:

I don’t think the average male figures that you could possibly be above him. They’ll come to you for advice, and the next thing you know, it’s their idea. But as long as you get what you want, what difference does it make? Men . . . they’re all alike; they haven’t changed one bit.145

Thus, while not as overtly confrontational as sit-ins, boycotts, or marches, the Bern Club’s many activities, such as its regular fundraising events to support college scholarships for deserving black teenage girls, were concrete organizing strategies for subverting racist and

143 Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere,” 460-61. Also see Squires, “Searching Black Voices,” 192-94, 202, 275; Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: Free Press, 1984), ix. Whereas theorists like Nancy Fraser used “subaltern” to qualify the category of counterpublic, Squires uses “subaltern” as a broader theoretical term and describes “counterpublic” as one particular form of many that a subaltern public sphere might take in a given historical circumstance. See Squires, “Searching Black Voices,” 193; Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere.” 144 Squires, “Searching Black Voices,” 218; JoAnne Grant, “Ella Baker, Freedom Teacher,” a talk given at the Center for Black Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, November 6, 1998. 145 Bernadine C. Washington, “Words of the Week,” Jet, August 12, 1976.

134 sexist imperatives designed to inhibit educational and employment opportunities for

African American women.

A primary difference between the Bern Club and the black counterpublic sphere is that the Bern Club did not utilize coercive force, such as direct action tactics, to initiate social reform. In fact, though committed to the cause of civil rights, Washington was quoted in 1975 in Jet confessing her reluctance to engage in certain direct action tactics, saying: “I’ve never been one for the picket lines, but I believe everyone has to be involved somehow.”

Additionally, her leadership in various black organizations such as Operation PUSH, the

Urban League, the NAACP, Joint Negro Appeal, and the Chicago Commission on Human

Resources is evidence of Washington’s community-organizing approach to injustice in

Chicago.146

While Squires’s conceptions of the black enclave, satellite, and counterpublic spheres are useful in analyzing the WVON Bern Club, they do not adequately account for the diplomatic dimension that defined the club’s interaction with whites and members of marginalized public spheres. Whether fraternizing with whites in downtown Chicago, brokering relationships with politicians in the nation’s capital, or interacting with foreign dignitaries, Bern Club members became ambassadors of African American womanhood. As envoys, Bern Club members offered unique perspectives about being black women in Cold

War Chicago. Thus, rather than the black enclave, satellite, or counterpublic sphere, the Bern

Club most resembles what I refer to an intercessory or ambassadorial public sphere that advocates on behalf of and seeks out allies with shared goals. And instead of being a convenient term, the concept of “ambassador” is actually embedded within public

146 “Bernadine Washington First Black Woman Radio GM, VP.”

135 perceptions of Washington, who was dubbed WVON’s “Ambassador of Goodwill.”147

The Bern Club’s activities, in particular its travel program, demonstrate how club members themselves became emissaries of goodwill in and beyond Cold War Chicago. Far from being a passive attribute, the ambassadorial or intercessory aspect of the black public sphere seeks creative strategies for maintaining relationships with allies while also pursuing particular agendas. Washington used her experience at WVON to instruct black women in professional success, once exhorting:

Instead of saying you do this, or you do that, I say, why don’t we do so and so. A man would rather do anything than take orders from a woman; they still have the attitude that a woman’s place is not here. I also make people around here feel important, They gain confidence, and the work gets done. That’s another way of getting what you want.148

Thus, Washington instructed women in the art of strategic diplomacy to achieve desired outcomes. Further studies of the WVON Bern Club, especially those involving oral histories of club members, could reveal to what extent the club served as a forum through which

Washington instructed African American women in the art of diplomacy.

Conclusion

The WVON Bern Club organized African American women in shared efforts to move beyond local and national imperatives inhibiting black mobility. Recovering unexamined dimensions of the club’s history has important implications for future projects examining the intersections of race, gender, and citizenship in the United States. For

147 See “Our History,” WVON website, http://wvon.com; House Resolution 0185 of the 93rd Illinois General Assembly, congratulating WVON on the occasion of its fortieth anniversary, March 3, 2003, http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&SessionId=3&GA=93&DocTypeId=HR&DocNu m=185&GAID=3&LegID=6519&SpecSess=&Session=. 148 Beverly Jensen, “Black and Female, Too: Career Women Find That the Road to the Top May Be Paved with Racism, Sexism, and Sometimes Both,” Black Enterprise, July 1976.

136 instance, oral histories of surviving Bern Club members might yield important insights for examining contemporary social forums affiliated with black-appeal media outlets endeavoring to confront modern imperatives of black containment. Such projects might reveal trends or tactics for which terminology developed among black public sphere theorists during the late twentieth century may not adequately account.

Washington understood the black community’s health to be tied directly to the black citizen’s resolve to be an active political agent. Responsible black citizens, Washington admonished Bern Club members, were active black citizens. During the Bern Club’s inaugural trip to Washington, D.C., in 1966, for instance, Washington encouraged members to view political participation aimed at uplifting African Americans in Chicago and beyond as a civic responsibility.149 In an April 1976 article in Jet, Washington bound her professional mobility to a passionately engaged community. “I made it in my community because the people believe in me. So I have a responsibility to give something back to the people and the community. If you go up the ladder and take others by the hand with you, you’ll get your reward in the end.” The reward of ever-expanding horizons daily confirms, no, testifies, the immutable inerrant truth that together with others one has come, and yet still may go, a mighty long way.150

149 Preston, “Black Radio Exec.” 150 “Words of the Week,” Jet, April 29, 1976.

137 CHAPTER 3

“Now Run and Tell THAT!”: WVON’s Editorials, Aural Release, and Soundscapes of Citizenship

T’was a memorable trip, but even with all of the problems in Chicago, it was good to drive down the Kennedy expressway early Tuesday morning and hear WVON’s Roy Wood giving hell to city politicians who have not been doing their job here. You don’t get that kind of “sound” on L.A. radio. . . . Perhaps that is the reason for the Watts situation after all.1 —Thelma Hunt Shirley

WVON’s listeners viewed Roy Wood’s editorials as a form of aural release from the simmering tensions growing in Chicago’s black community during the 1960s and early 1970s. . . . Wood’s editorials served not just a forum for his opinions, but spoke to the concerns of many listeners.2

—Jennifer Searcy

Our editorials are the soul of our station. . . . We do take a stand. If this means chastising our listeners, we chastise them. But we go after the police and the mayor too.3

—Moses “Lucky” Cordell

We have to keep working until everybody in the country learns how to live with each other.4

—Roy Wood

The young man hobbled into the office for his psychiatric evaluation. His mother persuaded him it was for the best. There was something gravely wrong after all. Only in his early twenties, the young man was depressed. He began to withdraw socially. Professional help, his mother thought, might help him to overcome the severe personal trauma he had endured. In 1938, at the age of twenty-three, Roy Wood was struck by a car and was partially

“crippled” for life. Shortly after the accident, grief consumed him. He thought, “I’m black.

1 Thelma Hunt Shirley, “Confetti,” Chicago Defender, July 19, 1966. 2 Jennifer Searcy, “The Voice of the Negro: African American Radio, WVON, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Chicago” (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University, 2012), 130, Paper 688, http://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/688. 3 Moses “Lucky” Cordell quoted in Earl Paige, “Beginning of New NATRA Era—E. Rodney Jones,” Billboard, August 16, 1969. 4 Roy Wood quoted in Paige, “Beginning of New NATRA Era.”

138 I’m ugly and crippled. What chance am I going to have in this world?”5 Wood’s mother arranged for him to see a psychiatrist to confront those dark thoughts. After his examination, Wood’s psychiatrist concluded, “No way do I see anything wrong with the young man except that he has a low self-esteem and ego problem and I think more education would take care of that. And if he goes back to school I think he will overcome it.” Wood was open to more schooling beyond his Bachelor of Science degree. “Well, I’m not doing anything else,” he reasoned with his psychiatrist. “I guess I may as well. What would you suggest I study?” The psychiatrist counseled, “Well you have a good voice, why don’t you become a radio announcer.” A radio announcer? Wood thought. He dismissed the idea swiftly, saying, “They don’t have any need for negro radio announcers.” His psychiatrist retorted abruptly, “I didn’t say be a Negro announcer, I said be a radio announcer.” Wood recalled that defining moment: “That put the ball in my court because many people hemmed themselves in with descriptive adjectives that don’t amount to a thing. And the word ‘negro’ before announcer didn’t have anything at all really to do with being an announcer.” Soon after that conversation Wood enrolled in journalism school at Columbia University in New

York City. Later reflecting on his professional career, Wood expressed his belief that, in a sense, it was “by design” that the accident that crippled him introduced him to a career in radio.6 Radio provided Wood a means of building self-esteem and self-direction. Similarly, as fans and colleagues have testified, Wood’s editorial voice as WVON’s news director provided African American Chicagoans with a means of releasing psychic pain, nurturing self-esteem, and empowering self-direction in the pursuit of justice.

5 “Rites Held for Mrs. Wood,” Chicago Defender, March 16, 1959. 6 Gilbert A. Williams, Legendary Pioneers of Black Radio (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1998), 174.

139 In March 1963, Roy Wood was hired as director of WVON’s news bureau, a position he held until 1972. In addition to supplying community-generated news about

Chicago events, WVON’s news department provided African Americans with hard-hitting local, national, and global news. Wood’s around-the-clock approach to news consisted of hourly reports and daily editorials, many of which Wood researched and then read on-air.

Wood’s provocative editorials usually followed news bulletins and were two to three minutes in length. Steering away from militant change, WVON’s news and editorials exhorted racial uplift achieved through middle-class values. Through his editorials, in particular, Wood challenged black listeners to embrace nonviolence and demonstrate what Jennifer Searcy describes as “flawless public behavior through individual self-improvement and community self-policing.”7 Wood’s editorials not only provided instructions for civil living, but they also voiced black Chicagoans’ concerns and incited thought-provoking discussions on a variety of issues such as gangs, police brutality, and race relations.

While Wood’s editorials did not champion militant change, they often involved serious critiques of the lack of self-policing within black communities and failures among elected city officials, regardless of race, to govern justly. Wood chided African Americans for failing to extend the same hospitality toward one another that they were demanding from whites through civil rights demonstrations and legislation. He also scolded elected officials in

Chicago guilty of perpetuating institutional racism. In fact, as Martin Luther King Jr. had done as a guest on WVON’s Hotline in July 1966, Wood concluded in 1981 that African

Americans’ rioting and nonviolent demonstrations in the mid-twentieth century were symptoms of the systematic neglect of black suffering. Wood believed many white

Americans were surprised when black anger about their oppression manifested as riots and

7 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 121, 124-26.

140 civil rights demonstrations because dominant mass media outlets ignored “what was happening to black people and their communities.”8 Consequently, he argued, most whites were largely unaware of the experiences of the black dispossessed. Thus, for many African

American Chicagoans, Wood’s editorials became critical invitations to psychic release amid growing angers, anxieties, and frustrations with the many racial injustices inflicted on them.

Searcy writes, “Regardless of the topic, Wood’s editorials were imbued with anger and they paralleled the growing frustration in Chicago’s black community at the pace of change during the Civil Rights Movement.” Aimed at mobilizing African Americans against white racism in Chicago, Wood’s editorials famously ended with him belting out the phrase “Now run and tell THAT!” The implication was that the message would eventually reach the ears of those to whom it was directed. Reminiscing later, WVON disc jockey Moses “Lucky”

Cordell explained, “The essence was I know you are going to run and tell the boss, run and tell the white man, so run and tell that, it’s used still today.”9

Wood’s editorials regularly evoked themes of citizenship in general and black citizenship in particular. Wood believed that the broadcast communication industry could unify citizens locally and nationally. He once stated, “I am convinced that most of the difference occurring between ethnic groups is due to ignorance of one another, rather than racial prejudice exclusively.”10 For Wood, communication technologies like radio had the capacity to strip away superficial representations masquerading as accepted knowledge of others and to reveal opportunities for more intimate relationships with diverse people. As

8 Roy Wood, “It’s Time for a Display of Unity,” New York Amsterdam News, September 26, 1981. 9 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 129-30; Roy Wood, in The Dawn of Urban Radio, producer and director Mark Williams, 1 hr 30 min, CTV, 1990, videocassette; Moses “Lucky” Cordell, interview by Alexis Gillespie, June 14, 1995, transcript, Radio Smithsonian: Black Radio Project Collection, Archives of African American Music and Culture, Bloomington, IN. 10 Roy Wood quoted in Glennete Tilley Turner, “Take a Walk in Their Shoes,” Ebony Jr!, May 1985.

141 Searcy writes, “Wood ardently believed in the role that communications could play in diminishing racial strife.” In one of his poems, “Wood Shavings,” Wood exhorts, “If I know you and you know me/And each of us our faults can see/Soon there will be no cause for strife/Between me and thee.”11 As WVON’s news director, Wood remained vocal in his belief that citizens living within a democracy had an obligation to establish inclusive relationships with one another, regardless of race. Flawed notions of U.S. democratic ideals, he maintained, caused much of the division between the nation’s citizens. In one editorial,

Woods insists, “We here at WVON feel that so much of the black disillusionment is being caused by a misunderstanding of words such as democracy, power, and authority. If they don’t get it, they’ll never know the meaning of words like democracy, power, and authority.”12 In short, whether challenging black listeners or holding elected officials accountable, Wood’s editorials pointed toward a concept of citizenship defined in terms of mutuality.

In this chapter, I argue that Roy Wood’s editorials at WVON provided African

Americans discourses of resistance that refigured narrow conceptions of citizenship in terms of radical interconnectivity. In particular, I analyze Wood’s June 1964 satirical editorial on bigotry. In this particular editorial, Wood utilizes the African American vernacular practice of Signifyin(g) to mock the absurd logic of prejudice and to persuade listeners of the benefits of a unified national citizenry. To unfold his argument, Wood assumes the identity of a self- proclaimed bigot who proudly extols the virtues of prejudice.13 Through scorching irony and

11 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro, 121; Shawn Ryan, “Roy Wood Poses in a Radio Broadcast Studio, the Place Where He Has Spent More Time Than Just About Any Other,” Birmingham News, September 5, 1993. 12 Wood, Dawn of Urban Radio. 13 This rhetorical device is known as prosopopoeia, a figure of speech in which an imaginary or absent person is represented as speaking or acting. Merriam-Webster Online, s.v. “prosopopoeia,” accessed June 28, 2017, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prosopopoeia.

142 indirection, Wood simultaneously ridicules the flawed logics undergirding racist ideologies and reasserts a concept of democratic citizenship defined in terms of openness, mutuality, and unity, which he defines as “brotherhood.” This double-voiced discourse achieved through Signifyin(g) allows Wood implicitly to shame racists while simultaneously inspiring unity beyond racial difference. Examining Wood’s other surviving editorials in conjunction with his June 1964 WVON editorial on bigotry demonstrates how Wood’s editorials talked back directly to racism and its many incarnations. In short, my analysis illustrates how Wood’s editorials were aural transliterations of black suffering that became strategies for release and resistance.

Having identified the African American vernacular practice of Signifyin(g) as the defining characteristic of Wood’s June 1964 WVON editorial on bigotry, it is necessary to define the term more thoroughly.14 H. Rap Brown, Stephen Henderson, Claudia Mitchell-

Kernan, Alan Dundes, Eugene D. Genovese, Roger D. Abrahams, Geneva Smitherman,

Lawrence W. Levine, Zora Neale Hurston, John W. Roberts, Mel Watkins, Harold

Coulander, and Albert J. Raboteau all have contributed significantly to understandings of the

African American tradition of Signifyin(g).15 While I build on these insights, I utilize Henry

14 Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). 15 See H. Rap Brown, Die Nigger Die! (New York: Dial Press, 1969); Stephen Henderson, “Introduction: The Forms of Things Unknown,” in Understanding the New Black Poetry, Black Speech and Black Music as Poetic References, ed. Stephen Henderson (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1973); Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, “Signifying as a Form of Verbal Art,” in Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore, ed. Alan Dundes (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973); Eugene D. Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage Books, 1976); Roger D. Abrahams, Talking Black (Rawley, MA: Newbury House, 1976); Geneva Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977); Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Zora Neale Hurston, The Sanctified Church (Berkeley, CA: Marlowe and Co., 1981); John W. Roberts, From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989); Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying: The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor That Transformed American Culture, From Slavery to Richard Pryor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994); Harold Coulander, A Treasury of Afro-American Folklore: The Oral Literature, Traditions, Recollections, Legends, Tales, Songs, Religious Beliefs, Customs, Sayings and Humor of Peoples of

143 Louis Gates Jr.’s concept of Signifyin(g) in particular to analyze Wood’s June 1964 editorial on bigotry. It is obvious, at least visually, that there is a difference between the standard English signifier “signification,” or “signifying,” and the African American signifier,

“Signifyin(g).” When spoken by African Americans in the vernacular, Gates argues, the word is more often than not pronounced without the final “g,” as signifyin’.16 Therefore, Gates has chosen to denote this distinction in meaning graphically, by rendering the word with a capital “s” and a bracketed “g”: Signifyin(g). Changing the word, both in the vernacular and in writing, demonstrates the manner in which African American vernacular critiques the nature of white meaning itself:

This political offensive could have been mounted against all sorts of standard English terms—and, indeed it was. I am thinking here of terms such as down, nigger, baby, and cool, which snobbishly tend to be written about as “dialect” words or “slang.” There are scores of such revised words. But to revise the term signification is to select a term that represents the nature of the process of meaning-creation and its representation. Few other selections could have been so dramatic, or so meaningful. . . . It is not sufficient merely to reveal that black people colonized a white sign. A level of meta-discourse is at work in this process. If the signifier stands disrupted by the shift in concepts denoted and connoted, then we are engaged at the level of meaning itself, at the semantic register. Black people vacated this signifier, then—incredibly—substituted as its concept a signified that stands for the system of rhetorical strategies peculiar to their own vernacular tradition. Rhetoric, then, has supplanted semantics in the most literal metaconfrontation within the structure of the sign.17

Through creation of the term “Signifyin(g)” and use of Signifyin(g) practices, Gates argues,

African Americans essentially “defined their ontological status as one of profound difference vis-à-vis the rest of society.” This act of renaming is evidence that there is inscribed, within the black vernacular, rules for reading black texts that exist outside the bounds of Western

African Descent in the Americas (New York: Marlowe and Co., 1996); Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 16 Gates, Signifying Monkey, 46. For a substantive description of Gates’s rationale for distinguishing between the standard English signifier, “signification/signifying” and the African American signifier, “Signification/Signifyin(g),” see Gates, Signifying Monkey, 45-51. 17 Ibid., 47.

144 Eurocentric standards of literary and rhetorical criticism. Rather, these rules emanate from standards inherent to black cultural traditions for reading black texts on their own terms. In vacating the white signifier, Gates concludes, African Americans “undertook this act of self-definition, implicit in a (re)naming ritual, within the process of signification that the English language had inscribed for itself.” Thus, Signifyin(g) is perhaps most appropriately described as a trope for rhetorical acts of formal critique and revision.18

A helpful way to understand Signifyin(g) is to consider it as a general category that encompasses a host of black figurative discursive practices. Thus, Gates’s notion of

Signifyin(g) can be thought of as “the rubric for various sorts of playful language games” that can reconstitute or demystify a subject.19 The figures or tropes constituting African

American Signifyin(g) are legion.20 The following are just a few Signifyin(g) practices that occur at the vernacular level within African American public discourse: testifying, ritual insults, talking shit, woofing, spouting, muckty muck, boogerbang, beating your gums, louding, loud-talking, talking smart, putting down, putting on, playing, sounding, telling lies, shag-lag, marking, shucking, jiving, jitterbugging, bugging, mounting, charging, cracking, harping, rapping, bookooing, low-rating, hoorawing, sweet-talking, and smart-talking.21 And just as a significant number of figures characterize the black vernacular practice, so the uses or functions of Signifyin(g) are also many. Signifyin(g) can be used to insult, degrade, praise, uplift, or provoke to anger. It can also be used to engage in irony, indirection, reversal, parody, pastiche, satire, humor, playful banter, self- defense, instruction, and hidden polemic, to name a few. In short, as Gates rightly

18 Ibid., 47. 19 Ibid., 52, 54. 20 For more information on Signifyin(g) as a rhetorical trope, see Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin, 101-67. 21 For this list of terms, see Gates, Signifying Monkey, 78, 82. For a fuller description of the diversity of tropes and uses that encompass African American Signifyin(g), see 44-124.

145 concludes, the African American vernacular tradition “assigns to Signifyin(g) multiple roles.”22

Examining Wood’s editorials as Signifyin(g) practices aimed at refiguring concepts such as “citizenship,” “democracy,” and “brotherhood” contributes to studies interested in demonstrating how African American media outlets in the mid-twentieth century responded to racial injustice as well as misrepresentation and erasure in white media. Wood viewed black-owned communication technologies as important allies in African Americans’ struggle to assert revised political identities amid racist conceptions of black citizenship. Wood once stated, “They freed our body but the man kept our mind enslaved by way of his books, his newspapers, his television set and his radio stations. It all comes back to communication.”23

For Wood, radio enabled African Americans to speak on their own behalf, in their own terms, and directly to members of a dominant culture who sought to silence and disenfranchise them. Thus, Wood understood communication technology as a means through which African Americans could articulate previously unheard, ignored, or manipulated dimensions of their humanity.24 Wood’s June 1964 WVON editorial on bigotry provides one example of how the rhetorical practice of African American Signifyin(g) produced an aural spectacle via radio that redefined conceptions of both black public life and U.S. citizenship.

This chapter proceeds in three movements. First, I provide a historical account of

Roy Wood’s radio career leading up his work as news director at WVON. I also explore the defining characteristics of WVON’s news department under Wood’s direction and the

22 Ibid., 123. 23 Wood quoted in Williams, Legendary Pioneers, 181. 24 Richard Newman, Patrick Rael, and Phillip Lapsansky, eds., Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African American Protest Literature, 1790-1860 (New York: Routledge, 2001).

146 psychological benefits that Wood’s editorials provided African American listeners.

Second, I analyze several of Wood’s editorials. Here I explore how Wood’s editorial voice often drew together parallels between unity and citizenship. Third, I analyze Wood’s June

1964 WVON editorial on bigotry as an instance of African American Signifyin(g) that confronts the absurdity of racial prejudice and argues indirectly for the virtue of a unified

U.S. citizenry. I approach Wood’s editorial as a satirical apologia, or speech of self-defense, that likely alludes to and draws inspiration from the contentious political climate comprising the 1964 presidential campaign. I conclude this chapter by suggesting the usefulness of contemporary studies of African American Signifyin(g) practices for interpreting the values and goals of civil rights activists and activities. Various rituals utilized among the Black Lives

Matter movement during public demonstrations, for example, can be read as Signifyin(g) practices that attempt to refigure public space as well as flawed notions of U.S. citizenship.

Roy Wood and WVON’s News Department

Roy Wood was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1915 to educated middle-class parents and grew up in Chicago. His father was a physician who died when Wood was three. His mother was one of the first African American women certified public accountants in the state of Georgia.25 Wood graduated from Morehouse College with a Bachelor of Science degree, and following the recommendation of the psychiatrist who treated him for depression, he enrolled in a master’s program in journalism at Columbia University in New

York City.26 By the time Wood finished his degree at Columbia, the market for black disc jockeys in Chicago had become big business. African American personalities like Jack L.

25 Williams, Legendary Pioneers, 186; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 122. 26 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 122; “Rites Held for Mrs. Wood.”

147 Cooper and Al Benson were already cultural icons. Wood was especially impressed with

Oscar Brown Jr. and Art McCoo, who were hosting news segments on Benson’s nighttime news, which aired on several local stations. “They did such a masterful job of reporting black news, I knew right away that news would be the way to go.” Though armed with his master’s degree, Wood felt that he lacked the experience necessary to report the news effectively.

Therefore, he decided to enroll in courses at the Columbia College. There Wood took special courses in broadcast news writing, broadcast news reporting, microphone technique, commercial advertising, and commercial advertising writing. After his course in commercial advertising, Wood began his first broadcasting job in 1932, when Jack L. Cooper, who was friends with his mother, hired Wood to work for him. At the time African American broadcasters had to purchase blocks of time from radio stations to broadcast their programming. Cooper bought blocks of time from WHFC, WGES, and WEDC wholesale and then resold that time retail to advertisers. As it turned out, Cooper had a fifteen-minute time slot available on WEDC that happened to be a news block. At the time Cooper was broadcasting from his home but did not have a line to WEDC. He asked Wood to broadcast the fifteen-minute news block from the station. Cooper could not pay Wood for his services.

