NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Black Power TV: A Cultural History of Black Public Affairs Television 1968-1980

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE

REQUIREMENTS

For the degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Field of Radio, Television and Film

By

Devorah Heitner

EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

June 2007

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ABSTRACT:

Black Power TV: A Cultural History of Black Public Affairs Television 1968–1980

Devorah Heitner

“Black Power TV: A Cultural History of Black Public Affairs Television, 1968– 1980” chronicles the history of a television genre that emerged in 1968, addressing African American audiences with such bold titles as Like It Is, Say Brother, Our People, and For Blacks Only in cities such as Boston, New York, Atlanta, Washington, and Chicago. This dissertation examines the importance of the urban uprisings as a catalyst for changes in Black media representation, considering the impact of the Kerner Report and the responses of local governments and media outlets to the civil unrest of that period. These shows had several critical effects: they created a space for publicizing internal debate in Black communities; they gave African American spectators a chance to see themselves and their communities represented positively on television; and they served as a training ground for a new generation of African American producers, journalists, and technicians. This dissertation analyzes the complex relations between the state, the media makers and the stations that aired these programs. While the programs were initiated as a salve for Black discontent, African American staff members of these programs used them to disseminate a message of Black liberation, by documenting and encouraging activism, celebrating Black artistic and political achievements, and offering a mode of rhetorical self-defense to racist discourses. Furthermore, both activists and government officials recognized a relationship between the media representation and the material conditions of an oppressed group. In addition to the programs themselves, this study demonstrates the impact of tuition-free training programs specifically for Black media workers, demonstrating the continuing impact of professionals who began their careers on programs such as Say Brother and who continued to transform television with programs from Eyes on the Prize to Hill Street Blues. Methodologically, this dissertation draws on extensive archival research as well as oral histories from twenty-three individuals who worked on the television programs. Close textual analysis is used to investigate how the programs articulated their vision of Black empowerment.

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Acknowledgements

Without the tremendous amount of support I received from teachers, mentors, family and

friends, I could not have written this dissertation. Furthermore, numerous media-makers,

archivists and scholars generously offered me essential resources, recollections and advice. It is a pleasure to thank everyone here.

My dissertation committee has offered more than I could have ever expected or asked for.

Their examples of principled and dedicated scholarship have been inspiring and motivating. My co-chairs Jim Schwoch and Martha Biondi offered constant encouragement and insightful feedback. Jim Schwoch was enthusiastic about this project from the moment we first discussed it. Jim’s generosity is legion and his encyclopedic knowledge has been crucial. His understanding of the stages of the research and writing process was also a great help throughout this process. Martha Biondi introduced me to both the emerging scholarship on the Black Power era and to Inside Bedford Stuyvesant, which started me down the path to this project. I am grateful for her dedicated to this project and to my scholarly development. Her combination of activism and scholarship offer an inspiring example. Mimi White’s innovative thinking and writing on television has been influential to me, and her ethics as a scholar and a person have been a constant example and support. Her wisdom and generosity helped me survive and thrive in graduate school from day one. Jacqueline Stewart’s connections between lived and scholarly community, her brilliant writing on Black Cinema, and her courses have been a tremendous inspiration. Her close readings of my work challenged me to ask important questions of my material that I would not have arrived at without her guidance. In addition to my committee,

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other faculty at Northwestern have offered mentorship—I especially want to thank Jennifer

Devere Brody for her excellent and often timely advice.

