African American Radio, WVON, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Chicago
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Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2012 The Voice of the Negro: African American Radio, WVON, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Chicago Jennifer Searcy Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the African American Studies Commons Recommended Citation Searcy, Jennifer, "The Voice of the Negro: African American Radio, WVON, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Chicago" (2012). Dissertations. 688. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/688 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Searcy LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO THE VOICE OF THE NEGRO: AFRICAN AMERICAN RADIO, WVON, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN CHICAGO A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN AMERICAN HISTORY/PUBLIC HISTORY BY JENNIFER SEARCY CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2013 Copyright by Jennifer Searcy, 2013 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my dissertation committee for their feedback throughout the research and writing of this dissertation. As the chair, Dr. Christopher Manning provided critical insights and commentary which I hope has not only made me a better historian, but a better writer as well. As readers, Dr. Lewis Erenberg and Dr. Susan Hirsch provided invaluable advice throughout the editing process. Professionally and personally, I would also like to extend my gratitude to Dr. Robert Bucholz. In looking back at my graduate career, some of my fondest memories are of working as your teaching assistant, including those frenetic times when final grades were due. I would also like to thank the Loyola History Department Dissertation Writing Group for their feedback and in particular Kevin Kaufmann, who could always be counted on as a never-ending source of support and for a perfectly-timed “buck up” whenever I was ready to throw in the towel. Given the fleeting nature of radio and a lack of audio primary sources, I would like to thank those who assisted in locating materials for this project, including the staff members at the Loyola University Chicago Library, the Archives of African American Music and Culture at Indiana University and The HistoryMakers, the nation’s largest African American video oral history collection. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Robert Pruter for providing much-needed copies of 1960s playlists from WVON and other local radio stations. iii Personally, I would like to thank my siblings, Jeremy and Joshua, and my parents Ronald and Cathy, for their support. From sending me to Space Camp to helping me sort through a junkyard in the middle of an Ohio winter for parts for a middle school science fair experiment, my parents supported my whims and instilled in me a love of learning that has yet to diminish. To my husband, Michael, I have known you for almost half of my life and this dissertation has occupied a good many of those years. It would not have been completed without your support, and I am forever grateful that “you remembered me” from our first meeting. Finally, I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my son, Wesley. This dissertation is a study of many different voices, but from the moment you were born your voice forever became the sweetest one for me. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: “WHERE A MAN CAN BE A MAN”: THE GREAT MIGRATION AND THE CREATION OF BRONZEVILLE 24 The Great Migration and the Creation of Bronzeville 26 The Emergence of “Race Music” In Chicago 43 The Rise of African American Radio in Chicago 50 Blacks in White Bodies: The Creation of Chess Records 60 Conclusion 68 CHAPTER TWO: CREATING THE “CHESS BABY”: THE BIRTH OF WVON 71 Where Happy Folks Congregate: Transforming “WHFC” Into “WVON” 72 Let’s Go to Work! The Formatting and Programming of WVON 78 The Good Guys: WVON’S Disc Jockeys 89 Conclusion 114 CHAPTER THREE: “NOW RUN AND TELL THAT!” WVON AND THE POWER OF RADIO JOURNALISM DURING THE CHICAGO FREEDOM MOVEMENT 116 The Journalism of WVON 119 Wesley South’s Hotline 134 A Classroom without Walls: WVON and the Education of Chicago’s Black Community 151 Conclusion 161 CHAPTER FOUR: FERNS, FEZNECKIES, IVY LEAGUERS AND GOUSTERS: WVON AND AFRICAN AMERICAN TEEN RADIO IN CHICAGO DURING THE 1960s 164 The Rise of Teen Radio 167 Chicago’s Second Ghetto 171 The World’s Oldest Teenagers: Herb Kent and the Good Guys 178 Don’t Cut Your Own Throat: WVON and Youth-Focused Social Activism 205 Conclusion 219 CHAPTER FIVE: “MUSIC IS THE BACKBONE”: THE MUSIC OF WVON 221 “NY Didn’t