However, the opportunity would provide him valuable on-air experience. Wood, who was working as an insurance agent for the Metropolitan Funeral System, accepted Cooper’s job offer. “I thanked him, and I accepted the challenge to do the 15-minute news block, without pay, just for the opportunity to get some experience.”27

While reporting the news for WEDC, Wood drew the attention of white employees at the station. For instance, Lloyd Stanom, an engineer at WEDC, praised Wood’s delivery of the news. Hoping to help Wood secure a full-time job in radio, Stanom put Wood in

27 Wood quoted in Williams, Legendary Pioneers, 174-75.

148 contact with an engineer friend at WCFL who was building a radio station, WGRY, in

Gary, Indiana. Stanom’s advocacy paid off. On November 23, 1947, WGRY hired Wood as a full-time staff member. Still, times were tough financially. Wood spent his entire weekly salary of twenty-five dollars just traveling by train between Chicago and Gary to get to and from work each week. In spring 1949, Howard Fischer, a Jewish man who was one of

Wood’s boyhood classmates, told Wood of a friend who had a radio station, WJVA (which became WNDJ), in a suburb of South Bend, Indiana, called Mishawaka, that was in need of an announcer. Fischer had already informed his friend that Wood was African American but that he did not sound “Negro.” Fischer’s friend responded that he only cared about Wood’s talent, not his complexion. After Wood auditioned, WJVA hired him, and he began working at the station at the end of the summer of 1949. By the spring of 1950, another career opportunity presented itself. WJVA was gearing up to broadcast the Indianapolis Speedway

Races. Bill Dean of Mutual Broadcasting Systems, which was a central division radio network, came to Mishawaka to prepare for WJVA’s broadcast of the races. Unable to sleep one night, Dean turned on the radio at about 4:00 A.M. He heard Wood reporting the news on his wake-up program, Sunrise Serenade, on which Wood reported the news, weather, and farming and even played some music. Impressed with what he heard, Dean phoned Wood at

4:30. He asked if Wood would be interested in a job paying him more money reporting news in Indianapolis at WIBC, Mutual Broadcasting System’s flagship station. The two agreed to meet later that morning to discuss the details further. However, when Wood arrived for the meeting, a shocked Dean confessed that he had not known that Wood was African

149 American: “He said, ‘I had no idea that you were a Negro.’ I smiled and said, ‘Negro or not, Mr. Dean, you and I had a breakfast engagement and I’m hungry.’”28

The two honored their breakfast meeting. Dean admitted his concern that the

“climate” might not be ready for a black announcer. His reluctance was rooted in concerns during the early twentieth century and particularly the interwar period that bodiless voices on

U.S. radio stations threatened established identity categories that depended on visual markers of race.29 Since Dean could not tell that Wood was black just from hearing his voice, he doubted that listeners would know either. He asked Wood to send him an audition tape. The date of the meeting was May 10, 1950. On July 2, Wood received a telegram from Dean offering him the job. Wood spent four years with WIBC, where he gained significant experience announcing commercials and doing intros and outros for shows like The Shadow,

Young Doctor Malone, Guiding Light, Queen for a Day, True Detective Stories, Mike Hammer’s The

Hammer Guy, and Frank Edwards’s News Casts.30

In 1954, Wood quit WIBC to work as the program director of KATZ, which was a new African American radio station in St. Louis, Missouri. It was Wood’s first job as a program director for a radio station. In 1957, Wood left St. Louis for Chicago. At that time,

Cooper talked with Illinois Republican congressman Richard Hoffman, who owned the foreign language station in WHFC (what later became WVON), which broadcast in Cicero,

Illinois. There, with a hefty weekly salary of $156, Wood announced foreign language

28 Ibid., 175-76. 29 Greg Goodale, Sonic Persuasion: Reading Sound in the Recorded Age (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 97. For an introduction to radio as a technology for demarcating boundaries of race and identity, see Barbara Dianne Savage, Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Radio, 1938-1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Susan Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004); Alexander G. Weheliye, Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Jacob Smith, Vocal Tracks: Performance and Sound Media (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Michael C. Keith, ed., Radio Cultures: The Sound Medium in American Life (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2008). 30 Williams, Legendary Pioneers, 176-77.

150 programs like the Lithuanian hour and the Ukrainian hour. After learning that Wood had received an opportunity at the black-oriented WGES, Hoffman offered Wood $100 more per week as an incentive to stay with WHFC. But Wood was determined to be in black radio. In 1959, Wood left WHFC to take a job as a staff announcer at WGES. The base pay there was $196 weekly. For about six months Wood made station breaks and put records on the turntable for disc jockeys. Unfortunately, a heated argument erupted between Wood and

Al Benson after Wood turned “a wrong record loose” and Benson insisted to John A. Dyer, one of the station owners, that Wood be fired. Unwilling to risk further upsetting Benson, who was making the station millions of dollars, Dyer fired Wood. At the time Wood’s son

Arthur was just four years old. He needed to find work quickly. Elizabeth M. Hinzman, the other station owner at WGES, suggested that Wood be given a vacant thirty-minute slot which he could sell for 30 percent commission to local businesses wanting to advertise on radio. Wood first sold airtime to North-Side TV Repair for $1,567 a week, which earned him a weekly commission of $500. After North-Side TV Repair, Wood sold airtime to Hamm

Brewing Company and then Old Style Town Beer.31

In March 1963, WVON hired Wood as news bureau director after the Chess brothers purchased the station (formerly WHFC) from Hoffman for one million dollars.

Though the news department was immediately a forum for community-generated news,

Wood, along with the help of Wesley South, quickly extended its focus to an around-the- clock approach to news, often highlighting the many injustices plaguing African Americans in and beyond Chicago. The station’s news department, Searcy writes, “incited discussion amongst and demanded change for WVON’s listeners.” An extension of the city’s black public sphere, WVON news became a vital resource to which African Americans turned for

31 Williams, Legendary Pioneers, 183-86.

151 information about the black community. During the Chicago Freedom Movement in particular, the station’s news department became a space African Americans used “to create a new collective group identity that would advocate for social change” amid city leaders’ apathy toward and neglect of black concerns. Under Wood’s direction WVON’s news department provided hourly reports and daily editorials, many generated by Wood. Running for approximately five minutes at the top of every hour with headlines announced every thirty minutes, WVON’s “news while it is still new” bulletins focused on a hybrid of local and national black-oriented news. Usually, the first story of the news bulletin focused on international affairs. Next came local news and community affairs. Then the editorials aired.32 People often confused Wood’s “impeccable English” and “middle-American accent” as a voice belonging to a white man. His graduate education combined with his more

Caucasian-sounding style of announcing contrasted with the more informal on-air styles of many of the other WVON personalities who resembled the likes of Al Benson.33

The WVON news department’s goal overall was brevity. According to WVON

Good Guy and disc jockey Moses “Lucky” Cordell, the news bureau endeavored to make educating the public “short enough that it won’t be a turn-off. I used to refer to it as this is what they want, this is what they need, and we’ll put it in between.”34 Additionally, Wood maximized every opportunity to affirm African American history and identity. For instance, he utilized breaks in WVON’s news to educate listeners through a black history series.

Running several times a week for roughly two-and-a-half minutes, this series featured profiles of historic African Americans such as Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and W.

32 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 116, 119, 121-22, 124-25; E. Rodney Jones, interview by Alexis Gillespie, March 14, 1995, audiocassette, Radio Smithsonian: Black Radio Project Collection, Archives of African American Music and Culture, Bloomington, IN. 33 Williams, Legendary Pioneers, 173. 34 Cordell interview, Radio Smithsonian.

152 E. B. Du Bois. For many African American Chicagoans, WVON’s news bureau was one of a few sources in the city that provided up-to-date information about social and civil rights concerning the black community as well as short lessons on black heritage.35 And while

South’s call-in talk show Hotline tackled the more radical aspects of the civil rights movement, Searcy argues, Wood championed a message of “change through education and self-empowerment.”36

Just two years after Wood began his work as director of WVON’s news bureau, his popularity had grown significantly. A 1965 Chicago Defender article mentions a nomination

Wood received from an organization for “best single or series of editorials.”37 Advertisers soon sought to capitalize on Wood’s star power as a trusted community voice. Like fellow

WVON Good Guy Bernadine C. Washington, Wood received profitable endorsements from local and national businesses and became an influential advocate for the possibility of

African American commerce. In a published advertisement for Hamm’s Beer, for example,

Wood’s headshot is displayed with the caption “Roy Wood talks. Chicago listens and gets the word on Hamm’s.” Displayed above Wood’s picture is Hamm’s new aluminum beer can, described as “bright and modern.” The image, Searcy observed, connected with Wood’s role as a community spokesperson. In another instance, Associated Brokers insurance agency utilized Wood’s influence as a brand ambassador, as its advertising urged listeners to “hold tight and listen to Roy Wood on WVON” because he is “telling it like it is.” Similarly, the national Prudential Insurance Company sponsored Wood’s “Citizen of the Week” campaign to celebrate local black Chicagoans for their work improving their communities. Certainly, as

35 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 119-20; Nadine Cohodas, The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 219. 36 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 121-22. 37 Thelma Hunt Shirley, “Confetti,” Chicago Defender, December 9, 1965.

153 historian William Van Deburg has argued, businesses at the time made use of the

African American community’s new cultural symbols that aligned with black vernacular expression and “living black.”38

Unlike many black-oriented radio stations in the 1960s, WVON utilized mobile units to bring its listeners live news coverage on the civil rights movement in and beyond Chicago.

In August 1963, just over four months since its first broadcast, WVON sent its own mobile unit to Washington, D.C., to cover the March on Washington.39 By 1965, the station’s news department had three staff members and two mobile units.40 Remote broadcasts of weekly

Chicago church services, benefit concerts for civil rights efforts, NAACP conventions, reports from school desegregation battles at the University of Mississippi, and live coverage of civil rights activities in Birmingham and Selma were just a few examples of how WVON’s news department connected listeners to news and events in and beyond Chicago.

One particularly famous example of the extent of the news department’s reach involved Wood’s one-month visit in 1966 to Southeast Asia to interview black soldiers, many from Chicago, who were fighting in Vietnam. The trip to Vietnam, which Sears

Roebuck and Company sponsored, was further evidence of Wood and WVON’s commitment to give voice to African American issues.41 Before Wood departed, WVON publicized the upcoming trip, and as many as ten thousand relatives phoned in to the station requesting that Wood talk to their loved ones fighting in Vietnam.42 Amid the excitement,

38 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 130-31; advertisement, Chicago Defender, February 17, 1965; advertisement, Chicago Defender, February 15, 1969; advertisement, Chicago Defender, June 21, 1969; William Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 193. 39 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 132; Lillian S. Calhoun, “Confetti,” Chicago Defender, August 27, 1963. 40 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 132; “Stations by Format,” Billboard, October 16, 1963. 41 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 133; Herb Lyon, “Tower Ticker,” Chicago Tribune, April 29, 1966. 42 “WVON to Air Viet Interviews,” Chicago Defender, April 21, 1966; Marsha Washington George, Black Radio . . . Winner Takes All: America’s 1st Black DJs (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2002), 48.

154 station owner Leonard Chess reassured listeners that Wood “at first will try to concentrate on soldiers who have been in Viet Nam the longest . . . after all, these soldiers are the ones who are missed by their loved ones the most.”43 During the month he spent in

Vietnam, Wood conducted over 150 interviews with soldiers. WVON later played excerpts of these interviews along with recorded greetings from soldiers to friends and family back home.44

Good Guy Herb Kent recalled the popularity that WVON’s disc jockeys enjoyed among black soldiers fighting in Vietnam who wrote the station requesting tapes from various shows. Kent even spoke with some soldiers who were on leave or discharged after being injured, and they informed him they would be “listening while they were fighting. I don’t know how they did it, but somehow they had some kind of tape player and earphone plugged up, and they’d take that hookup and just go off shooting.” Those tapes of various programs, Kent testified, “really helped sustain” black soldiers in Vietnam fighting so far from home.45 Wood’s journalistic adventure in Vietnam, then, was one more way that

WVON demonstrated its care and concern for black soldiers. Wood’s reporting also provided African American soldiers a means for venting and expressing their views on the

Vietnam War to listeners back home in Chicago. Wood concluded that the “Negro soldier does feel that it is necessary for America to do something about the situation over there.

Their only grief, however, is that they are not allowed to shoot until they are shot at first.

And not knowing who is the enemy or where he is, the GI’s find it a pretty rough game.”46

43 “WVON Awaits Tapes from Editor in Viet,” Chicago Defender, May 12, 1966; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 133. 44 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 133-34; uncaptioned photograph, Chicago Defender, June 21, 1966. 45 Herb Kent and David Smallwood, The Cool Gent: The Nine Lives of Radio Legend Herb Kent (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2009), 28-29. 46 Thelma Hunt Shirley, “Confetti,” Chicago Defender, June 22, 1966; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 134.

155 Wood’s trip was not a walk in the park, however. As a wartime news correspondent,

Wood at times was in close proximity to danger and death. In 1966, Wood was trapped for eight days at the Marine Press Center in Da Nang during a Buddhist monk uprising. While

Wood survived, Look magazine journalist Sam Castan was standing next to Wood when he was killed by shrapnel.47

Wood’s coverage of the war in Vietnam demonstrated WVON’s unparalleled broadcast scope among black-oriented U.S. radio stations at the time.48 In March 1965,

Billboard praised WVON for its capacity to facilitate critical reporting and live news coverage beyond Chicago. The magazine declared, “WVON represents modern Negro radio, broadcasting with the latest equipment, articulate and knowledgeable deejays, and aware news set ups.”49 Consequently, the station’s cutting-edge live and on-the-scene journalism connected African American Chicagoans with shared struggles among blacks locally, nationally, and overseas.50

During Wood’s time as WVON’s news bureau director between 1963 and 1972, news bulletins and editorials emphasized racial uplift through middle-class values.51 Listeners came to know Wood’s editorials in particular as vehicles for expressing scintillating yet often incendiary frustrations about racism in Chicago. Usually following news bulletins, Wood delivered thought-provoking editorials two to three minutes long in an intense, dramatic voice that, Searcy writes, “naturally lent itself to the station’s news and editorial broadcasts.”

Cordell recollected that Wood “could say ‘and the man walked across the street and

47 Shirley, “Confetti,” Chicago Defender, June 22, 1966. 48 “Stations by Format,” Billboard, October 16, 1963. 49 “Negro Radio: An Ever Increasing Influence,” Billboard, March 27, 1965. 50 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 132-34. 51 This “politics of respectability” emphasized flawless public behavior and, among some middle-class African Americans during the Victorian era, a pathway to equality and winning favor from whites. See Elizabeth Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 14.

156 everybody [voice trails off]’ . . . his delivery was dramatic.”52 Usually focused on local issues, Wood’s editorials covered a variety of subjects such as politics, police brutality, business, and gang warfare.53 Later reflecting on the breadth of Wood’s editorial voice,

Cordell declared: “He went after the bus companies because at some point they were going to increase the fares. . . . Any politician he felt was not performing . . . he’d stay smart enough to stay away from being liable for suit but he would put his finger on something that wasn’t right, that he felt was unfair or wrong.”54

Wood’s editorials were particularly critical of gang activity. In one editorial he chided the Black Stone Rangers, an African American gang involved in drug trafficking and money laundering that had also provided security for Martin Luther King Jr. during the Chicago

Freedom Movement. Cordell recalled that Wood “went on the air and blasted them and they threatened to kill his son, and he went back on the next day and blasted them again. And against the wishes of the station and his wife called and asked that he please stop . . . his attitude was ‘if my son or I have to go in this fight to save the rest of our community, so be it.’”55 Wood’s editorials, however, steered away from exhorting militant change. Rather, they emphasized nonviolence and advocated a politics of black respectability. Far from being uncritical toward African Americans, Wood sometimes blamed black men’s weak masculinity as a contributing factor to poor race relations in the United States. Wood urged black men to assume their place as the heads of their families, once stating, “If this had been done in years gone by there would have been no necessity for the civil rights bill.”56

52 Cordell interview, Radio Smithsonian. 53 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 123, 125-26. 54 Cordell interview, Radio Smithsonian; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 125. 55 Cordell interview, Radio Smithsonian. 56 “International Masons and Eastern Stars Meet Here,” Chicago Defender, October 5, 1970; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 126, 129.

157 For many African American Chicagoans, Wood’s editorials became a means of aural release and psychic survival. In fact, after returning to Chicago from Los Angeles,

Chicago Defender writer Thelma Hunt Shirley suggested that Wood’s editorials allowed African

Americans a constructive avenue for venting their frustrations about racism in the city: “It was good to drive down the Kennedy expressway early Tuesday morning and hear WVON’s

Roy Wood giving hell to city politicians who have not been doing their job here. You don’t get that kind of ‘sound’ on L.A. radio. . . . Perhaps that is the reason for the Watts situation after all.”57 Shirley implies that Wood’s WVON editorials provided a positive avenue for psychological relief so that African Americans’ frustrations about racial injustice did not manifest in physical violence or other self-destructive behaviors.58 Additionally, she suggests that the lack of Los Angeles radio stations bold enough to rebuke city leaders responsible for racial oppression may have incubated repressed feelings that erupted into the rioting that occurred in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles the previous year. However, Shirley concludes, Wood’s editorials facilitated black Chicagoans’ collective identification and provided them an avenue through which to vocalize the smoldering anguish that blacks in other major U.S. cities had too often suffered internally and in isolation. As radio historian

Susan Douglas has argued, listening to the radio “imparts a strong sense of belonging and creates connections between inner selves and voices.”59 Wood’s WVON editorials in particular, as Searcy argues, became a “communal mouthpiece” that worked as a “release valve,” helping to alleviate “the simmering tensions growing in Chicago’s black community during the 1960s and early 1970s.”60 In this regard, Wood’s editorial voice was particularly

57 Shirley, “Confetti,” Chicago Defender, July 19, 1966. 58 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 125, 130. 59 Douglas, Listening In, 19. 60 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 130.

158 useful in the wake of traumatic events such as police brutality or assassinations.

It is interesting to consider the parallels between Wood’s editorials and the tradition of blues music in the United States. The blues, Houston A. Baker Jr. argues, are essentially interpretations of African American life experience. The blues singer and her production

“are always at this intersection, this crossing, codifying force, providing resonance for experience’s multiplicities.”61 In short, the blues are the lyrical transliterations of African

Americans’ oppressive life experiences. The blues singer fashions the raw material experience of life into a figure or metaphor that stands for (or signifies) them. Thus, the blues singer is a master at troping. Similar to the blues, Wood’s WVON editorials became a means that African Americans utilized to retain their sanity in the face of existential realities of sorrow, hopelessness, and suffering. Further, according to James Cone, as “transcendent reflections on black humanity,” the blues, much like Wood’s editorials at WVON, affirm the black person amid the “immediate absurdity” of racial terror and injustice. Thus, both the blues and Wood’s editorials can be read as windows revealing African Americans’ attempts to assert and define their own sense of personhood amid struggle. Both can be read as cultural forms of psychic survival.62

In 1967, Wood brought his provocative editorials and news reporting to television as host of WCIU-TV’s A Black’s View of the News, the first black-oriented television news show of its kind in Chicago. Five nights a week Wood and WVON reporter Don Cornelius, who would go on to host Soul Train, offered news and commentary for African Americans. His first commentary for A Black’s View of the News involved police brutality by Chicago police

61 Houston A. Baker Jr., Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 7. 62 James Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 105, 110, 113-14, 119.

159 officers.63 Whether on radio or television, a hallmark of Wood’s often-controversial editorials involved constructions of black citizenship. He once stated, “Black people are the only ethnic group in this country who had to have a special bill passed in order for them to be treated halfway like citizens and human beings.”64 Thus, Wood’s editorials provide insights into his understanding of the nature and role of U.S. citizenship in general and black citizenship in particular. For Wood, one’s status as a U.S. citizen involved an inherent duty to pursue unity with others regardless of race.

Unity as a Civic Duty of U.S. Citizenship

As stated earlier, Wood believed communication technology like radio could serve as a bridge unifying difference across races. His editorials at WVON emphasized “unity” as an obligation inseparable from one’s status as a citizen. For Wood, U.S. citizenship entailed both an inherent right to equality as well as an inherited responsibility to treat others with mutuality. An examination of several full and partial transcripts of editorials Wood composed during and after his time as WVON news director reveals how the theme “unified citizenry” anchored Wood’s editorial voice throughout his radio career. Below I examine three editorials Wood used to communicate the intrinsic rights and obligations of U.S. citizenship. First, I examine one of Wood’s WVON editorials that Chicago Defender columnist

Thelma Hunt Shirley reprinted in April 1966. In this editorial, Wood lashes out at African

Americans for failing in their civic duties to uplift one another and improve their communities. Second, I explore Wood’s September 1981 editorial on the black press that was printed in the New York Amsterdam News. In this editorial Wood exhorts African

63 “A Black’s View of the News Featured on WCIU-TV,” Chicago Defender, May 6, 1969; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 128-29. 64 “International Masons,” Chicago Defender; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 129-30.

160 Americans to support black-owned media outlets, which, he argued, could educate whites about black public life and refigure racist representations of black identity and citizenship. Finally, I explore Wood’s December 1981 editorial on the season of Advent printed in the Los Angeles Sentinel. In this editorial, Wood evokes religion to argue for the inherent relationship between one’s faith and their citizenship. In each of the editorials examined below, Wood’s ideal of U.S. citizenship is defined by radical mutuality.

Wood’s editorials frequently described civil rights and the obligation to forge empathetic relationships, regardless of race, as mutually inclusive dimensions of U.S. citizenship. For Wood, the fullest expression and benefits of one could not be accomplished or experienced without the other. In short, Wood’s understanding of the interconnected nature of civil rights and civil responsibility served as a lens through which he interpreted and evaluated citizenship. In an April 1966 article in the Chicago Defender, Thelma Hunt

Shirley printed an editorial in which Wood criticized African Americans for failing to extend to each other the same basic hospitalities that many were busy fighting to receive from whites through civil rights demonstrations and legislation. African Americans’ quest to be treated as first-class citizens, Wood argued, inherently bound them to particular standards of behavior:

We here at WVON feel that first class citizenship includes equal rights, but also requires the assumption of equal citizenship responsibilities. Negroes now have the opportunity and the duty of fulfilling these responsibilities which have come with their long delayed equal rights. We sincerely hope that they will not continue to be indifferent to the opportunities or duties before them. It is a sad, but nevertheless true indictment that Negroes are woefully lacking when it comes to respecting the rights and privileges of their neighbors.65

Wood’s editorial continued by chastising both local black parents about littering and youth for destroying personal property like flowerpots. He was especially tough on parents, stating,

65 Thelma Hunt Shirley, “Confetti,” Chicago Defender, April 14, 1966; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 126.

161 “If they respect their neighbors’ right to a neat, clean surrounding, they would not allow their children, and some non-thinking grown-ups, to throw litter, whisky and wine bottles or other assorted waste matter into the streets and on the front sidewalks.” Here Wood draws parallels between personal behavior and the larger crusade for civil rights. He declared to listeners, “Now would be a good time to begin your own personal crusade against grime, grit and garbage. To really enjoy first class citizenship, you must act like a first class citizen!”66

Thus, in this editorial Wood defined citizenship in terms of the extent of one’s individual commitment to communal revitalization. For Wood, African Americans’ path to first-class citizenship began when they assumed responsibility for improving both the lives and the living conditions of their black neighbors. While Wood’s message is a forceful critique, it is also instructional. The struggle to persuade whites to confer full democratic freedoms to

African Americans, Wood counsels subtly, is not unrelated to African Americans’ treatment of one another. The implication is that within African Americans’ struggle for civil rights is an implicit commitment to refuse to impinge upon the rights and privileges of other African

Americans. Here Wood links collective struggle to individual behavior as he invites listeners to consider citizenship as both a right one receives and a duty in which one must participate.

Not only did Wood’s editorials seek to challenge African Americans to unite, but they also emphasized the power of black-oriented media to turn whites into allies while mitigating racial division. Wood maintained that black-owned and -operated media had the capacity to repudiate false depictions of black citizenship within white-dominated media. In

September 1981, the New York Amsterdam News printed an editorial that Wood composed on unity and the black press. At the time Wood was serving as Vice President of Special

Programming for the National Black Network in New York City and was heard in forty-two

66 Shirley, “Confetti,” Chicago Defender, April 14, 1966; Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 127.

162 cities as a news commentator.67 In his editorial, entitled “It’s Time for a Display of

Unity,” Wood argued that the racism threatening unity both among African Americans and the nation’s citizenry as a whole was fueled in large part by a white-owned media machinery fixated on misrepresenting black public life and citizenship: “Just as long as this nation’s mass media . . . electronic and print . . . remains racist just so long will there be a need for the ‘black press.’”68

Calling for collective support of the black press, Wood urged African Americans to purchase a black newspaper on September 17, 1981, a date the black-owned

Communications Alliance designated as “Buy a Black Newspaper Day.” Writing almost forty years earlier, St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton argued that white media institutions in

Chicago attempted to restrict black voices and inhibited accurate portrayals of the reality of

African Americans’ experiences through either blind neglect or pernicious sanctions on black media:

The larger white community exercises economic controls over Negro papers in other ways, too—through mortgage-holders, bankers who extend loans, and politicians who may grant or withhold political contributions during campaigns. Despite such controls, these papers are rarely maneuvered into a position where policy is actually dictated by these sources.69

Wood understood the black press as an institution that could help educate mainstream media agents and, consequently, the dominant public sphere about black life in the United

States. He lamented that information contained in magazines like Ebony and Jet as well as various national black newspapers could have been consulted to create policies to mediate past and present concerns within black communities across the country. Wood once

67 Roy Wood, “It’s Time for a Display of Unity,” New York Amsterdam News, September 26, 1981. 68 Ibid. 69 St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 412.

163 declared, “Except for the attention it gets in the black press, I am of the opinion that black Americans’ problems . . . social, economic and educational . . . have been grossly neglected over the past few years.”70

Also in his September 1981 editorial, Wood referred to the social protests that had erupted in the mid-1950s to dramatize the protracted nature of mainstream media’s misrepresntations of black life in the United States: “The so-called ‘racial crisis’ in this country was news long before 1954! As a matter of record, I think it was a major story when

19 Africans became indentured servants in Virginia in 1619.”71 To those first enslaved

Africans forced to Virginia’s shores in 1619, slavery was indeed a major headline. However, to their white captors, Wood suggests, slavery was simply a part of daily life that had become normalized between childhood and adulthood largely through white-owned media institutions’ negative constructions of black humanity. When it came to the matter of communication in the United States, Wood concluded as late as the 1990s that “the white man has total control.” And white-owned institutions that controlled advertising dollars— the lifeblood of electronic and print media—limited opportunities for African Americans to control and circulate information about and for black lives.72 Thus, Wood believed the black press had an obligation to talk back to and resist those media institutions circulating racist views of African Americans. In fact, Wood identified the black press as the strongest weapon at African Americans’ disposal in confronting racism and fostering unity among the races. He stated in 1981, “Without the continuing existence of the black press, African

Americans would be suffering many exceptional disadvantages that no longer exist.”73

70 Wood, “Display of Unity.” 71 Ibid. 72 Wood quoted in Williams, Legendary Pioneers, 178. 73 Wood, “Display of Unity.”

164 While overt theological exhortations are not present in most of Wood’s surviving editorials, there are instances when Wood evoked Christianity’s scriptural canon to inform a concept of citizenship defined by mutuality. In a December 1981 editorial printed in the Los Angeles Sentinel, Wood recognized the season of Advent in the Christian liturgical calendar as a time to reflect on how the ministry of Jesus Christ might motivate listeners to extend greater measures of hospitality toward others. Wood invites readers to imagine the series of events that would have unfolded if Jesus returned to earth that particular Christmas season unshaven, wearing a loincloth, donning open-toed sandals, and riding a donkey in the dead of winter. Police would have arrested Jesus, Wood imagined, for jamming major thoroughfares as people rubbernecked at the spectacle. Then Jesus would have angered many people and social institutions for going about his “Love Thy Neighbor Thing.” For instance, after feeding and clothing the poor, Jesus would have angered welfare workers concerned that Jesus might put them out of business. Next, after healing people who had illnesses, Jesus would have angered medical professionals worried that his free health care

(and administered without a license!) would cut into their profits. Finally, Jesus would have angered the undertakers after he started raising the dead. Jesus’ “Love Thy Neighbor Thing,”

Wood concluded, would have undoubtedly caused serious scandal:

Any way you look at it . . . if Jesus returned to earth this Christmastime he would be in big trouble. Not so much because the people would not be ready for his good works . . . healing the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and raising the dead . . . but mainly because people are not yet quite ready to accept His admonition to “love they [sic] neighbor as thyself.” As a matter of fact, most of us find it quite hard to really “love” anybody except ourselves . . . and even that love is suspect because of the way many of us misuse and abuse our health and bodies. Racist minded “Christians” would refuse to love Jesus if he comes back, simply because he wouldn’t be “WHITE.” Fortunately . . . at least for Jesus . . . Christmas gives all of us the chance to put selfishness and hatred on the back burner, thereby giving God and his son a well earned rest from their day to day ministrations to the victims of those two evils.

165 During this holiday season, I think it would be a good time for all of us regardless of color or race, to make an effort to be more like Jesus, because if we don’t do that . . . I’m of the opinion Jesus will never come back to earth again! You wouldn’t want to be crucified a second time either—would you? I know I wouldn’t and neither would Jesus. Anyway . . . merry Christmas everybody. This is just one Black man’s opinion. What’s yours? I’m Roy Wood.74

Written years after he left WVON, Wood’s editorial emphasizes the relationship between mutuality and citizenship, a conviction he championed throughout his career. It is significant that Wood uses racism to focus his editorial reflection on Advent, a season devoted to celebrating humanity’s reconciliation to God through the birth of Jesus Christ. In doing so,

Wood identifies restorative communion with others as a fundamental obligation that defines both Christianity and U.S. citizenship. Antithetical to the Advent message, he argues, is the hatred and selfishness that allow racism and its various manifestations of inhumanity to thrive. Faith in Jesus Christ as the crucified and resurrected Messiah, Wood exhorts, obligates a Christian to live free of the prejudice and self-centeredness that contradict God’s sacrificial nature embodied in Jesus’ life and ministry.

While Wood’s editorials were critical of both African Americans and whites, there were times his editorials were directed at failures in citizenship more generally. For instance,

Wood’s June 1964 satirical WVON editorial on bigotry indirectly indicts racist views without condemning a particular racial group. In this editorial, Wood assumes the role of a bigot to dramatize the threat prejudice poses to the unity or, to use Wood’s term, “brotherhood” among the nation’s citizens. It seems likely Wood’s editorial is responding largely to white supremacist views. However, his editorial is not directed at any particular race. Interestingly, the editorial’s effectiveness depends upon this ambiguity. For instance, by claiming to be a bigot, Wood, an African American, exposes the flawed logic at work when any African

74 Roy Wood, “Are We Really Ready,” Los Angeles Sentinel, December 10, 1981.

166 American fighting for full citizenship harbored hate toward whites. Additionally, by assuming the persona of a bigot, Wood reveals the hypocrisy at work when whites discriminate against African Americans who are also U.S. citizens entitled to the same equal rights. Thus, Wood’s construction of citizenship in this editorial involves the inherent right to equal treatment as well as the responsibility to fight to extend equality to others. In sum,

Wood’s June 1964 editorial on bigotry produces a complex instructional double-voiced discourse about racial division achieved through the African American vernacular practice of

Signifyin(g).

Feigning Bigotry for the Sake of Brotherhood

Wood’s editorials at WVON provided a forum for listeners to reflect upon a conception of U.S. citizenship defined in terms of radical interconnectivity. In fact, to reinforce this notion of citizenship Wood sometimes evoked the theme of “brotherhood” in his editorials. Though using clearly gendered language, Wood deployed the term to prompt reflection on the shared ideal and goal of unity, which he believed was every U.S. citizen’s right and responsibility. The term “brotherhood” would have also been familiar language used among members of black Protestant churches, social organizations, and labor institutions in Chicago to denote social cohesion, collective struggle, and group identity.

However, as Wood often argued, prejudice posed a serious threat to a unified citizenship, or

“brotherhood.” For Wood, bigotry was a contagion from which no human being, regardless of race, was immune. In his June 1964 WVON editorial on bigotry, for instance, Wood does not frame bigotry as an offense only white people commit. Instead, he weaves a savvy tirade about the destructive nature of prejudice into the zealous yet flawed understanding of

167 citizenship held by a bigot whom Wood impersonates. The implication is that racial prejudice has no ethnicity and that anyone harboring bigotry compromises the unity necessary for a thriving U.S. citizenry. Wood’s editorial, in its entirety, reads as folllows:

“As a bigot, I dislike all people who do not have the same color of skin as mine, because they are not as intelligent as I am . . . I think . . . I haven’t tried to find out. I don’t know if they can do my work as well or better than I can, and I won’t give them a chance to prove it. Suppose I did give them the chance and they succeeded . . . what would happen to my prejudice and old ideas about them? “No sir . . . nob[o]dy’s going to take my prejudiced ideas away from me . . . or will they? Another reason why, as a bigot, I continue to hate people who are different from me is because if everybody liked everyone else, wouldn’t it be harder to raise taxes . . . go to war against other nations . . . hate others? “I feel that brotherhood would take my freedom away from me, I want the freedom of hating anybody, anytime, without any interference from the government . . . like the civil rights bill they’re trying to pass . . . If we bigots keep on losing our freedom to hate, we will soon become extinct . . . You wouldn’t want this to happen would you? “Then, let’s get together and stop all this talk about brotherhood, peace, love, understanding, self-respect and equal employment opportunities. Help build a successful America by stamping out brotherhood. Today it is not safe to love your blood brother, and I know I’m not going to claim someone as a brother whose skin is a different color than mine! As a bigot, I believe that we can have the fatherhood of God, without the brotherhood of man!”75

The phrase “brotherhood of man, fatherhood of God,” had significant political resonance at the time Wood’s editorial aired on WVON. For instance, while running for the

Republican presidential nomination in 1964, New York governor Nelson Aldrich

Rockefeller repeated the phrase so often that reporters shortened it to the acronym

“Bomfog,” which came to refer to excessively pious and platitudinous political commentary.

Given the high political stakes of the moment, it seems likely Wood used the phrase at the conclusion of his editorial to denote the clashing of political philosophies or the bitter

75 Roy Wood, “WVON Takes Rap at Bias,” Billboard, June 20, 1964. See “Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, 41st Vice President (1974-1977),” United States Senate web site, https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Nelson_Rockefeller.htm.

168 tensions between racial prejudice and racial justice comprising much of the contentious climate of the 1964 presidential campaign.

It is likely that Wood’s entire editorial is a response to anti-civil rights sentiments espoused during the contentious 1964 presidential campaign by conservative politicians like

Arizona Republican senator Barry Goldwater. In the wake of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and amid Cold War anxieties of nuclear warfare and national racial unrest, Goldwater secured the Republican presidential nomination by berating party moderates.76 His candidacy emerged out of a growing conservative movement that valued limited government, strong anti-communism, and opposition to federal civil rights legislation.77 Goldwater himself voted against the bipartisan Civil Rights Act of 1964 on June

19 and supported restrictive amendments to earlier civil rights legislation.78 Wood’s reference to the civil rights bill in his editorial suggests that his WVON editorial aired before the

Senate voted. Thus, the editorial was likely broadcast on or before June 19, 1964. In July

1964, one month after Wood’s editorial aired on WVON, Goldwater delivered his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in the Cow Palace in San

Francisco. Conservatives roared in affirmation when Goldwater stated: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”79

76 Dan Nowicki, “Conservatives Owe Much to Goldwater’s Presidential Bid,” Arizona Republic, April 13, 2014. 77 Julian Zelizer, “Is Donald Trump Another Barry Goldwater?” CNN.com, March 1, 2016. 78 Bart Barnes, “Barry Goldwater, GOP Hero, Dies,” Washington Post, May 30, 1998. 79 Nowicki, “Conservatives Owe Much.” Despite the support of party conservatives, Goldwater ran an ineffective campaign against incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson. A terrible campaigner who constantly stumbled over words, lacked media savvy, and refused to moderate his views, Goldwater alienated moderate Republicans. Johnson capitalized on this widening fracture, and with the help of the media, who largely held unfavorable views of Goldwater, portraying the conservative as the extremist figurehead of a dangerous fringe. In particular, Johnson utilized negative television advertisements to marginalze Goldwater. These hard-hitting commercials attacked Goldwater for supporting the modification of Social Security and opposing Medicare and a nuclear-test-ban treaty. Perhaps the most inflammatory 1964 anti-Goldwater ad never actually aired. It

169 The 1964 presidential campaign, therefore, offers important historical context for making sense of the moment in which Wood’s editorial intervened. It also illuminates additional insights about and implications of the power of Wood’s editorial as a Signifying(g) discourse. It seems likely a direct allusion to the 1964 political scene. While the race of the bigot in Wood’s editorial is not identified, it would have been difficult for listeners following the 1964 presidential campaign not to have heard Wood’s bigot as a surrogate for political conservatives like Goldwater, who viewed the 1964 Civil Rights Act as unconstitutional. It is likely this was in fact Wood’s intention. In his editorial, Wood names, or rather, tropes a recurrent human situation involving the systematic denial of inherent freedoms and dignities.

It is not surprising that Wood’s editorial, which played eight times a day Monday through

Saturday the week it aired in June 1964, echoed with a note of scandal among some listeners.

In fact, shortly after it aired, Billboard reported that WVON “recently created quite a stir with an outspoken but to-the-point editorial on bigotry.”80 The Billboard article is the only commentary responding to Wood’s editorial I have found.

Wood deploys the African American vernacular practice of Signifyin(g) to refigure flawed conceptions of U.S. citizenship in hopes of inspiring people to reconcile beyond racial divisions. As stated earlier, the tradition of African American Signifyin(g) utilizes various forms of verbal play to communicate messages figuratively and, ultimately, to refigure structural conventions. Thus, Signifyin(g) repeats formal structures (in literature and language, for instance) but with a difference. For example, when the black essayist William J.

featured imagery of Ku Klux Klansmen burning a cross. The ad quoted the Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan espousing hatred toward African Americans, Catholics, and Jews. Then he states: “I like Barry Goldwater. He needs our help.” While Johnson vetoed the ad’s use, it conveyed the claim that Goldwater was a bigot because he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which he deemed unconstitutional. See Zelizer, “Is Donald Trump Another Barry Goldwater?”; Nowicki, “Conservatives Owe Much.” 80 Wood, “WVON Takes Rap at Bias.” Also see Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 125.

170 Wilson, who published writings in mid-nineteenth-century black periodicals under the pseudonym Ethiop, composed the essay, “What Shall We Do with the White People?” he was Signifyin(g) upon a common genre of essays known as “What Shall We Do with the

Negro” or, more succinctly, “The Negro Problem.”81 By repeating the latter genre’s formal structure but with an obvious difference in title and content, Wilson was able to produce a double-voiced discourse that articulated new figurations and meanings about black identity and self-determination. Thus, to achieve this double-voicedness, African American

Signifyin(g) depends fundamentally upon formal revision and intertexual relation. “It is a game of language,” Gates argues, “independent of reaction to white racism or even to collective black wish-fulfillment vis-à-vis white racism.”82

Unfortunately, scholars have too often focused on ritual insult games such as the dozens or more aggressive and vulgar verbal games and neglected the multitude of uses that constitute Signifyin(g). Both Gates and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan conclude correctly that many scholars have misunderstood Signifyin(g) because they have failed to define it as a substantive theory of black criticism. Instead, many have taken the tradition’s parts—one of

81 Ethiop, “What Shall We Do with the White People,” Anglo-African Magazine II, no. 2 (February 1860): 41-45. Gates, Signifying Monkey, 94. 82 Gates, Signifying Monkey, 51-52, 69-70, 94. For one of the earliest recorded definitions of Signifyin(g), see Nora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008). For additional definitions of Signifyin(g) as a rhetorical trope, see Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues (New York: Random House, 1946); Ethel M. Albert, “‘Rhetoric,’ ‘Logic,’ and ‘Poetics’ in Burundi: Culture Patterning of Speech Behavior,” American Anthropologist 66 (1964): 35-54; Thomas Kochman, “‘Rappin’ in the Black Ghetto,” Trans- Action 6 (February 1969): 32; Clarence Major, Dictionary of Afro-American Slang (New York: International Publishers, 1970); Hermese E. Roberts, The Third Ear: A Black Glossary (Chicago: English-Language Institute of America, 1971); Thomas Kochman, Rappin’ and Stylin’ Out: Communication in Urban Black America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972); Dundes, Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel; Malachi Andrews and Paul T. Owens, Black Language (West Los Angeles: Seymour-Smith, 1973); Jim Haskins and Hugh F. Butts, The Psychology of Black Language (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1973); Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner, comps. and eds., Dictionary of American Slang, 2nd supplemental ed. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1975); Roger D. Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980).

171 the many tropes subsumed within Signifyin(g)—as the whole.83 However, Wood’s June

1964 WVON editorial on bigotry provides a case for examining the diverse nature of

African American Signifyin(g). In this editorial, Wood utilizes several different Signifyin(g) practices to compel more critical reflection among listeners about the destructive effects of racism. Wood’s editorial insults and uplifts, mocks and affirms, laments and celebrates, and indicts and insinuates. Thus, the diverse and versatile nature of Signifyin(g) becomes an appropriate vehicle for the multiplicity of purposes seemingly at work.

Wood’s editorial deploys Signifyin(g) to dramatize through a clever double-voiced discourse the danger that racial prejudice poses to U.S. citizenship. Rather than speak directly against bigotry, Wood eviscerates the absurd logic of racism indirectly through a satirical apologia.84 An apologia is a speech of self-defense given in response to an accusation, especially one questioning a person’s morality, motives, or reputation.85 The

83 Gates, Signifying Monkey, 71, 80; Mitchell-Kernan, “Signifying as a Form of Verbal Art.” 84 In their foundational essay on the apologic genre, B. L. Ware and Wil A. Linkugel theorize categories and subgenres of apologetic discourse intended to assist rhetorical critics in identifying the strategies rhetors use when addressing accusations or blame; B. L. Ware and Wil A. Linkugel, “They Spoke in Defense of Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 59, no. 3 (1973): 273-83. Relying upon Robert P. Abelson’s terminology in “Modes of Resolution of Belief Dilemmas” to describe four modes of resolution, Ware and Linkugel identify four rhetorical choices or factors available to a rhetor in an apologetic situation: denial, bolstering, differentiation, and transcendence. In denial, a rhetor attempts to disavow any relationship to whatever about the accusation an audience finds reprehensible. Bolstering occurs when a rhetor identifies him- or herself with a fact, sentiment, or relationship the audience views favorably. Differentiation involves a speaker attempting to divorce some fact, feeling, or relationship from a larger context. The goal with differentiation is to place whatever an audience finds repulsive about a rhetor into a new perspective. Finally, transcendence involves joining some fact, feeling, or relationship with a larger context within which an audience does not yet view a rhetor. For an introduction to apologia, see Robert P. Abelson, “Modes of Resolution of Belief Dilemmas,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 3 (December 1959): 343-52; Jackson Harrell, B. L. Ware, and Wil A. Linkugel, ‘‘Failure of Apology in American Politics: Nixon on Watergate,’’ Speech Monographs 42, no. 4 (November 1975): 245-61; Dexter B. Gordon and Carrie Crenshaw, “Racial Apologies,” in New Approaches to Rhetoric, ed. Patricia A. Sullivan and Steven R. Goldzwig (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004), 245-66; Joy Koesten and Robert C. Rowland, “The Rhetoric of Atonement,” Communication Studies 55, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 68-87; Lisa Storm Villadsen, “Beyond the Spectacle of Apologia: Reading Official Apologies as Proto-Deliberative Rhetoric and Instantiations of Rhetorical Citizenship,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 98, no. 2 (May 2012): 230-47; Michelle A. Holling, Dreama G. Moon, and Alexandra Jackson Nevis, “Racist Violations and Racializing Apologia in a Post-Racism Era,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 7, no. 4 (November 2014): 260-86. 85 Allison M. Prasch, “Retelling Watergate: Apologia, Political Eulogy, and Richard Nixon’s ‘Final Campaign,’” Southern Communication Journal 80, no. 4 (September-October 2015): 274.

172 nature of Wood’s apologetic discourse in this editorial resembles a genre of self-defense speech that Dexter B. Gordon and Carrie Crenshaw call “racial apologies.” Gordon and

Crenshaw identify “racial apologies” as speeches whites construct in defense of whites as a group in order “to deflect personal responsibility for racism by masking White privilege.”

Though Wood’s editorial does not overtly condemn whites, it centers prejudice in order to expose it. In particular, Wood rhetorically transfigures himself into a bigot who proclaims proudly the pathogenic propositions preserving the deadly presumptions of prejudice. By evoking an unrepentant bigot, Wood’s editorial reveals a key dynamic at work in racial apologies: the shifting of the burden of perpetrating racism from whites to African

Americans.86 By repeating and then reversing structures of racist apologetics through parody,

Wood’s editorial conjures an alternate meaning meant to inspire listeners to consider the deadly implications of prejudice.87 Wood’s savvy use of a diverse repertoire of Signifyin(g) practices including parody, satire, irony, and indirection allows him to issue a scathing critique of racism without issuing any explicit argument against it. This silent message and certainly the insinuation of white culpability are made audible through Wood’s double- voicedness.88

Given the complexity and centrality of double-voiced discourse in Signifyin(g), it is necessary to elaborate briefly on the term before providing a close reading of Wood’s June

1964 WVON editorial. Mikhail Bakhtin’s essay, “Discourse Typology of Prose,” offers a

86 Gordon and Crenshaw, “Racial Apologies,” 262. 87 For early examples of racist apologetics and the use of religion to justify the systematic subjugation of African Americans in the United States, see Jeffrey Robert Young, ed., Proslavery and Sectional Thought in the Early South, 1740-1829: An Anthology (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006). 88 For a comprehensive archive of African American sermons that engage in black double-voiced Signifyin(g) discourse, see Martha Simmons and Frank A. Thomas, eds., Preaching with Sacred Fire: An Anthology of African American Sermons, 1750 to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2010). For a few compelling examples of the discourse found in this anthology, see Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July”; Sojourner Truth, “Ar’n’t I a Woman?”; and John Jasper, “De Sun Do Move.”

173 helpful interpretive lens through which to examine the double-voiced discourse upon which Wood’s editorial depends. In particular, Bakhtin identifies two subdivisions at work in double-voiced discourse—parodic narration and hidden polemic.89 He offers the following description of the nature and function of parodic narration or narrative parody:

As in stylization, the author employs the speech of another, but, in contradistinction to stylization, he introduces into that other speech an intention which is directly opposed to the original one. The second voice, having lodged in the other speech, clashes antagonistically with the original, host voice and forces it to serve directly opposite aims. Speech becomes a battlefield for opposing intentions. . . . Parody allows considerable variety: one can parody another’s style as style, or parody another’s socially typical or individually characteristic manner of observing, thinking, and speaking. Furthermore, the depth of parody may vary: one can limit parody to the forms that make up the verbal surface, but one can also parody even the deepest principles of the other speech act.90

Though the speech Wood employs in his editorial is an imagined discourse delivered through an imagined person, it functions as parodic narration as the bigot’s racist sentiments emerge alongside Wood and WVON’s audibly absent but silently present pro-civil rights sentiments.91 In other words, Wood’s double-voiced discourse relies fundamentally on his listeners’ familiarity with his views on racial equality. The parody, then, turns on listeners’ experience hearing Wood, who is already known publicly as a civil rights advocate, utter racist views. Ironically, Wood’s urgent call for human dignity is manifested in its absence. In short, his use of satire achieves in spoken discourse what Northrop Frye refers to in

89 Mikhail Bakhtin, “Discourse Typology in Prose,” in Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views, ed. Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), 176-96. Also see David Worchester, The Art of Satire (New York: Russell and Russell, 1960), 42; Gates, Signifying Monkey, 89-124. 90 Bakhtin, “Discourse Typology in Prose,” 185-86. 91 As mentioned earlier, Wood’s editorial relies upon prosopopoeia for its rhetorical force. Wood’s clever use of this device not only allows him to provide an alternate perspective to the one being described, but it also works to disarm listeners’ potential concerns with the content. For instance, instead of openly condemning white racists, or racists of any ethnicity, which some could read as antagonistic or at the very least taboo, Wood places the potentially unfavorable perspective on the shoulders of an imaginary stereotype. The audience's reactions are then directed toward this figment rather than Wood. Thus, it is the bigot, not Wood, who condemns racists, unmaskes the absurdity of prejudice, and celebrates the inherent equality of all human beings.

174 literature as “a special function of analysis, of breaking up the lumber of stereotypes, fossilized beliefs, superstitious terrors, crank theories, pedantic dogmatisms, oppressive fashions, and all other things that impede the free movement . . . of society.”92

In addition to parodic narration, Bakhtin identifies what he refers to as hidden polemic—which is also at work in Wood’s editorial—as a fundamental component of double-voiced discourse. In fact, it is the continual overlap of parodic narration and hidden polemic that facilitates Wood’s construction of the concept of a united U.S citizenry: “When parody becomes aware of substantial resistance, a certain forcefulness and profundity in the speech act it parodies, it takes on a new dimension of complexity via the tones of the hidden polemic. . . . [A] process of inner dialogization takes place within the parodic speech act.”93

Through this process of inner dialogization Wood’s editorial voice becomes two distinct autonomous voices: one containing the bigot’s prejudiced views and one containing the anti- racist views that listeners have previously heard Wood espouse. Both the bigot’s audible voice and Wood’s silent voice are instantly and simultaneously engaged in a conflicting inner dialogue. Wood’s editorial can be read, then, as engaged in Signifyin(g) through parody as hidden polemic. It seems the goal of such intentional Signifyin(g) is to create space rhetorically to redress a perceived power imbalance.94 Gary Saul Morson offers an important elaboration on Bakhtin’s concept of double-voiced discourse that provides further insight into the purposes Wood may have intended when he decided to impersonate a bigot to narrate his June 1964 WVON editorial. Morson explains, “The audience of a double-voiced

92 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 233. 93 Bakhtin, “Discourse Typology in Prose,” 190; Gates, Signifying Monkey, 112-13. 94 For an example of this kind of double-voiced Signifyin(g) through parody as hidden polemic, see Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972). In this book, Reed achieves a similar inner dialogization by foregrounding two autonomous narrative voices, one past and one present, in order to parody two simultaneous detective narrations; Gates, Signifying Monkey, 113, 124.