Break Records – They Came Here” 223 “People Get Ready”: Civil Rights and Soul Music on WVON 248 “You’ve Got to Make it Baby!” The Business of Being a WVON Disc Jockey 254 Conclusion 269 v CONCLUSION 273 BIBLIOGRAPHY 296 VITA 309 vi INTRODUCTION According to WVON disc jockey Lucky Cordell, “You know a radio station is not the wires and the tubes and a transmitter. A radio station is people.”1 Throughout the 1960s, many listeners on the south and west sides of Chicago wholeheartedly agreed with Cordell’s sentiments towards the local radio station WVON 1450AM, “The Voice of the Negro.” Created and managed by Chess Records founders Leonard and Phil Chess, WVON served not only as a lucrative marketing outlet for the company’s music and for the rhythm and blues and soul industry as a whole, but also as a driving media force that provoked collective thought and action among the Chicago black community during the station’s most relevant years spanning from 1963, the year of its creation, to 1969, with the unexpected death of Leonard Chess. WVON, the focus of this dissertation, provides an excellent opportunity to examine how radio served as an outlet for the concerns of Chicago African Americans, and this study can serve as a formative model for future investigations in how popular culture interacted with the Civil Rights Movement in urban areas. 1 Moses “Lucky” Cordell. interview by Alexis Gillespie, transcript, June 14, 1995, Radio Smithsonian: Black Radio Project Collection, Archives of African American Music and Culture, Bloomington, Indiana 1 2 The model for radio analysis established by communications and media theorist Marshall McLuhan can be applied to WVON. In his best-selling 1964 study Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McLuhan argued that for the first time in global history, “by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western World is imploding” as electronic media such as radio and television brought its inhabitants closer together.2 For McLuhan, electronic media unified societies by importing far-flung events into the daily lives of its consumers, thus created a shared consciousness about the world around them. Media also served as an “extension of man” and lengthened man’s ability to see, hear, feel, and touch the world around them by presenting information closer and quicker than ever before in human history. He contended that “It is the persistent theme of this book that all technologies are extensions of our physical and nervous systems to increase power and speed.”3 His mantra was “the medium is the message,” that is the medium, or the way and form in which a message is transmitted, is just as important as its content. The new forms of media introduced in the twentieth century, including telephone, radio, and television, inundated multiple senses with information simultaneously. As a result of this implosion, McLuhan argued that “the globe is no more than a village. Its electric speed in bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden 2Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw Hill and Company, 1964), 3. 3 Ibid, 90. 3 implosion has heightened human awareness to an intense degree.”4 As a result of these new forms of electronic media that immediately transmitted information, “Any highway eatery with its TV set, newspaper and magazine is as cosmopolitan as New York or Paris.”5 Radio’s ability to quickly transmit content aided in the unification of its listeners. During the Civil Rights Movement and the burgeoning Black Nationalism movement of the 1960s, WVON served as unifying force for Chicago’s African American community. Through this medium, which broadcast a combination of racially conscious rhythm and blues and soul music, disc jockeys who identified with the composition of the African American community encouraged a pro-Civil Rights agenda; through journalistic offerings that discussed and featured prominent Civil Rights agendas and leaders, WVON became a rallying point for black Americans for demanding improved conditions not only locally in Chicago, but also across the nation. On the surface, WVON fulfilled two goals, that of financial gain for the owners and the establishment of a black radio station in Chicago. This study, however, will focus on the progressive-mindedness of Leonard Chess and what role his mindset played in his decision to create WVON. As his son Marshall Chess remembers, “He had a real affinity and sensitivity to black people. I think in some way, all the Chesses were blacks in white bodies.” As previously explored by historian Lewis Erenberg, African Americans and Jews experienced a cultural connection because “both groups felt a deep woe, had 4 Ibid, 5. 5 Ibid, 12.