175 word is therefore meant to hear both a version of the original utterance as the embodiment of its speaker’s point of view (or ‘semantic position’) and the second speaker’s evaluation of that utterance from a different point of view.”95 In short, Wood’s editorial is an example of an extended Signifyin(g) sign of repetition and reversal, what Gates refers to as

“a chiastic slaying at the crossroads where two discursive units meet.”96

In the remainder of this chapter, I provide a close reading of Wood’s June 1964

WVON editorial on bigotry. In particular, my analysis focuses on Wood’s conception of a unified U.S. citizenship, or to use his language, “brotherhood,” which emerges in the editorial through its absence. I examine each of the editorial’s four sections—that is, paragraphs in the published version—separately and in consecutive order. This approach preserves the “textual context” or the unfolding of Wood’s discourse as one experiences it as a reader.97 By refusing to break character as a bigot, Wood attempts to simulate the logical justifications at stake for those who believe they do not have to relinquish racial prejudice to be faithful U.S. citizens or even people of faith. Ultimately, my analysis concludes, Wood’s editorial attempts, through his double-voiced Signifyin(g) discourse, to refigure a concept of citizenship forged in fear and self-centeredness into one defined in terms of courage, openness, and mutuality.

The editorial’s opening is jarring. Instead of providing any context for listeners,

Wood dives in headfirst. He introduces himself, unapologetically, as a bigot. He then proceeds by defining bigotry briefly in colorful yet simple terms:

95 Gary Saul Morson, The Boundaries of Genre: Dostoevsky’s “Diary of a Writer” and the Traditions of Literary Utopia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 108. See Gates, Signifying Monkey, 50. 96 Gates, Signifying Monkey, 66. 97 For more on “textual context,” see Phillip K. Tompkins, “The Rhetorical Criticism of Non-Oratorical Works,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 55, no. 4 (1969): 431-39; Michael C. Leff, “Textual Criticism: The Legacy of G. P. Mohrmann,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 72, no. 4 (1986): 377-89; Stephen E. Lucas, “The Renaissance of American Public Address: Text and Context in Rhetorical Criticism,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 74, no. 2 (1988): 241-60.

176 “As a bigot, I dislike all people who do not have the same color of skin as mine, because they are not as intelligent as I am . . . I think . . . I haven’t tried to find out. I don’t know if they can do my work as well or better than I can, and I won’t give them a chance to prove it. Suppose I did give them the chance and they succeeded . . . what would happen to my prejudice and old ideas about them?”98

Interestingly, Wood appears not to assume his listeners have a firm understanding of bigotry.

Instead, he creatively weaves a basic definition of the term into his extended diatribe on racial difference. Thus, this first paragraph can be read as a preamble that grabs the listener’s attention while also equipping listeners with the necessary principles and terminology to participate in the discussion that follows. However, since Wood begins the editorial already in character, it is not immediately clear if he intends to be satirical. Consequently, Wood is able to generate a measure of shock initially. It is reasonable to conclude from Billboard’s statement above that this shock or at least initial confusion constituted an aural scandal for at least some listeners. This self-proclaimed bigot’s contemptuous statements are quite scandalous, after all. For instance, the bigot confesses that while he has not taken the time to befriend people of different races or given them a chance to demonstrate their professional competency, he knows himself to be superior intellectually and professionally solely because of his race, which is not specified. Through the bigot’s brazen confession, Wood shines a spotlight on a basic assumption and flaw of prejudicial beliefs: they depend upon conjecture and myth to warp fact and reality. Thus, Wood opens his editorial by offering listeners the complex but succinct thesis that bigotry thrives on unsubstantiated rumor, innuendo, gossip, opinion, fear, and ignorance. The bigot confirms as much as his testimony unfolds further.

Maintaining obdurate negative fantasies about people of other races, the bigot argues, is necessary if one wants to continue hating them. He admits that if he gave people of other races an opportunity to prove their competency and they actually demonstrated behaviors or

98 Wood, “WVON Takes Rap at Bias.”

177 identities that defied the negative stereotypes in which he had unfairly imprisoned them, then he would risk losing the prejudicial worldview he depended upon to make sense of the world. Tragically, the bigot’s identity is defined solely by his freedom to hate people of other races. Thus, the bigot despises the prospect of relinquishing such freedom because, his reasoning holds, it would demand that he assume a new identity, a new way of relating to others that he is not willing or not yet able to imagine.

In the second section of the editorial, Wood introduces the flawed notion of citizenship that infects the bigot’s worldview. More specifically, the bigot’s subtle allusion to the democratic ideals of freedom of speech and expression is an attempt to justify his prejudice. The bigot concludes that his status as a citizen living within a democracy entitles him to the freedom to hate different races of people. Such freedom to hate, the bigot blares on, is his inalienable right and, consequently, a fundamental aspect of his identity as a U.S. citizen:

“No sir . . . nob[o]dy’s going to take my prejudiced ideas away from me . . . or will they? Another reason why, as a bigot, I continue to hate people who are different from me is because if everybody liked everyone else, wouldn’t it be harder to raise taxes . . . go to war against other nations . . . hate others?”99

Here the bigot reveals an important nuance to his understanding of citizenship. The bigot views his freedom to hate not only as his inherent right but also his fundamental responsibility as a citizen. And while the bigot reasons that losing his right to hate would change how the U.S. political machinery related to its citizens, the bigot’s discourse transcends the internal affairs of the nation. In particular, he suggests that without hate the nation would not be able to exert its military force and agenda on foreign soil in quite the

99 Wood, “WVON Takes Rap at Bias.”

178 same way. Thus, for the sake of all matters foreign and domestic, the bigot argues, disunity must be maintained.

Here Wood’s editorial reveals indirectly the larger, often unspoken and sinister role of bigotry: systematic oppression. The implication is that the U.S. democratic economy is most efficient when it can intentionally leverage difference and division to accomplish particular political ends uninterested in repairing disunity. Thus, the bigot concludes that his citizenship obligates him freely to exercise his right to hate others to sustain the U.S. social, economic, and political machinery. To cease to hate, the bigot suggests, would require a reformation of the entire system. Interestingly, the bigot does not view inhibiting higher taxes, quelling war, or minimizing hate as necessarily positive accomplishments. The bigot only laments that refusing to hate people of other races would fundamentally change the status quo. Rather than embracing a new identity in relation to a new societal order that could lead to more constructive ways of living, the bigot prefers to cling to prejudicial beliefs and an economic order dependent on discord. The bigot’s primary fear, then, seems to be the inevitable change that relinquishing hate would initiate.

Tragically, in the bigot’s haste to maintain the status quo, he remains blind to the destructive consequences of hate. Here Wood’s editorial conveys silently a fatal flaw of prejudicial thinking: confusion about the septic nature of hate that infects both victim and perpetrator. Though the bigot attempts to convince himself otherwise in the name of responsible citizenship, hate, as Martin Luther King Jr. counsels in his sermon “Loving Your

Enemies,” has no redeemable value: “By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down.”100

Thus, the recipients of hate are not the only victims. Perpetrators of hate also become casualties, a fact of which Wood’s bigot seems painfully unaware.

100 Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love (London: Hoddern and Stoughton, 1964), 38.

179 By the third section of the editorial, Wood reveals the primary threat to the bigot’s own sense of citizenship: a unified citizenry or “brotherhood.” It is a ridiculous logic.

Yet the bigot doubles down. Efforts to unify the nation’s citizens under the common goal of brotherhood, the bigot mourns, infringe upon his freedom to despise people of other races:

“I feel that brotherhood would take my freedom away from me, I want the freedom of hating anybody, anytime, without any interference from the government . . . like the civil rights bill they’re trying to pass . . . If we bigots keep on losing our freedom to hate, we will soon become extinct . . . You wouldn’t want this to happen would you?”101

The extent of the bigot’s stubbornness in retaining his right to hold prejudicial views reveals his distorted understanding of freedom. The bigot conceives of hate as his inalienable right.

Thus he concludes that he should be able to hate anyone with impunity. However, he fails to consider the many possibilities his prejudice forecloses. Hatred, Wood’s Signifyin(g) satirically insinuates, inhibits rather than enhances the bigot’s autonomy. Thus, the truth that emerges here through omission is that the bigot’s obsession with prejudice does not involve freedom at all. Additionally, his fear of what he perceives brotherhood would cost him paralyzes him from considering what he stands to gain by embracing alternatives to hate.

Thus, Wood concludes indirectly that when one is confined to a single worldview that constricts a preferred way of relating to others, then that person is living in bondage, not freedom. Sadly, the bigot looks upon brotherhood as an imposition rather than an invitation.

Consequently, the bigot cannot accept unity as a liberating path leading toward new possibilities, more diverse experiences, and even greater freedoms. Further, he sees civil rights legislation as an unconstitutional government strategy to force brotherhood upon him.

101 Wood, “WVON Takes Rap at Bias.” It seems likely that the reference to the civil rights bill in Wood’s editorial refers to the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Public Law 88-352, 78 Stat. 241), which made discrimination on the basis of sex and race illegal. See “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,” U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/civil-rights-act.

180 He refuses to view equality as an inherent right that legislation is not imposing but rather affirming and protecting. The bigot’s fierce refusal to relinquish prejudice suggests that he likely knows no other way. In this regard, his recalcitrance makes sense. Without another means of navigating the world, the bigot clings to his prejudicial beliefs because they are the only ones he possesses. Losing these beliefs would mean that part of his identity would cease to exist. In fact, extinction, the bigot warns, will be the fate of bigots should brotherhood prevail. Here the absurdity of the logic of bigots in justifying their prejudice is on full display.

The bigot hears the invitation to unity as a sentence of extinction rather than a promise of rebirth. Ultimately, the bigot’s tenacious defense of a person’s right to hate reveals his rejection of the belief in a person’s inherent right to be treated fairly, impartially, and with dignity. Wood’s savvy use of double-voiced discourse allows him to reveal this contradiction with scorching satirical force.

In the fourth and final section of Wood’s editorial, the bigot issues a passionate call to abandon brotherhood and attempts to unify North Americans’ shared hate for one another. Here, the bigot concludes his defense of enmity in a dramatic crescendo opposing citizenship defined by racial unanimity. The nation’s future success, the bigot exhorts, will be achieved through selfishness, not mutuality; fear, not courage; and division, not fellowship:

“Then, let’s get together and stop all this talk about brotherhood, peace, love, understanding, self-respect and equal employment opportunities. Help build a successful America by stamping out brotherhood. Today it is not safe to love your blood brother, and I know I’m not going to claim someone as a brother whose skin is a different color than mine! As a bigot, I believe that we can have the fatherhood of God, without the brotherhood of man!”102

While Wood’s editorial is likely a direct allusion to anti-civil rights sentiments espoused by conservatives like Goldwater during the 1964 presidential campaign, Wood’s refusal to

102 Wood, “WVON Takes Rap at Bias.”

181 disclose the racial identity of the bigot allows him to invite all listeners, regardless of their race, to reflect more critically about any overt or latent prejudicial views they might hold. The theme of “brotherhood” (or “family” more fundamentally), which Wood uses to define his understanding of citizenship, emerges prominently here. Because there is no guarantee that even family members will be loyal and loving, the bigot complains, he refuses to open himself up to a relationship with a nonbiological family member of a different race.

The primary root of the bigot’s concern about unity, then, seems to be his anxiety about vulnerability with diverse others. Moreover, the bigot fears the inevitable change to his identity that fully accepting people of other races would require. The bigot believes his life need not change in order to be a loyal citizen of the United States. Wood conveys this contradiction at the end of his editorial when he evokes faith to illuminate the constricted contours of citizenship in which the bigot lives. The bigot does not believe that denying people of different races basic human rights conflicts with his identity as a child of God. The bigot argues that one’s affirmation in God’s sovereign authority as creator and sustainer—as the divine parent of the person of faith—does not obligate the person of faith to extend mutuality to people of other races. In other words, the bigot believes there is no conflict in a person of faith claiming an identity as a child of God while simultaneously denying others basic rights to equality and dignity.

Here Wood’s editorial conveys a conviction he would go on to evoke in future editorials beyond his career at WVON: that one’s faith and citizenship should necessarily inform each another. For the bigot, faith and civic responsibility are mutually exclusive.

However, for Wood the two are mutually inclusive. Though Wood does not refer explicitly to a particular religion in this editorial, his overarching argument in support of unity (again,

182 expressed in its absence) resembles key principles of unity and mutuality found within the Christian tradition’s scriptural canon, which offers various interpretations and definitions of citizenship for those claiming to be followers of Jesus Christ. For instance, in the New

Testament passage of Matthew 5:43-45, Jesus teaches his disciples: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”103 Here Jesus draws a parallel between a person’s faith and the civic duty to practice mutuality. Similarly, in “Loving Your Enemies,” King evokes Jesus’ words as he counsels that: “We are called to this difficult task in order to realize a unique relationship with God.

We are potential sons of God. Through love that potentiality becomes actuality. We must love our enemies, because only by loving them can we know God and experience the beauty of his holiness.”104

In Jesus’ and King’s reflections on the relationship between faith and citizenship, what emerges prominently is the idea that the person of faith cannot claim to have integrity in an identity as a child of God without following the example of God, the divine parent, who loves all fully and without bias. In fact, Jesus’ exhortation, which King quotes, not to hate but to love others “so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” seems to suggest that one cannot fully receive the benefits of the fatherhood or parenthood of God while denying the brotherhood or family of humanity.105 Wood plays intentionally with this tension as his bigot claims that citizenship defined by selfishness and hate is acceptable to

God. Such a proposition dramatizes perhaps the most primary scandal of prejudice: it refuses to treat God’s children in the open, unbiased, and loving manner in which God treats

103 This translation of Matthew 5:43-45 is the New Revised Standard Version. 104 King, Strength to Love, 39. 105 Ibid., 53.

183 them. In the last line of his editorial, Wood implies through subtle allusion to the New

Testament that those who deny other races the mutuality that God freely offers deny their identities as children of God. Given the political stakes of the moment, it seems likely Wood also uses the phrase “brotherhood of man, fatherhood of God” to denote the clashing political philosophies about civil rights during the 1964 presidential campaign.

Wood’s 1964 editorial on bigotry continued to circulate in the years following its initial airing. In a 1968 Chicago Defender column, Doris E. Saunders quoted Wood’s editorial to commemorate the end of “Brotherhood Week,” a national celebration held the third week in February between the 1930s and the 1980s.106 Saunders said,

Now that “Brotherhood Week” is safely over, I’m thinking of the WVON editorial on the subject. IF we must have a single week out of 52 when we remind people to love one another, and even then they have a hard time, why bother? Roy Wood put it eloquently when he said “how can they believe in the fatherhood of God when they don’t believe in the brotherhood of man.” If you are your brother’s keeper, then it goes both ways, black-white and white-black. Logical, isn’t it?107

It is not immediately clear if WVON replayed Wood’s editorial on bigotry for Brotherhood

Week in 1968 or if Saunders was just recalling the editorial from four years earlier. In any case, her decision to evoke Wood’s sentiments about the obligation one’s faith places on citizenship is evidence of the significant role that some listeners attributed to the editorial in confronting racial division in the United States. In reflecting on Wood’s editorial, Saunders expressed her own frustrations with prejudice. There is almost a sense of hopelessness in her testimony. Saunders questions whether preaching unity is worth the effort if people are unwilling to love one another beyond their differences during even one week out of a year.

106 National Brotherhood Week was organized by the National Conference for Christians and Jews (NCCJ) in 1934. The NCCJ was founded in 1927 in response to anti-Catholic sentiment expressed when Al Smith ran for Democratic nomination for president of the United States. The organization devoted itself to bringing diverse people together in response to interfaith divisions. In the mid-1960s songwriter Tom Lehrer famously satirized the week in his song “National Brotherhood Week.” 107 Doris E. Saunders, “Confetti,” Chicago Defender, February 27, 1968.

184 However, her use of the language of mutuality found within the Old and New

Testament canons that define daily life for people of faith signals a transition in tone to one of hope. Specifically, Saunders’s language of “brother’s keeper” found in Genesis 4:9 and her reference to Wood’s imagery of God as a divine parent both invite and challenge her readers, regardless of their race, to consider the obligation faith places upon one’s citizenship to foster loving relationships beyond racial difference.

Wood’s emphasis on “brotherhood” in the 1964 WVON editorial draws attention to the racial hostility that threatens loving kinship bonds with diverse others. Through his double-voiced discourse Wood portrays this warring tension between “brotherhood” and its enemy, enmity, and assumes the voice of both an antagonist and protagonist. On the one hand, the bigot’s zealous commitment to his barbaric beliefs directly introduces listeners to the villainous obstacle to be defeated. On the other hand, the absurdity of such bigoted ideology indirectly illuminates Wood’s empathetic plea for unity as the heroic force capable of overcoming the formidable foe of bigotry. And that plea, as Saunders’s column four years later illustrates, did not fall on deaf ears. It seems the scandalous aural spectacle that Wood’s

1964 editorial conjured among listeners served as an ongoing exhortation to pursue constructive alternatives to hate.

Wood’s editorial indirectly invites listeners to imagine and foster newer and more vulnerable relationships with people of other races.108 In particular, Wood’s double-voiced

Signifyin(g) discourse indirectly co-opts the discriminatory rhetoric that the bigot he impersonates uses to discredit the legitimacy and redeeming power of a unified citizenry.

108 This communal notion of citizenship provides an ongoing regulatory ideal that is at work within African American communities today. For a more thorough discussion of black theology and the public sphere, see Victor Anderson, Creative Exchange: A Constructive Theology of African American Religious Experience (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008).

185 Ultimately, Wood’s editorial constructs a concept of citizenship defined in terms of mutuality. It is certainly possible that anyone listening to Wood’s editorial who was not familiar with either the tradition of Signifyin(g) or Wood’s pro-civil rights beliefs may not have recognized the editorial’s satirical purpose. As Mitchell-Kernan argues, “It is only by virtue of the hearers defining the utterance as signifying that the speaker’s intent (to convey a particular message) is realized.”109 However, those listeners familiar with the tradition of

African American Signifyin(g) and Wood’s civil rights advocacy would mostly likely have detected and decoded his satire. (Indeed, Wood’s decision to impersonate a bigot assumes as much). Those individuals would have properly discerned Wood’s double-voiced discourse which, to borrow Gates’s language for this Signifyin(g) technique, evokes “an absent meaning ambiguously ‘present’ in a carefully wrought statement.”110 The call for a unified citizenry is the absent meaning present in Wood’s extended parodic apologia supporting the stamping out of brotherhood.

Thus, Wood’s editorial on bigotry achieves what Roger D. Abrahams refers to as

“direction through indirection” and thus illustrates one of the chief aims of African

American tropological thought: to it refigure complex ideas in familiar vernacular.111 By assuming the persona of a bigot (and not an erudite academic, for instance), Wood is able to convey complex theories and worldviews about prejudice in language accessible to all of his listeners. Thus, he is able to explain the logical fallacies of bigotry that most knew intuitively but might not have been able to articulate clearly. The result is a new figuration (of U.S. citizenship here), which is the primary goal of African American Signifyin(g) discourse.

109 Mitchell-Kernan, “Signifying as a Form of Verbal Art,” 322. 110 Gates, Signifying Monkey, 86; Mitchell-Kernan, “Signifying as Form of Verbal Art,” 325. 111 See Roger D. Abrahams, “The Changing Concept of the Negro Hero,” in The Golden Log, ed. Mody C. Boatright, Wilson M. Hudson, and Allen Maxwell (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1962), 125; Gates, Signifying Monkey, 74.

186 Conclusion

During his time as news director at WVON, Roy Wood used his editorials to define

U.S. citizenship in terms of mutuality. His bold and hard-hitting approach to contentious issues such as police brutality, gang violence, and racism was meant to create a measure of aural scandal for listeners. For instance, the provocative discourse of the bigot that Wood impersonates in his June 1964 satirical editorial on bigotry is intentionally scandalous, but not for its own sake. Wood seeks to arrest listeners’ attention as he refigures misrepresentations and shallow conceptions of citizenship in order to reconcile people beyond racial difference.

Interestingly, the prejudical sentiments undergirding the bigot’s urgent call to “Help build a successful America by stamping out brotherhood” are strikingly similar to those embedded in the legislative pillars upholding President Donald Trump’s mission to “Make

America Great Again.” In other words, the bigot’s rationale for stamping out brotherhood is consonant with the rationale informing some of President Trump’s legislative initiatives such as immigration reform or his travel ban executive order that essentially targets immigrants from predominantly Muslim nations. The logic motivating such legislative agendas does not presume that all U.S. citizens are equal. Rather, these policies rely on exploiting racial and religious differences and fears to rally the nation’s citizenry to unify in shared dislike, disrespect, and disloyalty to others. Trump’s legislative actions have also rallied many citizens against the many non-U.S. citizens seeking asylum and new lives in the United States, such as

Syrian refugees and Hispanic immigrants. However, hopeful examples of Signifyin(g) practices seeking to refigure prejudicial notions of race, citizenship, and democracy abound today. For instance, the staged “die-ins” that members of Black Lives Matter have organized

187 on U.S. college campuses and in malls involve Signifyin(g) on public space, a sphere in which black bodies continue experience discrimination, racial terror, and violence. By lying prostrate on the ground feigning death, demonstrators participating in these “die-ins” attempt to refigure constructions of black and minority citizenship in the United States. This form of protest not only connects with similar protests in decades past against wars like

Vietnam and Iraq, but it also creates direct links between different forms of state-sponsored dying. Such Signifyin(g) rituals among civil rights advocates today offer significant contributions toward reforming perspectives about race in the United States.

Wood understood his editorial voice as one engaged in the work of challenging negative perceptions about racial difference and affirming the dignity of black selfhood. He identified his grandfather as a chief inspiration in his pursuit of such noble labor. In a poem his “almost unlettered grandpa” once taught him, Wood found a philosophy he would use in his career as a radio broadcaster:

Be proud to meet the man who is proud of being black but who also is intelligent enough to be oblivious of that fact. Be proud to meet the person who is proud of being white because every human being has some skin color, any skin color is alright. Be prouder still to meet every person who clearly understands that character and intellect makes a person. Color never made a man.112

Wood’s editorials on race provided provocative soundscapes that instructed listeners on how to begin the work of relinquishing beliefs that divided them from their fellow citizens. Wood had an audacious hope in the average citizen’s ability to relate beyond racial difference and to see neighbors as equals, all fashioned after God’s own image. Citizenship, Wood argued unapologetically, involved a constant obligation to see others as their Maker saw them, as precious children equally loved and all called to share that love equally with all others. A scandalous proposition indeed!

112 Wood quoted in Williams, Legendary Pioneers, 188.

188 CHAPTER 4

The Panther with the Pen: WVON’s Lu’s Notebook, Alternative Sites of Learning, and the Journey toward Political Literacy

“At once sincere and caustic, optimistic and controversial, Lu Palmer—in news columns, on the radio, at book seminars and in protests—spoke emphatically for black Chicago.”1 —H. Gregory Meyer

“The “talking drum” came to symbolize the importance of his radio career at WVON where his “Lu’s Notebook” and “On Target” broadcasts put issues in perspective for the Black community.”2

—James G. Muhammad

“IT IS NO secret that what Palmer states candidly is what very large segments of the black community think privately but decline to reveal—out of a genuine fear of retribution.”3

—Vernon Jarrett

“Ideologically rigid with an abrasive manner, Palmer was the type of community activist who naturally rises from communities under siege.”4

—Fredrick C. Harris

Vibrant chanting belted melodically over the airwaves: Ntuu-mbom-ntuu-mbom- ntuu-mbom-ntuu-mtuuu-mtuu.5 The sound of drums being spanked was unmistakable.

Suddenly that energetic soundscape faded, while a newer yet equally industrious sound emerged—the keys of a manual typewriter being pecked diligently: Chik-chik-cha-chik-chik- chika-chik-cha-chik-Ding-zzzzziiiiip!-chik-chik-cha. This creative sonic backdrop— drumming, then both drumming and typing, then just typing—served as the introduction to

1 H. Gregory Meyer, “Lu Palmer, 82: Journalist, Activist, and Emphatic Voice for Black Chicago,” Chicago Tribune, September 13, 2004 [corrected September 14, 2004]. 2 James G. Muhammad, “Even in Death, Lu Palmer Calls Black Community Back to Activism,” Tri-State Defender, September 25, 2004. 3 Vernon Jarrett, “One Man’s War against Ignorance,” Chicago Defender, October 20, 1976. 4 Fredrick C. Harris, The Price of the Ticket: Barack Obama and the Rise and Decline of Black Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 43. 5 According to Tawanda Chitapa, this rendering mimics an African drum. “Ntuu” is pronounced “hmn-to,” and “mbom” is pronounced “mb-um.” Tawanda Chitapa, in conversation with the author, June 29, 2017.

189 Lu Palmer’s popular radio program Lu’s Notebook. Sponsored by the telephone company

Illinois Bell, Lu’s Notebook aired weekdays on WVON and also on Chicago black-appeal radio stations WMPP, WGRT, and WBEE.6 The program featured Palmer’s commentary on news and current events relevant to black Chicagoans. Its introductory sonic hook served as a creative declaration about black radio: The drums represented a link to Africa. Since many

African Americans likened black-appeal radio metaphorically to the talking African drum, the sound of the drum conveyed the power of black vernacular expression to construct meaningful cultural communiqués. Further, for many North Americans, the sound of the typewriter represented the potency of the printed word. Writing in the 1960s, Marshall

McLuhan described radio as a “tribal drum” and concluded that the typewriter had been successful at bringing “writing and speech and publication into close association.”7 Thus, pairing the sound of drumming and typing in the introduction to Lu’s Notebook affirmed black-oriented radio as a vital medium for informing African American communities.

Interestingly, Palmer, whose labor sought to mobilize African American Chicagoans against injustice, would become affectionately dubbed “The Talking Drum.”

Lutrelle Flemming Palmer Jr. worked as a Chicago journalist before entering radio as host of Lu’s Notebook. Palmer began his journalism career in 1950 at the Chicago Defender. In

1968 the predominantly white Chicago Daily News hired Palmer as a columnist. The position made Palmer one of only several black columnists in the country with a national platform.

Palmer, whose provocative writing style earned him the nickname “The Panther with the

Pen,” embraced a more militant approach to black Chicago politics than WVON news

6 Display ad, Chicago Defender, June 13, 1970. 7 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet Books, 1964), 230.

190 personalities Wesley South and Roy Wood.8 As Illinois Democratic congressman Danny

Davis observed, “Lu Palmer was a Black Nationalist who wrote and spoke eloquently and passionately about black plight, black needs, injustice and black hopes.”9 Launched in 1970,

Lu’s Notebook served as a medium through which Palmer could express his views more freely. Additionally, the radio program connected African Americans to vital news and information about black life in Chicago. As Chicago Defender writer Chinta Strausberg states,

“It was a commentary that mattered to Black people.”10

In addition to his fiery print columns and newscasts on Lu’s Notebook, Palmer’s political activism throughout the 1970s and 1980s had significant implications for black lives in Chicago. For instance, in 1972 he launched Lu’s Bookshelf, a monthly colloquium on books relevant to black people that featured experts who lectured on the readings.

Additionally, Palmer created Junior Bookshelf, to serve a similar purpose for the children and youth who accompanied adults to Lu’s Bookshelf. Palmer also launched the Community

Forum, which was a public forum, sometimes with invited panelists, that met every two months to discuss issues of concern to black Chicagoans. And in preparation for his crusade to begin a movement to elect the city’s first African American mayor, Palmer and his wife,

Jorja English Palmer, organized political education clinics in 1981 to increase African

Americans’ knowledge of the city’s political system.11 He reinforced his efforts to enhance

8 Danny Davis, “Tribute to Mr. Lutrelle Palmer,” Vote Smart, September 14, 2004, https://votesmart.org/public-statement/64740/tribute-to-mr-lutrelle-palmer#.WWkITzOZPeQ. 9 Davis, “Tribute to Mr. Lutrelle Palmer.” 10 Chinta Strausberg, “Lu Palmer’s Life and Legacy in Journalism, Pt. II,” Chicago Defender, February 13, 2001. 11 Lu Palmer, interview by Madison Davis Lacy Jr., April 14, 1989, transcript, Henry Hampton Collection, University Libraries, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri (hereafter HHC-WU). Jorja English Palmer also had distinguished career as a Chicago political activist. During the 1960s she headed the West Chatham Improvement Organization Education Committee. In the 1970s, she joined Palmer and others in creating the Black Crime Commission to fight police brutality. She served as a delegate to the National Black Political Assembly in Gary, Indiana. On October 22, 1982, she established the Stanford English Home for Boys, which was the first group home for African American children in Illinois. The home was named for her

191 blacks’ political literacy by initiating massive voting registration campaigns throughout the city. Many credit Palmer specifically with Harold Washington’s election as Chicago’s first

African American mayor. Harris states, “If there is one individual who single-handedly built the organization that led to Washington’s election as mayor, it’s Lu Palmer.”12

In this chapter, I argue that Lu Palmer’s radio program Lu’s Notebook and his off-air political activist ventures served as vital educational sites that enhanced the political literacy of African Americans Chicagoans. Lu’s Notebook, Lu’s Bookshelf, Junior Bookshelf,

Community Forum, and Palmer’s political education clinics each connected African

Americans with information and skills that empowered them to be more active political agents.13 In other words, these educational sites provided African Americans with alternative resources for organizing against local political machinery that too often suppressed blacks’ basic civil rights.

Analyzing black-oriented media to reveal how they have served as avenues for various forms of instruction and resistance within North America is not a new scholarly endeavor. Elizabeth McHenry, Jessica Enoch, and Shirley Wilson Logan have conducted important studies on African American sites of learning in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Additionally, Brian Ward, Catherine Squires, Jennifer Searcy, Barbara Dianne

Savage, and Susan J. Douglas have examined how African American-oriented radio programming in particular produced important forums for discussion, information,

son Stanford English, who had autism. She was instrumental in creating the process that Palmer and other activists used to identify a black candidate the community would support to run for mayor of Chicago in 1983. See Delores McCain, “Community Mourns Activist Jorja English Palmer,” Austin Weekly News, January 11, 2006. 12 Harris, Price of the Ticket, 42. 13 Meyer, “Lu Palmer, 82.”

192 education, and political mobilization in the United States during the twentieth century.14

To distinguish my study from those of others who have examined black-oriented media as alternate sites of public education, I ground my analysis in the theoretical frameworks of media scholars who have studied how the Internet in tandem with popular cultural productions such as books, television, movies, and gaming in the twenty-first century have provided unconventional sites of education where fan communities can learn skills for personal and professional development. Such scholars include Pierre Lévy, Peter Walsh,

James Paul Gee, and Henry Jenkins. While I build on these insights in general, I utilize Gee’s conception of “affinity spaces” in particular to focus my examination of surviving transcripts of Lu’s Notebook and those news articles, interviews, and documents related to the other educational spaces that Palmer created between the 1970s and 1980s. At these sites, shared affinities for political literacy were leveraged into skills that garnered greater political agency.

Little scholarly research on Palmer’s radio career or political activism exists.

Recordings of Lu’s Notebook do exist within the home archives of some WVON employees, but I could not obtain access to these recordings in time to examine them for this chapter.

In response to limited primary source material, I rely upon articles and columns in Chicago newspapers, including the Chicago Defender, which provides a substantive account of Lu

Palmer’s radio program and political activism. Additionally, I use transcriptions of Lu’s

Notebook broadcasts and promotional documents about the educational sites Palmer created

14 For an introduction to the use of media as sites for African American learning and criticism, see Elizabeth McHenry, Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); Jessica Enoch, Refiguring Rhetorical Education: Women Teaching African American, Native American, and Chicano/a Students, 1865-1911 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008); Shirley Wilson Logan, Liberating Language: Sites of Rhetorical Education in Nineteenth-Century Black America (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008); Catherine Squires, African Americans and the Media (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2009); Maurice O. Wallace and Shawn Michelle Smith, eds., Pictures and Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012); and Robin R. Means Coleman, ed., Say It Loud!: African-American Audiences, Media, and Identity (New York: Routledge, 2002).

193 to increase black political literacy. Finally, I utilize scholarly literature on black political activism in Chicago between the 1970s and 1980s. Ultimately, this chapter seeks to extend historical scholarship on the role of black-oriented radio as providing an instructional site in which African Americans learned new skills to facilitate their political autonomy.

Since the central purpose of this chapter is to examine Lu’s Notebook and Palmer’s other educational sites as “affinity spaces,” it is necessary to define the term. Simply stated, affinity spaces are unconventional sites of learning, collaboration, and mentorship.

According to Gee, affinity spaces are sites in which people pursue a shared interest or affinity while learning particular skills and carrying out specific activities. Affinity spaces are defined primarily by an affinity for solving particular problems.15 Gee has examined online fan communities (particularly gaming communities) as affinity spaces where youth and adults turn their passions for a subject into opportunities to develop skills. Through their participation in fan or special-interest affinity spaces, people gain knowledge and expertise in countless areas, such as writing, literary criticism, graphic design, computer science, gaming, and video editing.16 Thus, participants within affinity spaces are driven by a desire to learn outside of traditional school systems. Most of these fan or special-interest sites are open to the public, and membership is fluid. People are thought to “belong” the moment they enter a particular online site no matter how long they use it. With enough discipline, they can emerge from affinity spaces as more experienced amateurs. As Gee states plainly:

Affinity spaces are an out-of-school form of ubiquitous learning. They are spaces where people can count and matter, not for their money or credentials, but for their achievements, effort, and contributions to others. They are places where people can

15 James Paul Gee, Teaching, Learning, Literacy in Our High-Risk High-Tech World: A Framework for Becoming Human (New York: Teachers College Press, 2017), 117. 16 James Paul Gee, Literacy and Education (New York: Routledge, 2015), 119-20.

194 gain status and even fame. They are places where an interest can be fanned into a passion and a passion can lead to grit, mastery, and success.17

Affinity spaces provide such important learning opportunities because they facilitate dynamic interactions between heterogeneous collectives of people with diverse experiences and backgrounds. In other words, as Jenkins explains, the shared interests or affinities within a particular affinity space “bridge across differences in age, class, race, gender, and educational level” and enable participation according to one’s skills and interests, not professional credentials. Peer collaboration and mutual co-construction of the self help to facilitate education within affinity spaces. In particular, peer-to-peer teaching encourages participants to view themselves as experts who can access others’ expertise. Consequently,

Jenkins argues, participants within affinity spaces are “constantly motivated” to acquire new information and refine existing skills.18

One helpful example of an affinity space is The Daily Prophet, a now inactive “online newspaper” that a young woman named Heather Lawver launched in 1999 at the age of fourteen.19 The newspaper, based on a publication of the same name in J. K. Rowling’s Harry

Potter books, was dedicated to fan fiction about life at the fictional wizarding school of

Hogwarts. By 2006 Lawver managed a staff of 102 children from around the world. As managing editor, Lawver hired columnists who covered their own beats at Hogwarts.

Children who submitted stories for The Daily Prophet were given instruction on editing and storytelling from those in charge of the publication. From the start Lawver framed her

17 Gee, Literacy and Education, 120. 18 Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 186. 19 “The Daily Prophet,” The Heather Show, http://www.heathershow.com/dailyprophet/.

195 project with the specific pedagogical goal of increasing participants’ abilities to analyze and compose literature.20

It is important to note that not all affinity spaces operate by the same norms.

Depending upon the interest and purpose defining a particular affinity space, the expectations holding the space together can vary significantly. Some are practical while others are theoretical; some are nurturing while others show tough love; some are technical while others are social. And while the Internet provides a convenient venue for affinity spaces, such spaces do not have to be virtual. As Gee argues, affinity spaces existed before the Internet and digital media. Still, he maintains that implementing the features of affinity spaces in face-to-face interactions presents particular challenges. Exigencies such as institutional constraints, differences in status or credentials, or geography can prevent people from organizing nonvirtual affinity spaces.21 It is also important to note that Gee does not attempt to romanticize affinity spaces, which, he states, “can be bad and go bad as easily as they can be good.”22

While affinity spaces vary, they do have things in common. Gee describes fifteen core features that affinity spaces generally share:

1. Affinity spaces are organized around a common endeavor for which at least many people in the space have a passion. The common endeavor is primary, not race, class, gender, or disability. In other words, shared passion not socially constructed categories of identity defines and organizes an affinity space. 2. Affinity spaces are usually not segregated by age. Because affinity spaces are held together by mutual passion not skill both older and younger people eventually evaluate each other work based on their interest and willingness to learn. 3. Newbies, masters, and everyone else share a common space. In affinity spaces, newcomers are not segregated from experts or more advanced members. People can pursue different goals depending on their purposes.

20 Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 178-79. 21 Gee, Literacy and Education, 127. 22 James Paul Gee, The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students through Digital Learning (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 191.

196 4. Everyone can, if they wish, produce and not just consume. Affinity spaces are generally designed to encourage (not pressure) people to be more than spectators and to participate by producing content. 5. Content is transformed by interaction. Within affinity spaces content is typically not fixed but is regularly transformed as social interaction among participants occurs. Thus, most of what is available in an affinity space is a product of participants’ continuous production of content in the space. 6. The development of both specialist and broad, general knowledge are encouraged, and specialist knowledge is pooled. Affinity spaces encourage and empower participants to share and gain both specialist and general knowledge. These spaces assume everyone has some knowledge to contribute. 7. Both individual and distributed knowledge are encouraged. Affinity spaces help people gain and share individual knowledge (the data in their heads) and distributed knowledge (collective knowledge accessible in various ways and media). 8. The use of dispersed knowledge is facilitated. Through links to other groups, software, tools, and online sites participants can access relevant information and knowledge dispersed across various media. 9. Tacit knowledge is used and honored; explicit knowledge is encouraged. Tacit knowledge involves knowledge members have acquired through practice (trial and error) but which they might not be able to explain fully in words. Explicit, codified knowledge (like tutorials) can also be found within affinity spaces and is often shared through personal contact like online forums or messaging. 10. There are many different forms and routes to participation. The intensity, frequency, and nature of one’s participation depend upon their goals and interests. One can follow or mentor, spectate or produce, or remain an amateur or seek further expertise. 11. There are many different routes to status. Affinity spaces provide people opportunities to gain status in a variety of ways such as content creators, or for their tutorials, or even strategies for navigating a particular online affinity site. 12. Leadership is porous and leaders are resources. There are no bosses or rigid hierarchies in affinity spaces. While skill and experience are respected, the boundaries between leaders and followers are blurred. 13. Roles are reciprocal. Because members within an affinity space are bound together through a common passion or purpose they practice mutuality in their interactions. The space is held together by a shared desire for everyone to learn. 14. A view of learning that is individually proactive, but does not exclude help, is encouraged. While asking for help is not frowned upon within an affinity space it is not ever seen as a supplement for a person taking ownership in advancing their learning. 15. People get encouragement from an audience and feedback from peers, though everyone plays both roles at different times. Affinity spaces provide opportunities for participants to practice providing constructive feedback as both an “audience” (someone who uses a product someone else has created) and as a “peer” (someone with similar or advanced skill and experience).23

23 Gee, Literacy and Education, 120-27.

197 Given Gee’s classification of affinity spaces, it might seem an odd theoretical decision to utilize the concept in an examination of Lu’s Notebook in particular. After all, there is no evidence to suggest that peer-to-peer instruction or mutual co-construction of identity actually took place as African Americans listened to Lu’s Notebook. Unlike Wesley South’s

WVON talk show Hotline, Lu’s Notebook seems not to have invited listeners to telephone in to interact with the host or other listeners. As a space that did not facilitate real-time co- collaboration, mentorship, and peer-to-peer instruction, Lu’s Notebook does not share many of the core features that Gee argues define affinity spaces. Thus, a strong argument can be made that Palmer’s radio program is an isolated educational site not consonant with Gee’s definition of an affinity space. However, if it is read as a smaller part of the larger affinity space comprising Palmer’s multiple educational ventures, then Gee’s conception of affinity spaces becomes productive. For instance, programs such as Lu’s Bookshelf, Junior

Bookshelf, Community Forum, and Palmer’s political education clinics share many of Gee’s core features of affinity spaces. Therefore, I maintain that Gee’s concept of affinity spaces offers a useful theoretical approach in analyzing Palmer’s work.

The primary pedagogical purpose undergirding each of Palmer’s educational spaces is one that all affinity spaces have in common: to provide an unconventional venue to facilitate journeys toward “literacy.” Jenkins’s broader definition of the “literacy” achieved within affinity spaces helps to provide a basis for reading Palmer’s multiple educational sites as smaller parts of a larger affinity space:

Here, literacy is understood to include not simply what we can do with printed matter but also what we can do with media. Just as we would not traditionally assume that someone is literate if they can read but not write, we should not assume that someone possesses media literacy if they can consume but not express themselves. Historically, constraints on literacy come from attempts to control different segments of the population—some societies have embraced universal

198 literacy, others have restricted literacy to specific social classes or along racial and gender lines. We may also see the current struggle over literacy as having the effect of determining who has the right to participate in our culture and on what terms.24

For Gee, individual development (or literacy) within an affinity space is best conceived as a journey. In particular, such development is a path to being, or becoming, something. Gee describes his own metamorphosis from a novice video game player to an experienced gamer as a “journey through different spaces (real and virtual) across time, spaces filled with different sorts of people, technologies, media, resources, and tools.” Similarly, African

Americans who participated as listeners of Lu’s Notebook and as participants in Palmer’s other educational sites were on journeys toward literacy, political literacy. Interestingly, Gee does not describe the journey toward literacy in a particular field as a rigid linear movement from one space to another. “But development is a journey that continually moves back and forth between new and old spaces.” Through this movement people develop into a “certain kind of person, such as a gamer, or a Catholic, or a physicist.”25 Such movement characterizes the ways listeners of Lu’s Notebook and participants in Palmer’s other educational sites moved between spaces. Through their interactions with fellow participants within these smaller affinity spaces, African Americans embarked on journeys to become more politically savvy and empowered civic leaders.

Before giving a name to the larger affinity space in which Palmer’s other educational programs are subsumed, it is helpful first to consider an example of a similar affinity space composed of smaller virtual and nonvirtual spaces. In his most recent work, Gee provides an example of an affinity space that has informed my reading of Palmer’s political activism. The example Gee uses is the “Catholic affinity space” of his childhood. Mostly, this space was

24 Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 177. 25 Gee, Teaching, Learning, Literacy, 107, 110.

199 made up of smaller face-to-face affinity spaces including schools, homes, church functions, and the local Catholic college. However, virtual spaces in the form of telephone conversations and Catholic television programming also made up this larger Catholic affinity space. Both these virtual and nonvirtual affinity spaces facilitated “the looping journeys that constitute and sustain development.” Thus, within the larger Catholic affinity space, these smaller spaces connected people to one another through a shared affinity for Catholicism.

“Every space shared in the responsibility for teaching, mentoring, and resourcing Catholic development at all different levels,” Gee writes.26

Following Gee’s reading of the intricacies of the “Catholic affinity space,” it is possible to read each of the alternative learning spaces Palmer created as subspaces that are part of a larger affinity space, which I refer to in this chapter as Lu’s Political Activism affinity space. Each of Palmer’s educational programs—Lu’s Notebook, Lu’s Bookshelf,

Junior Bookshelf, Community Forum, and Palmer’s political education clinics—connected

African American Chicagoans in their shared affinity for becoming more informed and politically literate citizens. Therefore, Gee’s notion of affinity spaces provides a productive theoretical framework to analyze the full scope of Palmer’s educational enterprises as unconventional methods for enhancing black political empowerment in Chicago between the 1970s and 1980s.

This chapter proceeds in three movements. First, I provide a historical account of

Palmer’s work as a journalist in Chicago. Palmer’s career in journalism reveals important details about the extent of his crusade against institutional racism and African Americans’ political disenfranchisement during twenty years before people heard his voice on the radio.

Second, I discuss Palmer’s foray into radio as host of Lu’s Notebook and describe the

26 Ibid., 112-14, 111, 115.

200 program’s significance among African American Chicagoans. Here I provide close readings of transcripts of three broadcasts of Lu’s Notebook that aired during the last week of

April 1971. These close readings reveal how Palmer’s radio commentary offered listeners implicit instructional models for engaging news and current events more critically. Third, I analyze the other affinity spaces Palmer created to strengthen African American Chicagoans’ political literacy: Lu’s Bookshelf, Junior Bookshelf, Community Forum, and the political education clinics Palmer founded in 1981 to mobilize a city-wide movement to elect

Chicago’s first African American mayor. I conclude this chapter by suggesting the usefulness of contemporary studies of existing or potential affinity spaces in which African Americans are learning or have the potential to learn useful skills in the struggle against political disenfranchisement in the United States today.

Lutrelle F. Palmer Jr.

Lutrelle Flemming Palmer Jr. was born March 28, 1922, in Newport News, Virginia, to Myrtle and Lutrelle F. Palmer Sr. He earned an undergraduate degree in sociology from

Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia, in 1942 and a M.A. degree in journalism from Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, in 1948.27 When Palmer first came to

Chicago in 1950, he had finished his coursework requirements for a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Iowa. However, after losing his dissertation notes on a train, Palmer did not complete his degree.28

Palmer’s father, Lutrelle Palmer Sr., was a prominent educator and activist in

Newport News. The elder Palmer graduated from Wilberforce University in 1911 and

27 Theresa Fambro Hooks, “Lu Palmer, Journalist, Dead at Age 82,” Chicago Defender, September 13, 2004. 28 Conrad Worrill, “Remember a Great Ancestor: Lu Palmer,” Chicago Defender, May 5, 2006.

201 received a second degree from the University of Michigan in 1912. He served as principal of Huntington High School and helped found the Virginia Teachers’ Association, which supported black teachers and schools during a time of intense racial segregation.

While serving as principal at Huntington High School, Palmer’s father led a lengthy and unpleasant fight for equal pay for black teachers in Virginia.29 In 1940 the Newport News

Negro Teachers’ Association petitioned the school board for equal pay, taking up a two- decades-old fight. After the school board rejected the petition, teacher Dorothy Roles

Watkins and the teachers’ association sued the superintendent, Joseph H. Saunders, and the school board on February 18, 1942. Although a federal court in 1943 ruled in favor of

Watkins and the teachers’ association, six leaders of the Newport News Negro Teachers’

Association, including Palmer’s father, were fired.30

Palmer was an undergraduate student at Virginia Union University when his father was fired as principal of Huntington. His father managed to find work teaching at Hampton

University for several years before he died in 1950 at the age of sixty-three of what Palmer claimed was a broken heart.31 The successes Palmer achieved unifying African American

Chicagoans in various black liberation efforts resembled the ones his father had achieved in

Newport News. In this regard, Chicago educator and activist Conrad Worrill argued, the old saying “like father, like son” applies.32 Palmer accomplished much of his activist work

29 Vernon Jarrett. “Honor Our ‘Lu,’ Activist-Journalist,” Chicago Defender, April 14, 2001. 30 Newport News Public School website, “In the News,” February 28, 2011, http://sbo.nn.k12.va.us/news/archive/2011/2011-03-01_activist_educators.html. This URL, although functional in April 2016, was inactive as of July 15, 2017. 31 Jarrett, “Honor Our ‘Lu’”; Chinta Strausberg, “Lu Palmer Hangs Up Microphone at WVON, Retires at 78,” Chicago Defender, February 10, 2001. 32 Worrill, “Remember a Great Ancestor.”

202 through the field of journalism, which for him was a means of avenging his father’s death from the broken heart a racist system had precipitated.33

Palmer began his career as a journalist with the Chicago Defender in 1950. Chinta

Strausberg argues that he became one of several reporters at the paper who were admired for their trailblazing and bold reporting in their coverage of civil rights and Chicago politics in the 1950s and 1960s.34 Palmer’s tenure at the Chicago Defender in the 1950s was formative. “I covered everything,” he later recalled.35 In 1959, the Chicago Defender sent Palmer to cover the lynching of a man named Mack Charles Parker in Poplarville, Mississippi. Parker had been arrested earlier that year for allegedly kidnapping and raping a white woman.36 Palmer interviewed Parker’s cellmate. He told Palmer the mob dragged Parker out by his feet and that he heard his head bumping every one of the metal stairs between the first and second floors.37 Palmer recalled the bitter, violent racial climate of that time:

That period was in the middle of the civil rights uprising. They lynched in many ways. They’d hang you from the tree. They’d put the word out and it would be like a celebration, a picnic. They celebrated the lynching of Black people.38

As a journalist Palmer covered other high-profile civil rights cases. When the first sit- in protests began on March 19, 1960, in Memphis, Palmer was working as editor of

33 Strausberg, “Lu Palmer Hangs Up Microphone.” 34 Chinta Strausberg, “Chicago Defender Heralded as Nation’s ‘Racial Healer,’” Chicago Defender, May 5, 2001. 35 Strausberg, “Lu Palmer’s Life and Legacy.” 36 On the night of April 24, 1959, a mob abducted the twenty-three-year-old Parker from Pearl River County Jail in Poplarville, where he was awaiting trial for his alleged crime. Parker’s body was found in the Pearl River on May 4, 1959. The Chicago Defender sent Palmer along with photographer Tony Rhoden to cover the story. Initially, when Palmer arrived at the jail where Parker had been held, he was not allowed to interview Parker’s cellmate because Palmer was black. However, a white official with the UPI (a consolidation of the International News Service and the United Press), with which the Chicago Defender had a contract, facilitated Palmer’s interview with Parker’s former cellmate. See “Here’s What UPI Means to Readers of Defender,” Chicago Defender, May 27, 1958. 37 Strausberg, “Lu Palmer’s Life and Legacy.” 38 Ibid.

203 Memphis’s black-owned weekly newspaper, the Tri-State Defender, the Chicago Defender’s sister paper.39 His first of several arrests as a reporter occurred while covering that story:

“The first time, I was covering a sit-in at the library by Black students in Memphis. They arrested all of us and threw all of us in jail. When I got bailed out of jail, I was editor of the Tri-State Defender and one of the staff people had had an accident in West Memphis, Ark. He called me to come and get him out (of jail) and when I went to get him out, a cop didn’t like my attitude and jumped over the counter and beat the hell out of me, then threw me out of the jail,” Palmer said.40

Palmer endured many similar incidents as editor of the Tri-State Defender. In fact, Palmer described that particular time as an “eventful” period. His life was in jeopardy frequently. “I had all kind of experiences with the KKK. They burned crosses in front of the Tri-State

Defender,” he recalled.41

In 1968, Palmer joined the Chicago Daily News as a columnist, becoming one of only a few black columnists with a national readership.42 As a Daily News columnist Palmer delivered hard-hitting commentary on a variety of public issues. A year after beginning at the

Daily News, Palmer received the Welfare Public Relations Forum Helen Cody Baker Special

Media Award in recognition of his reporting on health and welfare agencies in Chicago. The

Chicago Defender boasted that his reporting on such institutions “brings understanding and encouragement to those who are a life-giving force in the work of all agencies—citizen volunteers.”43 While writing his column Palmer also served as an instructor for the course

“The Nature of Communications” at Elmhurst College in Chicago’s western suburbs.44

While Palmer thrived as a Daily News columnist, he became increasingly frustrated working for the newspaper, which catered to a predominantly white audience. He was critical

39 Hooks, “Lu Palmer, Journalist.” 40 Strausberg, “Lu Palmer’s Life and Legacy.” 41 Ibid. 42 Jarrett, “Honor Our ‘Lu.’” 43 “Lu Palmer Gets Special Media Award Here,” Chicago Defender, June 9, 1969. 44 “Lu Palmer in OBAC Talk,” Chicago Defender, October 27, 1971.

204 of mainstream media for its ignorance about African American life. Annah Dumas-

Mitchell observed, “Palmer noted that a communicator can be a powerful person but as it stands, the whole communication system is currently controlled by whites.” Palmer lamented this reality, saying, “What goes on the mind of people is determined by white men.” Palmer fought continuously with his editors about his perspective on issues that shaped African

American life. “I almost lost my mind trying to work with them,” Palmer recalled. Dumas-

Mitchell recalled the time Palmer stood on top of a desk in the Daily News newsroom in front of more than one hundred reporters after his writing was “altered” not to offend readers “who were ignorant of the Black struggle.” Palmer himself remembered: “I stood up on the desk and went crazy,” he said. “What they did to my copy and columns . . .”45

Palmer regularly complained about editors altering his Daily News columns. He described one such instance when an editor allegedly changed a column he wrote on the

1969 police raid that killed Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Palmer described the editor as having “disrespected” the sentiments composed within his “potent journalistic column” following the “orchestrated 1969 murder” of Hampton and Clark.46

This alleged incident would not be the last Palmer would cite. Several newspaper reports reference Palmer’s claims of his columns being altered. For instance, before the publication of Palmer’s column on the use of federal funds by Malcolm X College president Dr. Charles

Hurst, Daily News reporter Charles Nicodemus allegedly, and without informing Palmer beforehand, edited Palmer’s column and also wrote a countering story that appeared alongside Palmer’s piece. According to the Chicago Defender, two weeks earlier Daily News associate editor Kenneth McArdle refused to publish one of Palmer’s columns because he

45 Dumas-Mitchell, “Community Activist Hangs Up Mic”; Palmer quoted in Dumas-Mitchell. 46 Baba Hannibal Afrik, “A Tree Has Fallen: A Tribute to Our Elder Lu Palmer,” Chicago Weekend, September 22, 2004. Also see Meyer, “Lu Palmer.”

205 felt it supported the Illinois Black Panther Party’s “program of community control of police.”47

On January 15, 1973, Palmer resigned from the Daily News. Nine days later he called a press conference with about forty journalists at the South Side Community Art Center.

Palmer explained to the gathered journalists that he had resigned from the Daily News because his editors routinely “meddled” with his writing without his knowledge.48 The

Chicago Defender captured some of the frustrations Palmer expressed during that press conference: “You know,” journalist Lu Palmer said yesterday, “you can only take so much . .

.” At the press conference, Palmer handed out copies of the letter of resignation he had sent to Daily News managing editor Donald Gormley. Then after talking about his reasons for resigning, Palmer announced a rally among black media figures to be held that Saturday at

Blackwell Memorial AME Zion Church. The purpose of the rally was to develop strategies for “a black news media system.”49

Palmer’s resignation from the Daily News ended his days as a mainstream journalist.

He vowed that he would “never again work in any communication medium where any white person can make the decision as to whether my copy will be published or how it will be published.”50 He kept that vow for nearly three decades. In 1973, Palmer started Black X-

Press, a weekly newspaper he edited and published. That same year the Chicago Defender reported on Palmer’s “Save-a-concept-in-distress” benefit to raise funds for the Black X-

Press. The benefit was held in the evening of October 19, 1973, at Tabernacle Baptist

Church. The benefit involved a memorial tribute in song to the late Mahalia Jackson, who

47 “Say Lu Palmer Weighs Job Offer,” Chicago Defender, January 18, 1973. 48 Meyer, “Lu Palmer.” 49 Tony Griggs, “Lu Palmer: You Can Only Take So Much,” Chicago Defender, January 24, 1973. 50 Lu Palmer in Salim Muwakkil, “From an Activist’s Standpoint,” Chicago Tribune, April 9, 2001.

206 had died in 1972. General admission was three dollars or twelve dollars for a one-year subscription to the Black X-Press.51 Despite fundraising efforts, however, the paper folded fourteen months after its founding.52

Though Palmer was often described as a bold Black Nationalist, his friends and colleagues remember him not as simply confrontational or reactionary. He did his homework before taking a stand, said Robert Starks, director of the Harold Washington

Institute for Research and Policy Studies at Northeastern Illinois University. “Extremely well-read, extremely well-informed, an excellent speaker, an excellent communicator.”53

Similarly, journalist Vernon Jarrett concluded in 1974 that many Chicagoans’ perception of

Palmer as a contentious, forthright African American journalist is only partly correct. “That is only one facet of the Palmer personality. This man is one of the most self-sacrificing, and

[thoroughly] dedicated journalists I have met during the past 25 years.”54

During his career as a journalist in Chicago, Palmer raised serious concerns with white-run media’s control of images and information about African Americans. “The system is such that we have no control over our lives,” he said.55 Motivated by mainstream media’s failure to offer more nuanced perspectives of African American life and struggle in and beyond Chicago, Palmer created multiple educational spaces that focused on enhancing black political literacy. His popular radio commentary, Lu’s Notebook, was one such educational site. Created while Palmer was still working at the Daily News, Lu’s Notebook provided serious editorial commentary on black public issues.

51 “Benefit for Black X-Press,” Chicago Defender, October 16, 1973. 52 Meyer, “Lu Palmer.” 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Dumas-Mitchell, “Community Activist Hangs Up Mic.”

207 Lu’s Notebook

Sponsored by Illinois Bell, Lu’s Notebook first aired in 1970. A May 1970 Chicago

Defender article announced the May 11 start of the show, a five-minute news analysis that aired on four black-appeal radio stations.56 Illinois Bell’s sponsorship allowed Palmer to broadcast three different shows daily, Monday through Friday, on WVON, WMPP, WGRT, and WBEE radio stations. On Saturdays three of the week’s best programs were broadcast.57

Illinois Bell claimed to have no reservations, and its advertising manager explained the practical motivation behind sponsoring Lu’s Notebook:

“We feel that this type program offers another avenue through which we can communicate with significant numbers of our consumers,” Robert E. Campbell, Illinois Bell advertising manager, said. “Lu Palmer is highly regarded and we expect his news commentary to attract a large audience.”58

Lu’s Notebook was produced by Chicago’s Vince Cullers Advertising Agency, which also prepared print advertising and commercials targeting the interests and needs of African

American communities. Vince Cullers also recognized the importance of black-oriented news program in Chicago such as Lu’s Notebook:

“There is a definite information gap where ‘soul radio’ is concerned—and black people generally must turn to white-oriented radio stations for news analysis,” Culler says.59

Illinois Bell ran an advertisement in the Chicago Defender on June 13, 1970, conveying a rationale for sponsoring Lu’s Notebook. At the top of the advertisement is an excerpt the telephone company identifies as the “The Credo of the Negro Press.” The company promotes Lu’s Notebook as an exemplar and extension of the black press:

56 “‘Lu’s Notebook’ Sponsored by Bell Telephone Co,” Chicago Defender, May 5, 1970. 57 Display ad, Chicago Defender, June 13, 1970. 58 “‘Lu’s Notebook’ Sponsored by Bell Telephone Co.” 59 Ibid.

208 THE CREDO OF THE NEGRO PRESS The Negro Press believes that America can best lead the world away from racial and national antagonisms when it accords to every man, regardless of race, color, or creed, his human and legal rights. Hating no man, fearing no man, the Negro Press strives to help every man in the firm belief that all are hurt as long as anyone is held back. Right On. Illinois Bell feels the same and we’re trying to live it . . . Through equal opportunity employment and equal service to the Black community. For 1970, Illinois Bell is proud to sponsor a new service to the community, Lu’s Notebook . . . Soul-searching analysis by columnist, Lu F. Palmer, Jr.60

In the advertisement, Illinois Bell affirms the ideals of equal rights and equal opportunities for African Americans. The company expresses a clear alignment with African Americans’ struggle against social and political disenfranchisement. In short, the advertisement describes

Illinois Bell’s sponsorship of Lu’s Notebook as a public service.

Lu’s Notebook connected African Americans to vital news and information about black life in Chicago. Much like tribal talking African drums used earlier among enslaved blacks in North America, Lu’s Notebook mobilized African Americans against a hostile dominant public sphere. The show became one of the primary message centers for African

Americans.61 As Worrill argues, Palmer used Lu’s Notebook to articulate many key issues that influenced “the heartbeat of the Black community in Chicago and the United States.”62

Additionally, through Lu’s Notebook broadcasts, Palmer offered listeners informal lessens in critical thinking. As Palmer dissects various civic issues for his audience, his language is indirectly instructional. In other words, as he interrogates the unstated influences on or implications of current news headlines, he demonstrates for listeners how to scrutinize

60 Display ad, Chicago Defender, June 13, 1970. 61 Danny K. Davis, “The Making of a Mayor,” Chicago Defender, November 26, 2007. 62 Worrill, “Remember a Great Ancestor.”

209 public information. As listeners witness Palmer deploy this skill on Lu’s Notebook, they are invited to participate in similar approaches to more critical engagements with headline news.

Although Illinois Bell had expressed explicit support for Palmer’s radio program, the company did not plan to continue its sponsorship of Lu’s Notebook after May 9, 1971. In response, Palmer and other supporters started a committee representing more than fifty-five black organizations known as People for Lu Palmer. Cirilo A. McSween, chairman of the committee, recalled committee members arguing about the importance that African

American Chicagoans placed on Lu’s Notebook:

We took the position that ‘Lu’s Notebook,’ because of its local relevance to black people, has become an institution in Chicago’s black communities, including South Chicago and Gary, Indiana. And since Illinois Bell is a public utility, we felt that it must take into consideration the wishes of black people before making a decision of such importance.63

Committee members instructed McSween along with spokespersons of the executive committee of People for Lu Palmer to meet with Illinois Bell president Charles Brown. Since

Brown would be out of town, he asked J. H. Johnson, vice president of Illinois Bell’s

Chicago operations, to meet with the delegation on April 21, 1971. McSween recalled the subject of that conversation:

“We assured Illinois Bell that we appreciated its foresight in initiating ‘Lu’s Notebook’ and we indicated to Bell officials that the program has developed into an institution in our black communities,” McSween said. “It was made clear to the committee that there are certain obligations and responsibilities all corporate structures have to black people. And we expressed the point of view that these obligations and responsibilities are heightened when that corporate structure is a monopoly,” McSween continued.64

Illinois Bell agreed to sponsor Lu’s Notebook for at least another thirteen weeks. The program

63 “Black News Show Continues,” Chicago Defender, May 12, 1971. 64 Ibid.

210 went on to air for the next twelve years under the telephone company’s sponsorship.

The victory of People for Lu Palmer in securing Illinois Bell’s sponsorship demonstrated

Palmer’s ability to inspire people to collective action. Additionally, the victory revealed the extent to which Lu’s Notebook had become for African Americans a much-desired community forum.65

During the first week in December 1972, another controversy erupted for Lu’s

Notebook when six black Chicago aldermen presented the city council a resolution criticizing

Illinois Bell for sponsoring what they claimed was political propaganda. The resolution called for an investigation of Illinois Bell to determine whether the telephone company’s sponsorship of Lu’s Notebook constituted an endorsement of a particular political agenda.

The Chicago Defender reported on the councilmen’s primary complaints, which alderman

Claude W. B. Holman presented:

That advertising money spent for sponsoring of “Lu’s Notebook” is possibly an infraction of regulations for a public service utility. Commentator Lu Palmer is paid large sums to express on what is, “in fact, a purely partisan political program.” A full public hearing should be conducted “to determine exactly how much of the money of the Chicago telephone users is being spent by the telephone company to promote purely partisan political propaganda.”66

In short, the councilmen suggested Lu’s Notebook was a political program and not a public service.67 The six black aldermen, all supporters of Mayor Richard J. Daley, argued that a pending tax increase the telephone company sought was not appropriate since they believed the company was using tax dollars to fund Palmer’s personal political views.68 The Chicago

Defender also provided the opposing viewpoints:

65 Ibid. 66 “Black Groups Support Palmer,” Chicago Defender, December 7, 1972. 67 “Say Lu Palmer Weighs Job Offer.” 68 Joe Ellis, “Lu Palmer ‘Quits’ Newspaper Job,” Chicago Defender, January 17, 1973.

211 Leaders and representatives made it clear that IBT buys the show as a means of advertising its telephone sales and services, and that IBT has already issued a response to councilmen, to media, and to all other community segments. IBT indicated that purchase of the show did not include control or supervision of content of material used by Palmer in his commentaries, with entire advertising format (for IBT) found “reasonable and proper” by ICC in some 80 public sessions.69

The Chicago Defender reported Illinois Bell officials expressed confusion “over the allegations that Palmer registers politically partisan points of view in what they designate as professional handling of material on Palmer’s part.” Black groups supporting Palmer expressed their sense that the city councilmen who launched the original complaint were attempting to censor Palmer. According to the Chicago Defender, the consensus of these groups was that

“Palmer stands and serves as a symbol of information vitally needed in black communities, and that general concern must be expressed and activated whenever attempts are made to alienate, compromise or eliminate the open and honest transmission of ideas by any one— for whatever reasons.”70

As the controversy involving Illinois Bell’s sponsorship of Lu’s Notebook lingered, black supporters organized a rally on behalf of Palmer at Holy Cross Church on January 13,

1973. Participants at the rally shared opinions and raised questions. The Chicago Defender observed: “The most interesting question raised about the purpose of the meeting called by members of the black media is: If Illinois Bell is behind Lu Palmer as they have declared in no uncertain terms, then why all the fuss?”71 Some observers believed the aldermen’s actions were a consequence of several Lu’s Notebook broadcasts prior to the November 7 elections that informed African Americans “how to split their tickets” to defeat state’s attorney

69 “Black Groups Support Palmer.” 70 Ibid. 71 Charlie Cherokee, “Arnita Boswell Says,” Chicago Defender, January 13, 1973.

212 Edward V. Hanrahan.72 Thus, while the controversy circulated some negative views about Lu’s Notebook, it also demonstrated the radio program’s significance among black

Chicagoans as a reliable news source.

At times Lu’s Notebook garnered critical, even heated, conversations among

Chicagoans in their face-to-face interactions outside of the program’s broadcasts. For instance, in 1976 the Atlantic Daily World referenced a bizarre incident between two

Chicagoans, one black and one white, who allegedly got into a physical altercation over

Palmer’s radio program. In an entertainment brief, the newspaper reported:

There’s a big flap reported going on in Chicago over Lu Palmer, a radio commentator heard on his own daily sponsored show, “Lu’s Notebook,” on several black oriented stations and his criticism over a fund raised to help a white victim blinded by a black and the reaction of other blacks who organized the fund.73

A week later, the Atlantic Daily World again referenced the alleged incident.

Controversial sparks flying in Chicago, behind LU PALMER criti[ci]zing the fund raising efforts for a white victim blinded by a black over his own daily sponsored radio show “Lu’s Notebook.”74

No additional context or information is provided in either report, and no further press records of the alleged incident or its causes seem to be available. While the specific details of the argument may not ever be known, it is safe to conclude from the Atlantic Daily World’s reporting on the alleged incident that Lu’s Notebook had the potential to generate debate among Chicago residents.

Between the early the 1970s and early 1980s, Palmer’s voice on Lu’s Notebook became ubiquitous on black-appeal radio. Chicago Tribune writer Salim Muwakkil argued that Palmer’s

“sharp-edged pieces” had the capacity to mobilize African Americans to take action against

72 “Say Lu Palmer Weighs Job Offer.” 73 “Entertainment Briefs,” Atlanta Daily World, June 10, 1976. 74 Warren Lanier, “Ebony Etchings, Etc. Hollywood: People Are Talking About,” Atlanta Daily World, June 17, 1976.

213 political insults or social service failures.75 However, such boldness came at a cost.

Palmer utilized Lu’s Notebook as one a means of organizing a movement to elect Harold

Washington as the city’s first black mayor. Hours after Washington announced his candidacy for mayor on November 10, 1982, Illinois Bell announced the end of its sponsorship of Lu’s

Notebook.76 According to the Chicago Independent Bulletin, Palmer’s “outspoken support of the city’s first Black Mayor, Harold Washington; reportedly led to the cancellation of the radio program’s sponsorship by Illinois Bell.”77 WVON picked up Lu’s Notebook, and the program aired on the radio station between 1983 and 2001, when Palmer retired.78

Few detailed records of the broadcasts of Lu’s Notebook remain. Below, however, I examine transcriptions of the 308th, 309th, and 310th broadcasts of Lu’s Notebook that aired on April 26, 27, and 28, 1971; the transcriptions are held by the Chicago History Museum.79

The titles of the broadcasts are “Lots of Funny Stuff Going On,” “Slippery as Eels in Olive

Oil,” and “The Monkey That Came Back.” In “Lots of Funny Stuff Going On,” Palmer engages the subject of systematic corruption within Chicago’s political structure. In “Slippery as Eels in Olive Oil,” he addresses dishonest city leadership. Finally, in “The Monkey That

Came Back,” Palmer analyzes the crisis of drug addiction in black communities as a white- engineered form of genocide. The theme that connects all three broadcasts is the insidious nature of Chicago’s political agents. I examine these broadcasts of Lu’s Notebook as instructional texts that model indirectly how to engage in substantive analyses of current events. I analyze the broadcasts in the order they aired.

75 Muwakkil, “From an Activist’s Standpoint.” 76 Jarrett, “Honor Our ‘Lu’”; Kevin Klose, “Race for House Tests Mayor’s Clout,” Washington Post, July 24, 1983; “‘Lu’ Palmer, Newspaper, Radio Journalist,” Chicago Independent Bulletin, September 16, 2004. 77 “‘Lu’ Palmer, Newspaper, Radio Journalist.” Also see Hooks, “Lu Palmer, Journalist.” 78 “‘Lu’ Palmer, Newspaper, Radio Journalist.” 79 “Lu’s Notebook, 1971,” box 68, folder 6, African American Police League Records, 1961-1988, Chicago History Museum Research Center, Chicago, IL (hereafter AAPLR-CHM).

214 During the 308th broadcast of Lu’s Notebook, “Lots of Funny Stuff Going On,” which aired April 27, 1971, Palmer challenges listeners to consider corruption and malicious leaders at work within the city’s power structure. Palmer offers a short analysis of three contentious issues that had made news headlines: an alleged plot to murder Chicago mayor

Richard J. Daley and the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the investigation of the police raid and killings of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and the election of John D. Carey as Chicago school board president. Palmer begins this broadcast by offering a short summary of the circumstances involving the alleged plot among four men, initially thought connected to a black militant outfit, to kill Daley and Jackson. “They pick up four guys and the next thing you know the papers are filled with headlines about a plot to kill the mayor and the Country Preacher.” Though the men were arrested, their bail was set “at a fantastic low $5,000.” Palmer insinuates that an assasination attempt on two public figures should warrant a higher bail for the suspects. Here the discontent Palmer’s language conveys signals to listeners that something about the circumstances seems suspect. Then, Palmer laments, the state’s attorney’s office instructed the court that an investigation revealed there was not in fact a case against the four men: “Not even a black militant group waiting in the wings to do Chicago in by some mysterious means. So the four brothers are turned loose and the whole episode smells like rotten cheese . . . funny stuff.” The sarcastic tone of Palmer’s commentary here is apparent. He concludes that the swift decision to dismiss the entire case, and with no explanation to the public, should evoke suspicion. The lack of transparency,

Palmer declared, was evidence that important information was being hidden intentionally from the public. Rhetorically, Palmer’s phrase “funny stuff,” which he repeats after each of the three news events he analyzes in this broadcast, provides him a means to launch subtle, if

215 not sarcastic, criticisms of what he believes to be the coercive forces at work within the city’s power structure. The implication seems to be for listeners to read for the meaning between the lines of official news reports and to consider any unstated connections or contradictions. In this sense, Palmer’s commentary here offers an implicit invitation for listeners to be more vigilant in their engagement of news.80

The second illustration Palmer uses in the 308th broadcast of Lu’s Notebook involves rumors circulating about an alleged county grand jury report indicting police and city officials involved in the December 4, 1969, police raid that resulted in the deaths of Black Panthers

Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. In particular, Palmer questions why this alleged court report detailing the investigation of the police raid was delayed in being made public. According to

Palmer, special prosecutor Barnabas F. Sears had announced recently that he and his grand jury would deliver the findings of their investigation of the killings to Criminal Court Chief

Judge Joseph A. Power. Palmer informed listeners that the previous week word had buzzed through news circles that indictments might be issued against police officers involved in the raid and the city leaders responsible for investigating it.81 However, as Palmer explained to listeners, the opposite occurred:

But, all of a sudden, the report was held up. Judge Power was quoted as saying his jurors wanted to hear another witness or two. But when reporters asked Sears what was going on, he gave this curious answer: “In the many years I have been practicing law, I have been impressed with you news reporters. And now, more importantly, I have become impressed with the importance of the freedom of the press.” Then he disappeared. By the time you hear this, something may have broken on Panther Grand Jury. But as for what happened last Thursday, we may never really know what went down . . . funny stuff.82

80 Lu Palmer, “Lots of Funny Stuff Going On,” Lu’s Notebook, April 27, 1971, in “Lu’s Notebook, 1971,” box 68, folder 6, AAPLR-CHM. 81 John R. Thomson, “The Case That Wouldn’t Fade Away,” Chicago Tribune, August 29, 1971. 82 Palmer, “Lots of Funny Stuff.”

216 Here Palmer draws strategically on Sears’s quote to substantiate his suspicions of foulplay. Sears’s commentary suggests some hidden miscarriage of justice he hopes that reporters will investigate further. Palmer evokes Sears’s commentary as evidence supporting his suspicion that something suspect is at work in the overall investigation. Palmer offers no further details about the case or the hidden injustice he suspects is at work. However, contemporary newspaper accounts also describe the investigation as having involved suspicious activity.

Sears and four of his assistants began studying the federal grand jury transcripts on

July 26, 1970. Judge Power swore in the county grand jury on December 7, and the jurors heard their first witness a week later. The grand jury investigation proceeded quietly until

April 22, when Power called the jurors, Sears, and Sears’s assistants to a private meeting in his chambers. Though Sears initially objected to the secret conference, preferring instead to meet in open court, the group did meet privately. During that meeting, Power directed Sears to call all the witnesses who had appeared before the federal grand jury to appear before the county grand jury. After the meeting, rumor spread that the grand jury had voted to charge

Illinois State’s Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan and other high-powered officials with conspiracy to obstruct justice and had named police superintendent James B. Conlisk Jr. as an uncharged co-conspirator. On Saturday, April 24, and Sunday, April 25, media outlets reported that Hanrahan had been accused by the grand jury. The alleged grand jury report naming these indictments seems to be the one Palmer mentions to his listeners. However, the existence of this report was not confirmed, nor was this alleged report printed or broadcast at that time.83 Nonetheless, Palmer’s commentary provides an entry point for

83 No official indictments were issued until August 24, when Power opened the grand jury’s June 25 sealed indictment that charged Hanrahan, one of his assistants, and twelve police officers with conspiracy to obstruct

217 listeners to begin asking their own questions about the grand jury’s investigation. Thus, once again, Palmer indirectly offers listeners a method for conducting substantive analysis on media message.

The third illustration Palmer uses in the 308th broadcast of Lu’s Notebook involves the appointment of John D. Carey as Chicago School Board president in December 1971.

The position was left vacant in September 1970 by the death of board president Frank M.

Whiston. Warren H. Bacon, an African American and leader of board independents, and

Carey, a candidate supported by loyalists of Mayor Richard J. Daley, sought to fill the post.

However, both candidates struggled to secure the required six votes out of the ten remaining board members. In the days before the vote, neither had amassed a significant lead over the other. Chicago Tribune reporter Peter Negronida observed that a coalition of black and white liberal groups mobilized support on Bacon’s behalf, “openly threatening Daley with political opposition and even civil disruption” if he did not agree to Bacon’s election. Despite these efforts, Carey was elected. Palmer told listeners that the outcome was the result of the Daley administration’s backroom dealings. Palmer resolutely claimed that “the city’s powers that be, and that means Mayor Daley, saw to it that John D. Cary [sic]—white—was elected school board president.”84

In his coverage of the board election, Negronida expressed similar views about possible coercive powers at work within Daley’s administration. Before the election

Negronida actually referred to suspected strong-arm tactics: “As usual, the forces loyal to the

justice in the raid that resulted in the deaths of Hampton and Clark. As the grand jury investigation wore on in the months after Palmer’s April 26 broadcast of Lu’s Notebook, an already-boiling power struggle between Sears and Power heated further. The actions of key players involved in the investigation indicated that questionable behavior was likely taking place behind closed doors. See Thomson, “The Case That Wouldn’t Fade Away.” 84 Peter Negronida, “School Board Showdown Set for Bacon, Carey,” Chicago Tribune, November 15, 1970; Palmer, “Lots of Funny Stuff.”

218 mayor have been subtle. One Bacon supporter reported getting pressure from a Carey partisan on the board, and other behind-the-scenes pressure is suspected, tho not admitted.”85 Some time between the December 1970 election and the time of Palmer’s April

26, 1971, broadcast of Lu’s Notebook, Carey announced he would not serve another term as school board president when his term ended. Palmer’s response focused on what was not being said to the public:

Carey is now saying that being president of the board is “very demanding and too much of an encroachment” on his work as staff representative in Chicago for the United Steel Workers of America. Funny thing; he’s been a board member for five years and when he was scheming to rip off Bacon from the president’s post, Carey wasn’t talking that way. What has happened between now and then? Funny stuff . . . funny, funny stuff. . . . This is Lu Palmer.86

Again, Palmer’s language is sarcastic. He insinuates the reason Carey offered to explain his intent to resign did not seem genuine. He also draws on memory to shed new insights on the present. Instead of accepting Carey’s statements at face value Palmer reads more closely, and implicitly invites his readers to do the same. Carey later changed his mind again and was renamed to a five-year term as school board president.87 Throughout this broadcast of Lu’s

Notebook, Palmer’s commentary draws attention to the underhanded deals and strong-arm tactics many suspected were at work within Daley’s administration. Each of the three illustrations he uses probes beneath the surface of news coverage and explores the implications of unstated information. Again, his refrain, “funny stuff,” serves rhetorically as a subtle indictment of what he believed to be the insidious nature of the city’s power structure under Daley’s rule. Further, Palmer’s entire commentary offers listeners models for the active interrogation of local news.

85 Negronida, “School Board Showdown Set for Bacon, Carey.” 86 Palmer, “Lots of Funny Stuff.” 87 Edward Schreiber, “Daley Renames Carey to School Job; Commission Chief Protests,” Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1971.

219 During the 309th broadcast of Lu’s Notebook, “Slippery as Eels in Olive Oil,” which aired on April 27, 1971, Palmer continues to address themes of coercion and foul play within the city’s leadership. In particular, the theme of accountability among the city’s elected leaders emerges prominently in this broadcast. To illustrate his theme, Palmer highlights Chicago union leader Lillian Bates’s efforts to support mental health resources in the city. In particular, Palmer emphasized how Bates, then president of Local 1610 of the

American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, fought to improve job conditions for employees working in mental health facilities. He relayed to listeners that he sometimes ran into Bates while she was battling for “lower echelon employees” at the

Chicago-Read Mental Health Center. Not only did Palmer admire Bates for her work as a mental health care advocate, but he also praised her for being “as good a phrase maker” as she was a union leader. Palmer recalled the humorously damning language she used to describe the administrators at the mental health center. According to Palmer, Bates said:

“Those administrators out there are slippery as eels in olive oil.” Palmer used this anecdote to call his listeners’ attention to systematic racism infecting Chicago’s administrative practices more broadly, declaring:

Mrs. Bates has beautifully, colorfully, and accurately described that general state of white administration which rules over the institutions which control our lives. And, unfortunately, the brother who manages to get a seat by the door in some of the upper echelons of the white power structure more often than not swims in the same vat of olive oil.88

Palmer minces no words describing the institutional racism plaguing white administrative efforts within those city institutions that shaped black public life. Additionally,

Palmer suggests that those African Americans who manage to secure positions of power

88 Lu Palmer, “Slippery as Eels in Olive Oil,” Lu’s Notebook, April 27, 1971, in “Lu’s Notebook, 1971,” box 68, folder 6, AAPLR-CHM.

220 within the city’s administrative structure are often co-opted by administrative corruption. Like corrupt white civic leaders and politicians, black administrators in Chicago,

Palmer declares, often became as slippery as eels in olive oil. In short, he describes Chicago’s political structure as vast and one that seduces indiscriminately.

After naming the problem of institutional racism, Palmer discusses employment discrimination as a symptom of the city’s larger bureaucratic dysfunction. In particular,

Palmer describes Bates’s fight to represent African Americans and poor white employees with low-paying jobs at Chicago-Read Mental Health Center. According to Palmer, Bates had this to say about the unfair treatment of employees at the facility:

“There is no redress for complaints by the little employees. Employees get shifted from one job to another because complaints were made against them. They don’t get a chance to answer the accusations made against them. When we try to get details on a case, we get a big run-around.”89

Here Palmer uses quotations attributed to Bates to highlight discriminatory employment practices among health center managers. Additionally, he draws upon Bates’s work as an advocate of employees at this facility to illustrate how the larger problem of institutional racism in Chicago constricted employment opportunities for African Americans and low- income whites. Palmer also names for listeners a chief strategy— bureaucratic obstruction— managers at Chicago-Read Mental Health Center employ to prevent employeees from resolving grievances about job discrimination. According to Palmer, Bates argued that some department heads within the Chicago-Read Mental Health Center used “an implied threat of dismissal to force employees to sign petitions giving up their right to participate in a study which is designed to get at some of the hospital’s problems.”90 By drawing on Bates’s union experience, Palmer attempts to educate listeners about the extent of the tactics some

89 Ibid. 90 Palmer, “Slippery as Eels.”

221 Chicago institutions were suspected of using to facilitate employment discrimination. He also emphasizes the significance of holding city administrators accountable for perpetuating systematic racial oppression.

During the 310th broadcast of Lu’s Notebook, “The Monkey That Came Home,” which aired on April 28, 1971, Palmer again broaches the incidious nature of the city’s power structure under Daley’s rule. Specifically, Palmer addresses the crisis of drug addiction among young African Americans. He declares to listeners that drug addiction within

Chicago’s black communities has been systematically engineered:

There is no question in my own mind that the system by which young blacks become addicted to drugs is a genocidal scheme. There is no question in my mind about the destruction wrought by drugs, the destruction of the mind. Drugs are pumped into black communities by whites. The big profits on drugs go to whites. But every time a youth—or an adult for that matter—succumbs to the compelling need for dope, that youth or that adult is messing up his mind that much more.91

Palmer insists to listeners that the drug crisis he believed whites in power had orchestrated in black communities constituted something more sinister than conspiracy: an act of genocide.

This particular form of racial violence, Palmer explains, targets the mind as a primary site of attack. He suggests that when a person is addicted to drugs, mental faculties are redirected from self-edification to self-destruction. In other words, Palmer concludes that while those whites in power reaped enormous financial profits from the drug economy, the black community sustained a significant loss of intellectual power. Palmer’s description of the cognitive cost of the drug crisis in Chicago’s black communities offers listeners a compelling nuance to the problem of drug addiction. Here his language invites listeners to consider the not only the injustice of the drug crisis in black communities but the coercive forces sustaining it.

91 Lu Palmer, “The Monkey That Came Home,” Lu’s Notebook, April 28, 1971, in “Lu’s Notebook, 1971,” box 68, folder 6, AAPLR-CHM.

222 After describing drug addiction within black communities as a “genocidal scheme,” Palmer discusses how its destructive impact had actually boomeranged to impact white communities as well.92 While many had come to view the problem of drug addiction as a black problem, Palmer argues, many middle-class whites in the early 1970s were also struggling with drug addiction:

It is common knowledge in black communities that blacks have been victimized by drugs for many, many years. It is also generally understood that as long as dope was a problem within black communities, the larger society showed no concern. So, now that middle class whites have fallen victim to this mind blowing habit, everybody is getting excited and officials are trying to do something to eliminate the problem.93

Palmer then directs listeners’ attention to efforts among certain corporations to address drug addiction. He refers to the corporate insurance agency Allstate, which he states utilized its company magazine, Good Hands, to reduce drug addiction and to acknowledge the racist implications behind the drug crisis in black communities:

Allstate’s “goodhands” magazine, in its latest issue, begins a three part article by Bill Boone which is a report on the growing use of drugs in middle class America. Remembering that middle class America essentially means white America, listen to these words from the Allstate article: “The fact is, in a climate of despair – drugs, alcohol and other forms of escapism is profitable business. Such business thrived in the slums and ghetto. And perhaps because business was allowed to thrive; because drugs, and the cirme [sic], family and community deterioration, etc., that drug abuse creates, was not vigorously attacked, because society’s institutions failed to respond to the needs of the despairing by providing jobs, better education, medical services, adequate law enforcement, etc., perhaps because of these factors, drugs became the problem it is today . . . a problem that has extended into more lucrative markets where the clientele have access to better jobs and more money. In other words, the drug supplier thrives today because he was allowed to exist yesterday.” To which I add, it was also allowed to exist yesterday because of an insidious determination to control blacks by messing up their minds. . . . This is Lu Palmer.94

92 Ibid. 93 Ibid. 94 Palmer, “The Monkey.” I have not been able to verify the article Palmer references written by Bill Boone in Allstate’s magazine Good Hands. However, the August 12, 1971, issue of Jet magazine announces that a man named William A. Boone, who was the former assistant editor of Allstate’s Good Hands, was named assistant manager of the manpower development division of Allstate in Chicago. It seems likely that Bill Boone is the same person Palmer refers to in this broadcast of Lu’s Notebook. See “People,” Jet, August 12, 1971.

223 According to Palmer, the Allstate magazine article acknowledged the ways agents of the drug traffic industry targeted African Americans living within particular climates of despair.

Because drug trafficking was allowed to persist as a profitable business within black communities, he concludes, it lived long enough eventually to find its way back to the white ruling class that had first loosed it on black communities. Drug suppliers have been allowed to operate within black communities, Palmer argues, because they are part of a larger conspiracy to oppress blacks. As far as Palmer is concerned, members of a racist white ruling class weaponized drugs because of “an insidious determination to control blacks by messing up their minds.”95

Each of the three broadcasts of Lu’s Notebook examined above offers listeners implict instructions for engaging in more more critical analyses of news and information. Through constant sarcasm, insinuations, and overt indictments, Palmer invites listeners to reflect on the seeming strategic underhandedness at work among agents in control of the city’s political machinery. Using a variety of evidence including news reports, personal testimonies, and firsthand accounts, Palmer illuminates how Chicago’s political power structure operated in ways that disenfranchised black lives. Palmer’s commentary on the radio program modeled for listeners how to participate in more substantive engagement with public issues. In short,

Lu’s Notebook was a space in which listeners were encouraged to practice and enhance their skill in catechizing news and information concerning black public life in Chicago.

Lu’s Political Activism Affinity Space

While Lu’s Notebook offered an important site of learning, it was just one of several educational spaces Palmer created to accomplish his larger activist work cultivating African

95 Palmer, “The Monkey.”

224 American Chicagoans’ political wherewithal. Other extensions of this work included

Palmer’s community book colloquiums for black adults and youth, Lu’s Bookshelf and

Junior Bookshelf; his series of public discussions on current issues, Community Forum; and his political education clinics that strengthened blacks’ political acumen in preparation for a city-wide campaign to elect Chicago’s first African American mayor in 1983. Like Lu’s

Notebook, each of these educational spaces can be seen as subspaces connected to Palmer’s larger political activism between the 1970s and 1980s. Below I examine Lu’s Bookshelf,

Junior Bookshelf, Community Forum, and Palmer’s political education classes as subspaces of Lu’s Political Activism affinity space.

In 1972, Palmer organized Lu’s Bookshelf, a free monthly colloquium on books of relevance to African Americans. Lu’s Bookshelf participants met on the second Saturday of each month at 4:00 P.M. at Parkway Community Center for a discussion about the book they had been assigned to read for that month. A noted authority lectured on the assigned book, and participants exchanged ideas, adding and gaining their own knowledge about relevant issues. The local firm Urban Communications partnered with Palmer to help promote the program. During the first meeting of Lu’s Bookshelf on Saturday, November 4, 1972, at

Holy Angels Church, members discussed James H. Cone’s A Black Theology of Liberation. Dr.

Charles Long, then professor of history of religions at the University of Chicago, served as the invited authority who lectured on Cone’s book. Some of the books Lu’s Bookshelf members read during their gatherings included the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s Why

We Can’t Wait and Frantz Fanon’s A Dying Colonialism.

Lu’s Bookshelf members were encouraged to purchase assigned books from local black bookstores, although this was not required. Six local black bookstores were chosen as

225 the featured vendors for the monthly colloquium. A list of these bookstores was even included on flyers advertising the group’s meetings.96 Additionally, these promotional materials defined Lu’s Bookshelf as “A Community Awareness Project” and included a brief description detailing the nature of the program:

PARTICIPANTS IN THIS BLACK AWARENESS SERIES READ A BOOK EACH MONTH AND ATTEND THE ANNOUNCED MEETING WHERE THIS BOOK IS ANALYZED WITH AUDIENCE INTERACTION.97

Promotional documents indicate that Lu’s Bookshelf meetings could include formal business, such as Palmer reading reports on the state of the organization and issuing program schedules for the next six-month period.98 Four years after Palmer launched the program it was estimated that Lu’s Bookshelf had more than five hundred black participants.99

Palmer also created Junior Bookshelf so that children and youth who accompanied adults who attended Lu’s Bookshelf could also engage in critical discussions of interest to them. Promotional materials state that Junior Bookshelf was adapted to “the level of children and youth.” Advertising for one meeting of Junior Bookshelf on September 14,

1974 includes a quotation describing the nature of the youth organization: “THROUGH

LITTLE WORLDS, WE ENVISION AND ATTAIN THE COSMOS OF OUR

AGGRAVATED STRIVINGS.” Advertising for this particular meeting had Junior

Bookshelf participants scheduled to discuss Boy by Ferdinand Oyono (most likely an abbreviated reference to Oyono’s 1956 novel Houseboy). That same day adults attending Lu’s

96 This information was taken from a flyer advertising a Lu’s Bookshelf meeting on Saturday, June 14, 1975, in “Lu’s Notebook, 1971,” box 68, folder 6, AAPLR. The black bookstores serving as partners with Palmer and Lu’s Bookshelf were Ellis Bookstores; Forum Bookstore; A. J. Williams Bookstore; A & J Bookstore; Jay’s Bookstore; and A & S Stationary & Bookstore. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 Jarrett, “One Man’s War.”

226 Bookshelf were scheduled to discuss Ferdinand Lundberg’s book The Rich and the Super

Rich. Northeastern University instructor Anderson Thompson served as the expert analyst during that conversation.100 For the Lu’s Bookshelf meeting on Saturday, June 14, 1975, members were scheduled to discuss Barbara A. Reynolds’s book, Jesse Jackson: The Man, the

Movement, the Myth. Panelists during this meeting included Palmer, Conrad Worrill, who was serving as a professor at George Williams College, and Jorja English, who was an advisory board member of Lu’s Bookshelf.101

In a special session of Lu’s Bookshelf on Saturday, July 12, 1975, in a local high school auditorium, participants honored former Morehouse College president Dr. Benjamin

E. Mays. Lerone Bennett Jr., then senior editor of Ebony magazine, analyzed Mays’s work,

Born to Rebel: An Autobiography, for the gathered group. South Side Bank underwrote expenses for that Lu’s Bookshelf meeting and even provided funds to bring Mays to Chicago for the celebration.102 Nearly one thousand people attended the event. In his introductory remarks,

Palmer dedicated the special session of Lu’s Bookshelf to his father “and to the countless black men and women who lived in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and who fought so valiantly against a sick and repressive system.” The occasion marked the first time since Lu’s

Bookshelf launched that an author was honored at a meeting. Reporting on the event, the

Chicago Defender stated: “Lu’s Bookshelf was initiated to encourage blacks to read and analyze books which are relevant to the black liberation struggle.”103 Through their participation in

100 This information was taken from a flyer advertising a Lu’s Bookshelf meeting on Saturday, September 14 [no year included], in “Lu’s Notebook, 1971,” box 68, folder 6, AAPLR-CHM. 101 Flyer advertising Lu’s Bookshelf, Saturday, June 14, 1975, in “Lu’s Notebook, 1971,” box 68, folder 6, AAPLR-CHM. 102 “Honor Dr. Mays on ‘Lu’s Bookshelf,’” Chicago Defender, July 2, 1975. 103 “Former Morehouse President Honored,” Chicago Defender, July 24, 1975.

227 Lu’s Bookshelf and Junior Bookshelf, African American children, youth, and adults gained skills to analyze the past, present, and future.104

In addition to the monthly book colloquia for adults and children, Palmer initiated a series of public discussions on pressing issues of concern to African Americans. In 1974,

Palmer launched Community Forum to help educate and inform African Americans about current events. Sponsored by Palmer’s organization, the Lu Palmer Foundation, Community

Forum meetings took place at Parkway Community House on Saturdays at 4:00 P.M. every two months and frequently drew an audience of more than seven hundred people.105 During each meeting participants discussed a selected issue and also interacted with a panel of experts Palmer moderated. A two-dollar donation per person was requested for admission.

Tickets for season membership in Community Forum could be purchased for ten dollars.

Those persons wanting season membership cards could obtain them through the Lu Palmer

Foundation.106

Palmer hosted the first Community Forum on Saturday, November 30, 1974. That forum was entitled “A Black Mayor ’75.” In a community announcement promoting the event, the Chicago Defender reported that all the black candidates seeking to win support to run in the 1975 Chicago mayoral election had confirmed they would attend the meeting.

Each candidate was scheduled to have a period of time to speak, and after everyone spoke, each would be given an opportunity for rebuttal. A question-and-answer period was also scheduled so participants could interact with the candidates. This forum was the first in a

104 “Palmer in Reading Program,” Chicago Defender, October 24, 1972. 105 Jarrett, “One Man’s War.” 106 “1st Lu Palmer Forum Saturday,” Chicago Defender, November 28, 1974.

228 series of six forums held during the program’s first year.107 The 1974-75 Community

Forum season schedule reveals the diversity of the issues participants discussed:

SERIES SCHEDULE

Nov 30 – A Black Mayor ’75 Jan 25 – Economics of Survival Mar 22 – Black Leadership May 24 – Black Crime July 26 – Black Education Sept. 27 – The Black Church108

As this schedule illustrates, Palmer’s Community Forum provided a space for African

Americans to have substantive conversations about the circumstances and institutions shaping their lives. Through their involvement in discussions, participants acquired tools for analyzing and engaging complex social problems. For instance, during the Community

Forum meeting on May 24, 1975, participants were scheduled to engage the following questions on the subject of black crime:

What constitutes the criminal element in Black communities? How much do Law Enforcement, Economic, Education & other institutions contribute to this crime? What can we do?109

A four-person panel was also scheduled for this meeting. The panelists were Renault

Robinson, executive director of Afro-American Patrolmen’s League; Joyce Clark, coordinator of the Higher Education Guidance Center for Chicago Public Schools; Russ

Meek, president of Search for Truth; and Winston Moore, executive director of the Cook

County Department of Corrections.

In the last Community Forum during the series’ first year, participants gathered to engage a panel of ministers who discussed “The Black Church in Urban Society.” Those

107 “1st Lu Palmer Forum Saturday.” 108 This information was taken from a flyer advertising a Community Forum meeting on Saturday, May 24, 1975, in “Lu’s Notebook, 1971,” box 68, folder 6, AAPLR-CHM. 109 Ibid.

229 ministers were the Reverend Father George Clements, pastor of Holy Angels Catholic

Church; Bishop Louis H. Ford, presiding bishop of the First Diocese, Church of God in

Christ; and the Reverend Maceo Pembroke, pastor of St. Mark Methodist Church. The

1975-76 Community Forum season schedule began November 22, 1975, with the topic,

“Blacks and the Bi-Centennial.”110 Eventually, Palmer utilized the Community Forum model to target particular community leaders. In October 1976, the Chicago Tribune reported that

Palmer “recently started” a venture resembling Community Forum that consisted of a forum of fifty black business leaders who exchanged ideas about business and local problems faced by neighborhood entrepreneurs.111 Thus, public forums were a form of activism Palmer favored as he sought to provide resources to different community leaders.

Finally, Palmer created political literacy clinics designed to empower African

Americans to take more active roles in shaping their destinies. Between 1981 and 1983

Palmer utilized these classes as a foundation of a successful citywide grassroots movement to elect the city’s first African American mayor. These classes were just one means Palmer used to respond to African Americans’ growing frustrations over the previous decade with

Chicago’s racist machine politics. By late 1960s and early 1970s, Fredrick C. Harris has argued, African American Chicagoans had become increasingly impatient with elected leaders’ silence “if not complicity” on important issues such as police brutality, housing discrimination, and overcrowding in public schools.112 Palmer seized the opportunity to use his platform as a journalist, radio host, and community activist to develop programs dedicated to educating generations of black Chicagoans who had been through what he

110 “Community Forum on ‘The Black Church,’” Chicago Defender, September 27, 1975. 111 Jarrett, “One Man’s War.” 112 Harris, Price of the Ticket, 42.

230 called “decades of machine politics” and who had consequently been “forced out of any real involvement.”113

Palmer’s activism is most accurately aligned with the tradition of political activism, which scholars such as Harris distinguish from political organizing. In other words, the political organizer’s work is short-term community mobilization narrowly confined to a particular issue. The political activist, on the other hand, confronts multiple issues simultaneously and has long-term commitments to changing the unjust conditions plaguing the communities. The political activist works within what sociologist Charles M. Payne calls the “organizing tradition.”114 Not to be confused with the community organizer’s work, the political activist’s “bottom-up nonhierarchical form of activism,” Harris explains, involves work that “entails teaching others about activism.” The governing principle in this “organic form of black activism” is “each one teach one,” and it was utilized by figures such as Ella

Baker and Septima Clark in the 1950s and 1960s.115 This peer-to-peer instructional approach defines the collaborative pedagogical nature Gee attributes to all affinity spaces.

Seeking to address both African Americans’ frustrations with Chicago’s racist machine politics and the lack of awareness many blacks had about the local political process,

Palmer founded the Chicago Black United Communities (CBUC) in 1980. An independent black political organization, the CBUC was composed of local black activists and intellectuals. In 1981, CBUC members agreed it was time Chicago elected an African

American mayor. “And, the feeling was, that was impossible, just utterly impossible,” Palmer recalled. However, bolstered by the knowledge that more than two hundred U.S. cities had

113 Lu Palmer, interview by Madison Davis Lacy Jr., April 14, 1989, transcript, HHC-WU. 114 See Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 115 Harris, Price of the Ticket, 44.

231 already elected black mayors, the group persisted in its efforts. As a first step, Palmer and the CBUC helped to organize a citywide political conference at Malcolm X College on

August 15, 1981. The theme of the conference was “Toward a Black Mayor.”116 The consensus among conference attendees was that the ideal candidate would be someone who opposed the city’s long-guarded tradition of machine politics. That conference, then, provided momentum to existing grassroots efforts among black Chicagoans to oust

Democratic mayor Jane Byrne and to oppose the racist political machinery she had inherited.

Many African Americans had become dissatisfied with Byrne, who ran as a reform candidate and won the election in 1979. However, many of the black voters who supported Byrne felt her work as mayor was not consistent with her platform as a reform candidate. As Harris explains: “Once she became mayor, Byrne carried out the old-style machine tactics of her predecessors.” Additionally, Harris argues, Byrne allowed discrimination to persist in employment and community services and failed to honor promises to appoint African

Americans within her administration. “Far from a break from the past,” he writes, “the problems of police brutality, education, and housing for blacks continued—and in some cases worsened—under Byrne’s administration.”117

The 1981 conference at Malcolm X College was a crucial first step in mobilizing large-scale support behind an African American mayoral candidate. Palmer and conference leaders set two strategies: to develop a unifying slogan and to begin creating a plan to educate African Americans about politics. The chosen slogan, “We shall see in ’83,” which

Palmer coined, became the movement’s 1981 rallying cry in anticipation of the 1983 election.

The now-famous slogan was designed to inspire black voters to make history in electing

116 Lu Palmer interview by Madison Davis Lacy Jr., April 14, 1989, transcript, HHC-WU. 117 Harris, Price of the Ticket, 45.

232 Chicago’s first African American mayor.118 The second strategy to which Palmer and conference organizers committed was to begin plans to establish a program of political education classes to be offered between 1981 and the 1983 mayoral election. However, the task would involve significant labor. The target audience for these classes consisted largely of

African Americans who lacked advanced knowledge about the city’s political process. Most had no substantive experience with local politics. Palmer later recalled:

They knew nothing about what a State Rep was, what a State Senator was, they just did not know anything about the political system. So it became absolutely essential that we develop a cadre of people, number one, who were informed and number two, who had been trained on what to do out there in the streets, insofar as campaigning was concerned, and that’s what developed, a year and a half period of political education.119

Palmer’s wife, Jorja English Palmer, organized the political education courses. The courses were held on four consecutive Saturdays with the fifth Saturday reserved for a graduation ceremony. Between 1981 and 1983, more than two thousand people graduated from the Palmers’ political education courses. Palmer admired participants’ intense commitment. He recalled this commitment displayed during the first graduation ceremony.

That ceremony was held in a building with no heat during a record cold day—80 below zero, according to Palmer. Yet, Palmer recalled, graduates arrived resolute in their quest to finish what they started:

And we were up here, maybe a hundred or more of us, see the people came, they brought their spouses, they brought their families. It was like a regular graduation. It was a prideful day. And there was no heat in this building. Do you know that not one person left? We were up here easily an hour, hour and fifteen, an hour and twenty minutes, and we went through our ceremony with overcoats, scarves, gloves. I mean it was cold. And that was another signal to me, you know, we don’t like cold weather. And I said, “If our people will sit through this kind of a ceremony as long

118 Muwakkil, “From an Activist’s Standpoint.” 119 Lu Palmer interview by Madison Davis Lacy Jr., April 14, 1989, transcript, HHC-WU.

233 as they did in much cold, we’re headed somewhere.” And that was a second signal to me that we were going to elect a Black mayor in ’83.120

The political education clinics were a vital, and successful, first step in mobilizing African

Americans’ support of a campaign to back a black candidate for mayor in 1983. For participants, the significance of the training was palpable. Palmer concluded, “They were just people, grassroots people. And to get . . . what we called it, a political education degree, that they could put on their walls. It was just an extraordinary experience for them, I tell you.”121

With a coalition of thousands of African Americans well versed in Chicago’s political process, Palmer and CBUC members executed the next phase of their campaign: identifying suitable candidates. To begin this work, the CBUC developed a survey asking black

Chicagoans to select the mayoral candidate they most favored. The survey was mailed to more than thirty-five thousand black households. To Palmer’s delight about seventeen thousand surveys were returned. From those surveys ninety-two names emerged as potential mayoral candidates. That list was then narrowed to the ten most popular choices among respondents. At the very top of that list was Congressman Harold Washington. About six of the top ten candidates expressed to Palmer that they would be interested in running for mayor. Palmer then helped to organize a black mayoral plebiscite in 1982 at Bethel A.M.E.

Church in hopes of gaining a consensus among African American Chicagoans about the candidate they would support. Hundreds of the city’s grassroots leaders attended, and once again Washington was endorsed as the people’s choice to run against Byrne. In many ways,

Washington was an ideal candidate. Politically, he was a “machine politician” turned

“machine renegade” after placing fourth and losing to white alderman Michael Bilandic in

120 Ibid. 121 Ibid.

234 the special Democratic primary election for Chicago mayor in 1977. Bilandic replaced

Richard J. Daley after Daley’s death on December 20, 1976.122

While the CBUC’s surveys and the 1982 plebiscite revealed overwhelming black support for Washington’s candidacy, the newly elected congressman was reluctant. He had run successfully for Congress in the First Congressional District, defeating machine-backed incumbent Bennett Stewart in 1980. Washington said he would agree to run for mayor if fifty thousand new black voters were registered. When the CBUC and a coalition of other organizations achieved that milestone, Washington asked for another fifty thousand new black registrants. After more than one hundred thousand new black voters were registered,

Washington agreed to run for mayor. Washington went on to win the Democratic primary election. The massive black voter registration campaign resulted in blacks surpassing whites in voter registration in the Democratic mayoral primary, 87 percent to 82 percent, and black voters tied white voter turnout at 64 percent. Latinos’ votes were split between the three candidates: 45 percent for Byrne, 30 percent for Richard M. Daley, and 25 percent for

Washington. In the end Washington prevailed, receiving 52 percent of the total vote, including 12 percent of the white vote and 99 percent of the black vote.123

Because of the extensive political activism of Palmer, the CBUC, and other grassroots groups, a diverse coalition of African Americans coalesced around Washington’s candidacy. Such widespread support, Harris argues, was unprecedented, and it proved instrumental in Washington’s victory. “It energized black communities in Chicago like never

122 Harris, Price of the Ticket, 45-46. Harris also notes that Wilson Frost, a black alderman who served as president pro tem of the city council, was next in line to replace Daley. However, the city’s political machine bypassed Frost, adding to blacks’ growing impatience with the Democratic Party. 123 Ibid., 45-46, 48-49. Harris argues that what helped put Washington over the top was support from Latino voters, who gave Washington 82 percent of their vote. Still, it is safe to say that without the significant number of new African American voters whom Palmer and others helped register, Washington might not have clinched the election.

235 before” and represented “one of the most spectacular insurgent movements in the history of urban politics.”124 Abdul Akalimat and Doug Gills agree about the efficacy of the political activism in which Palmer and others engaged during Washington’s campaign:

There were many Lazarus-like winos and street people in the campaign who put on ties, picked up notebooks, pens, and pencils—not merely to vote, but to advocate that others do also . . . Women’s groups united under the Women’s Network in Support of Harold Washington, where middle-class highbrows joined hands with welfare recipients. Youth joined together with senior citizens who had passed the baton of active struggle to those younger. The elderly, many of whom had been trapped in their highrises for years in fear, walked in defiance (of the gangs) to “punch 9” and await the unfolding of their wildest dreams—a black mayor in their lifetimes.125

Many credit Palmer specifically with Washington’s election as Chicago’s first African

American mayor. Harris states, “If there is one individual who single-handedly built the organization that led to Washington’s election as mayor, it’s Lu Palmer.”126 Worrill identified the CBUC as Palmer’s greatest organizing venture, which “more than any other organization” established the necessary groundwork for Washington’s election.127 Muwakkil has expressed a similar view: “Talk to any of the people who tried to convince a reluctant congressman named Harold Washington to run for mayor in 1983 and they will testify that

Palmer was a pivotal part of the mix that produced Mayor Washington.”128 Palmer’s political activism relied upon deep roots and long-term engagement with his community. Harris concludes correctly that Palmer was a product of his environment: “Ideologically rigid with an abrasive manner, Palmer was the type of community activist who naturally rises from communities under siege.”129

124 Ibid., 46-47. 125 Abdul Akalimat and Doug Gills, Harold Washington and the Crisis of Black Power in Chicago (Chicago: Twenty- First Century Books and Publications, 1989), 73. 126 Harris, Price of the Ticket, 42. 127 Worrill, “Remember a Great Ancestor.” 128 Muwakkil, “From an Activist’s Standpoint.” 129 Harris, Price of the Ticket, 43.

236 Although Palmer certainly spoke emphatically and unapologetically for black

Chicagoans, he is best understood as a coalition builder.130 He lived and worked to empower marginalized communities even while he fought fiercely for the rights of black lives. And while Palmer produced a host of separate alternative educational sites to facilitate black learning, each connected African Americans in a shared resolve to struggle against racial oppression toward political empowerment. As Worrill testifies: “Through Lu’s Notebook and forums, he was instrumental in mobilizing and organizing Black people to take action around our own self-interests.”131

Conclusion

For over fifty years Lutrelle F. Palmer Jr. informed, educated, and organized African

American Chicagoans against the negative social forces constricting black life in Chicago.

Through programs such as Lu’s Notebook, Lu’s Bookshelf, Junior Bookshelf, Community

Forum, and political education clinics, Palmer enhanced blacks’ political literacy and developed their ability to engage the world around them more critically. Having committed his life and career to promoting public education and substantive discussion on issues vital to the black community, Palmer can be understood as a person on a journey to liberate

African Americans from ignorance and civic passivity. Thus, his nickname, “The Talking

Drum,” appropriately characterizes his labor to convene African Americans in shared affinities and quests for greater autonomy and, ultimately, more abundant life.132 Much like

130 Davis, “Tribute to Mr. Lutrelle Palmer.” 131 Worrill, “Remember a Great Ancestor.” 132 Chinta Strausbert, “Lu Palmer Hailed for a Life of Activism,” Chicago Defender, April 16, 2001.

237 the actual African drums upon which his ancestors rapped feverishly, Palmer’s labor demonstrates the efficacy and the advocacy role of black discourse.133

Palmer’s use of alternate educational sites as a means of sustained political activism provides a model for evaluating and creating affinity spaces in the twenty-first century that are committed to celebrating and protecting the beauty and dignity of black lives. For instance, examining contemporary black talk radio programming in the United States might reveal the existence of dynamic affinity spaces. Such studies might also identify opportunities to create spaces that leverage listeners’ interests into developing skills necessary for social and political empowerment. Additionally, such studies might yield questions that could bolster contemporary black political activist efforts: What interests do black youth living in major U.S. cities share? What media forms do black adults utilize when learning new skills or when seeking new information? What skills are critical for the successful public protest of police brutality? Examining those modern affinity spaces that mobilize participants against black disenfranchisement could provide answers to these and related questions. Further, such studies could reveal those spaces (i.e., churches, colleges, radio) and those shared affinities (i.e., video editing, social media, social justice) with the greatest capacities to facilitate systemic change.

Beyond providing a method for evaluating and creating strategies of political activism, Palmer’s labor illuminates the possibilities that thoughtfully conceived affinity spaces can offer African American communities today. Just as many thought that electing

Chicago’s first African American mayor was impossible, many black communities today face similar impossibilities. Saving black youth from police brutality, for instance, is one task that

133 James Warren, “Talk About Clout: When Black Radio Speaks, Chicago’s Politicians Listen,” Chicago Tribune, March 23, 1989.

238 seems to grow more impossible each day. However, Palmer’s unique political activism demonstrates the penultimate nature of particular impossibilities when a community is united in shared affinities for a better world. Palmer’s life provides compelling testimony that if people engage in collaborative efforts, impossibilities can become something more than just abstract hopes. They can become realities.

239 CONCLUSION

During the mid-twentieth century, mainstream media institutions in the United

States regularly circulated circumscribed, often-racist representations of African American life. Frequently, these institutions scripted black citizenship as inferior and unworthy of the same democratic freedoms as whites. Given the limited number of black-owned and black- oriented media at the time, African Americans had few avenues through which to challenge such misrepresentations of black identity. However, from WVON’s first broadcast on April

1, 1963, the radio station’s programming intervened in this racist politics of representation and proved an effective tool in the fight against anti-black sentiments. Surprisingly, with just

1,000 watts of power, WVON became an immediate broadcast sensation, giving voice to a culture and community otherwise marginalized on the airwaves and in other mainstream media outlets. WVON’s civil rights advocacy alone illustrates Marshall McLuhan’s observation that “radio is not only a mighty awakener of archaic memories, forces, and animosities, but a decentralizing, pluralistic force.”1

Through its diverse programming WVON provided listeners alternate sites of popular knowledge and learning about black public life. Consequently, the station encouraged and empowered listeners to reflect on their identities as citizens in more nuanced ways beyond whites’ semantic and semiotic constructions of black identity. As an avenue that facilitated identity formation among its listeners, WVON illustrates Alexander G.

Weheliye’s argument that “the spatialities resulting from the juxtaposition of consuming sonic technologies and being consumed by them suggest specifically modern ways of

1 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: Signet Books, 1964), 267.

240 be(com)ing in the world.”2 By analyzing WVON as an institution that mobilized African

Americans against racist popular knowledge about black lives, then, “Talking Drum” demonstrates the epistemological implications of the radio station’s programming. In other words, this project has shown how WVON’s sonorous Signfiyin(g) on negative representations of African Americans helped to challenge and refigure ideas about black identity and citizenship in the postwar and civil rights years. Additionally, WVON’s programming offered new venues for convening and circulating black Chicagoans’ cultural, religious, and geopolitical concerns about systematic black disenfranchisement.

Wesley South’s program, Hotline, provided African Americans an interactive forum in which they could debate pressing public issues in real time. As Chapter 1 has shown, Hotline often channeled prophetic critiques that exposed mainstream media myths or fake news about black public life in Chicago. In particular, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s July 1966 appearance on Hotline both confronted erroneous claims of a correlation between rioting and nonviolent direct action campaigns and exposed latent racism within Chicago’s white communities.

Hotline afforded King the opportunity to speak directly to listeners’ concerns about rioting.

Consequently, the show reversed the law and order rhetoric that racist city leaders and local media outlets used to criminalize civil rights demonstrations and demonstrators and, ultimately, refigured racist whites as the true breakers of the law in Chicago. In short, Hotline provided a creative avenue through which the tradition of the American and African

American prophetic critique enabled African Americans to indict whites’ unfaithfulness to the national covenant of freedom and equality.

2 Alexander G. Weheliye, Phonologies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 107.

241 Similarly, Bernadine C. Washington’s programs, On the Scene with Bernadine and the WVON Bern Club, were created to increase African Americans’ agency amid hostile sanctions designed to inhibit black mobility. Specifically, both programs provided forums that confronted educational and employment inequalities that African American women faced in Chicago while they expanded listeners’ and participants’ social, cultural, intellectual, and political worlds. Examinations of the Bern Club in particular reveal the unique tactics members of black radio-affiliated social clubs in the Cold War era deployed to confront the systematic oppression of African American women. Furthermore, the analysis of

Washington’s social club in Chapter 2 extends terminology and theoretical categories comprising black public sphere theory. For instance, while Catherine Squires’s concepts of the black enclave, satellite, and counterpublic spheres are integral to black public sphere theory, they are not sufficient alone to analyze the unique contours and contributions of the

WVON Bern Club. Rather, the program is more accurately described as an intercessory or ambassadorial public sphere. Thus, my study of the Bern Club offers public sphere theory new methods and terms for studying how oppressed black communities utilize media innovations to respond to various forms of social injustice.

While WVON programs like On the Scene with Bernadine and the WVON Bern talked back to racism and patriarchy in more subtle, diplomatic ways, Roy Wood’s news and editorials took more direct and controversial approaches to confronting social injustice.

Specifically, Wood’s editorials provided African Americans with discourses of resistance that refigured conceptions of citizenship in terms of radical interconnectivity. In particular,

Wood’s June 1964 satirical editorial on bigotry exemplifies the radio station’s ability—as

Wesley South and Bernadine C. Washington’s programs demonstrate—to talk back directly

242 yet artfully to racial prejudice. In this editorial, Wood deploys the African American vernacular practice of Signifyin(g) to mock the absurd logic of racism and to persuade listeners of the benefits of a unified national citizenry. By constructing a creative self-defense or apologia from the perspective of an impenitent bigot, Wood’s editorial achieves a double- voiced discourse that both condemns and celebrates racist ideology. Described as the “soul” of the station, Wood’s editorials, and his 1964 editorial on bigotry in particular, consolidated the diverse styles of the station’s personalities, such as the directness of South and the savvy subtlety of Washington. Evoking an unapologetic bigot also seemed to be a rhetorical strategy Wood deployed as a means of alluding to the contentious racial politics of the 1964 presidential election. Wood’s editorials offered listeners provocative commentaries on citizenship that challenged all, regardless of race, to consider the benefits of rising above racial division.

Finally, Lu Palmer’s Lu’s Notebook and his other educational ventures, like WVON’s other programming, served as alternate sites of learning that enhanced the political literacy of

African American Chicagoans. Through Lu’s Notebook, Lu’s Bookshelf, Junior Bookshelf,

Community Forum, and Palmer’s political education clinics, African Americans gained access to information and skills that helped them develop into more competent and active political agents. These educational sites or “affinity spaces” facilitated mentorship and collaboration and were held together by African Americans’ shared affinities for political activism. Collectively, these smaller affinity spaces comprised a larger space that I refer to as

Lu’s Political Activism affinity space, through which Palmer organized black Chicagoans in unprecedented activist efforts, such as launching a successful city-wide movement to elect

Chicago’s first African American mayor in 1983.

243 One of the more remarkable truths my research has unearthed is the intimate connection and fierce loyalty that WVON and its programming inspired among listeners.

WVON could mobilize the city’s African Americans to collective action in the span of a single program broadcast. Additionally, the station served as a calming force for its listeners, encouraging rational thinking and unity in the wake of traumatic events. Consistent with

McLuhan’s argument about the tribal power of radio, WVON moved listeners to involve themselves with others in pursuits of common goals. As the station’s programming demonstrates and as Jennifer Searcy correctly observes, “in times of communal need, the station channeled this unity into positive action.”3

“Talking Drum” attempts to expand the small body of scholarship that has explored the intersections of radio, race, and religion before and after World War II and the capacities of radio as a political response to black oppression. Subsequent studies of WVON, while important, face particular challenges. One significant challenge is that with the passing of

WVON Good Guy Herb Kent, “The Cool Gent,” on October 22, 2016, none of the station’s original disc jockeys are still living. However, scholars wishing to study WVON or

Chicago black-appeal radio between the 1960s and the present have a small yet slowly dwindling archive of current and former listeners who could provide compelling oral histories.

Oral histories of listeners’ engagements with WVON can yield exciting contributions to scholarship on the social and political impact of the station’s programming. In considering this archive, a series of compelling questions arise: Are there still people living who called in to Hotline in July 1966 when Dr. King appeared on the show? If so, were they nervous asking

3 Jennifer Searcy, “The Voice of the Negro: African American Radio, WVON, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Chicago” (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University, 2012), 157-58, Paper 688, http://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/688.

244 their questions? Did the conversation change their thinking about riots and nonviolent demonstrations? What role did they think they were playing as listeners or callers? Likewise, are there still black women living today who listened to On the Scene with Bernadine? Are there members of the WVON Bern Club who can describe their overseas adventures with the social club? Did they think of themselves as ambassadors of black womanhood? How did their participation in these programs impact their lives? Similarly, there are still people living in Chicago who heard Roy Wood’s editorials, and most likely his provocative June 1964 editorial on bigotry. What would those people say about Wood’s commentary in light of

Donald Trump’s presidential administration? And finally, there are African Americans still living in Chicago who participated in Lu Palmer’s Political Activism affinity space. What skills did they learn? What role did they think they were playing through their participation?

How impossible did it seem in the early 1980s to elect Chicago’s first black mayor? All these questions and more serve as archival gems awaiting excavation in future oral history projects.

In addition to expanding scholarship on Cold War Chicago black-appeal radio, this project also seeks to prompt reflection on how WVON’s programming might illuminate ways members and institutions of the black public sphere in the twenty-first century utilize mass media technology to advance African American citizenship. In particular, WVON provides a resource to support attempts to mobilize African American communities amid national imperatives of black containment. Thus, “Talking Drum” aims to initiate reflection on the capacities of modern mass media technologies to transfigure misrepresentations of black citizenship and to secure greater democratic freedoms for African Americans in

American cities such as Ferguson, Missouri; Charleston, South Carolina; Chicago, Illinois;

Baltimore, Maryland; and Long Island, New York. These cities are urban spaces where in

245 recent years instances of police brutality against African Americans have sparked still fiery national debates about whether or not black lives matter. What are the opportunities to improve uses of black media institutions to intervene in a dominant politics of representation and, ultimately, to interrupt and (re-)figure negative representations of blackness? These questions can animate future studies on WVON or black-appeal radio and the intersections of race, media, and modern civil rights organizations.

“Talking Drum” was written with both academic and nonacademic audiences in mind. Thus, while the project serves as a resource for scholars, it also has valuable implications for contemporary nonprofit, commercial, civic, and civil rights organizations.

For instance, the analysis of WVON’s programming undertaken in this project can inspire opportunities within today’s mediating institutions of the black public sphere to expand efforts to address racial discrimination. In particular, black-appeal radio stations could enhance their capacity to mobilize listeners’ participation in community actions or justice work through off-air social clubs that target specific demographics, such as entrepreneurs, youth, or civic leaders. Diverse activities, programs, and events could be designed specifically to expand club members’ social, professional, or political worlds. Such organizations would create additional avenues through which African Americans might become more empowered and engaged civic participants.

Additionally, “Talking Drum” can offer positive insights to African American churches committed to addressing blacks’ systematic disenfranchisement. Since they convene regular audiences each week, black churches provide important forums for informing and organizing black communities. Livestream Internet town hall meetings between church members and prominent local or national leaders might provide convenient

246 ways to inform African Americans on critical issues such as police brutality. Churches could also develop social club travel programs for black youth modeled after the WVON

Bern Club. These clubs could expose youth living in urban areas like Chicago to other parts of the city, country, and world, expanding their conceptions of self and citizenship.

Churches could also develop online and in-person affinity spaces where participants pooled their experiences and expertise in pursuit of a shared interest. For instance, political activism affinity spaces could be created for those interested in political science, local or national politics, or careers in elected office. Within such spaces participants could increase their political literacy while they cultivated skills in a particular area, such as voting rights, free speech, activism, or constitutional law. Additionally, communication affinity spaces could be developed within churches to enhance participants’ skills in writing or speech. These spaces could cater to a variety of interests such as public debate, fiction writing, screenwriting, and public speaking. Church media departments could be created or redesigned to help church leaders more sufficiently intervene in mainstream media misrepresentations of black public life. For instance, church media centers could offer training to strengthen skills necessary to challenge racial stereotyping in mass media outlets. Forums in print journalism, editorial writing, podcasts, blogging, photography, acting, video editing, radio delivery, or television broadcasting would enable peer-to-peer learning. The various skills learned could then be used to respond to racist scripts about African Americans circulating within the larger U.S. public sphere.

Thus, “Talking Drum” offers nonacademic communities resources for facilitating critical thinking, self-direction, and personal development. Despite the present injustices within the prison industrial complex and police departments, for example, “Talking Drum”

247 offers institutions of the black public sphere a means of empowering African Americans to engage structural oppression within wider public spheres with greater verve and efficacy.

In short, writing about WVON involves more than just a contribution to an academic discourse about the political significance of black-appeal radio in Cold War Chicago. That is an important contribution. But “Talking Drum” was composed with an additional purpose in mind: activism. In other words, while this project seeks to document WVON’s history and to argue about the theoretical implications of black-appeal radio on black public life, it also intends to talk with those African Americans and their allies who are presently fighting to persuade members of a dominant public sphere that black lives have inherent value, that black lives matter. In short, every instance of writing about WVON becomes a consequential extension of the station’s programming. Projects about WVON as a “talking drum,” then, continue the radio station’s labor in convening, constructing, and rebroadcasting African

Americans as citizens fearfully and wonderfully made.

If indeed WVON was for black Chicagoans a “talking drum” that convened black masses in quests for more abundant life, then the station’s on-air personalities were the drum majors leading the way. In a 1972 Chicago Defender column, the Reverend Curtis E. Burrell Jr. drew parallels between historic epic poets and community spokesmen, such as Joshua,

David, and Homer, whom he referred to as “Bards,” and those African American Bards like

Roberta Flack, Quincy Jones, and Marvin Gaye heard singing on WVON. Historically,

Burrell argued, Bards have played significant roles in the development of societies, cultures, and nations:

They caused thought and meditation; they inspired and cautioned; they gave direction and therapy. Through words and rhythm, they set to ballad the pulse, heartbeat, anxieties and hope of the people. They spoke of sorrow, love, confidence, steadfastness, everyday life, community and Nationhood. They gave inspiration,

248 praise, thanksgiving, understanding and vision. The Bards were the spiritual, moral and morale-building vanguard. They were somewhat prophetic and idealistic—but always realistic. . . . The Bard is not an artist for the sake of art, but for the sake of truth and the people. The political and social relevancy of the Bard is that they always have a message of healing as they cause the listener to reflect upon themselves, individually and collectively.4

The connections between such historic Bards and WVON personalities Wesley

South, Bernadine Washington, Roy Wood, and Lu Palmer are striking! Each served as influential spokespersons who led black Chicagoans in shared struggles to realize the power of self-direction. They too spoke of sorrow, love, and healing. They too inspired self- determination through their artistry. WVON’s Bards, Searcy writes, “encouraged their listeners to seize their own agency and through community betterment campaigns and becoming involved with the Civil Rights Movement, to change the world around them.”5

Thus, while WVON provided a channel through which black Chicagoans could connect with their diverse tradition of Bards, the station’s personalities became beloved heralds who proclaimed unequivocally the power and possibility of black lives. And they call to each of us now. They call from eternity, challenging us to open our eyes, to seek out adventures on foreign shores, to see the beauty in unity despite difference, and to seek out spaces where we can pursue our passions and learn to be better versions of ourselves today than we were yesterday. Can you hear them calling? Regardless, that blessed sonority is now our precious inheritance. Our sacred trust and responsibility. May we detect its unique frequency. May we be open to its message and leading. And may we be faithful imbuing our labors and our lives with its courageous, liberating love.

4 Reverend Curtis Burrell Jr., “Music Messengers: The Old New Bards,” Chicago Defender, July 13, 1972. 5 Searcy, “Voice of the Negro,” 162.

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