I am grateful to numerous individuals and groups for their feedback on various chapters

and sections in progress: University of Chicago’s Social History Workshop and the American

Culture Workshop, as well as the African American History Dissertation Group at Northwestern

University. I am especially grateful to Darlene Clark Hine, Eric Gellman and Ebony Utley and at

Northwestern and Jacqueline Goldsby, Andrew Johnston, Stephanie Allen, Michael Stamm, and

Alyson Hobbs at University of Chicago, for helpful comments on drafts. At DePaul University,

Jacqui Lazu, Amor Kohli, Darrell Moore and Amy Tyson have offered insights on this work and opportunities to share it. Liena Vayzman taught quite a bit about the writing and research process. Various folks read drafts and made useful suggestions; I especially thank my partner,

Dan Weissmann, for comments on many drafts, always with fresh insights and patience, as well as a journalist’s eye for clear writing. Thanks also to Chris Finke, Lenore Weissmann, Margo

Miller, Liena Vayzman, and Liz Duffrin, for some major and minor surgery on this text. Finally, but not least, Michael Kramer’s insightful readings of several chapters and his camaraderie as a dissertation buddy were invaluable, and I look forward to his book.

The media makers I interviewed for this project spent many hours with me, recollecting their early careers. I wish to extend heartfelt thanks to everyone that I interviewed, especially

Angela Fontanez, Charles Hobson, Madeline Anderson, Kay Bourne, Jewelle Gomez, Hazel

Bright, Bobby Shepard, Eric Werner, St. Clair Bourne, Mrs. Ernestine Middleton, and Jim

Tilmon. It was a privilege to get to know these individuals over the course of hours of tape.

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Numerous archivists and librarians pointed me to resources, gave me excellent advice, and even

attempted to help me get funding for my work. I wish to especially thank Ruta Abolins at the

Peabody Archives, Karen King at National Public Broadcasting Archives, and Leah Weisse and

Mary Ide at the WGBH archives. Additionally, archivists at New Jersey City University Library,

The Moorland Spingarn Library at Howard University, The Moving Pictures Archive at the

Library of Congress, The Museum of Television and Radio (New York) The UCLA Film and

Television Archives, the Ford Foundation Archives and the Schomburg Center for Research in

Black Culture helped me find video and documents from the history of Black public affairs television. Tracy Capers at the Bedford Stuyvesant Redevelopment Corporation helped me to locate the letters and other material cited in the second chapter. Laura Wolf-Powers offered crucial insights and research leads on Brooklyn and urban planning.

I am grateful for the grants and fellowships that facilitated this work. Northwestern

University’s Humanities Center gave both the Mellon Research and Travel Grant and the

Graduate Affiliate Award. These grants made several research trips possible. I am also grateful for fellowships from the Northwestern University Graduate School: a Research Fellowship, and a Graduate Research Grant. The University of South Carolina’s Institute for Southern Studies

funded a research trip to South Carolina. I am indebted to the American Association of

University Women for the American Fellowship during which much of the final draft was

written.

On a graduate student’s budget, even with generous funding, I would never have been able to carry out this research without the hospitality of a number of people who let me stay with them, bought me meals, picked me up from airports and otherwise contributed to both my

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survival and sanity on the road. My father Howard and stepmother Lois were especially generous

with both schlepping and hospitality while I was in the New York metropolitan area. My father

once carried a window unit up to an apartment I rented while doing research one hot summer in

New York City. I would have dedicated this dissertation to him anyway, but that certainly sealed the deal. Additionally, Joe Milutis, Cecilia Lucas, Chris Kalb, Rebecca Bachman, Todd and

Naomi Schragmar, Laura and Josh Wolf Powers, Lori Macintosh, Lynea Diaz Hagen and

Federico Hewson, Ken and Aliza Heitner, Ellie Knepler, Ethan Heitner, Choe Smolarski, Jessie

Cohen, and Dan Streible all contributed to my life on the road in various ways.

My work has been supported and sustained by a rich network in and beyond Chicago.

Aniko Bodroghkozy, Steven Classen, Arlene Davila, Jennifer Fuller, Frida Furman, Bambi

Haggins, Peniel Joseph, Mary C. Kearney, Darrell Moore, Amy Onigiri, Laurie Ouellette, Yeidy

Rivero, Mark Williams, and Michele White and have extended themselves in ways that make me feel fortunate to be part of a thriving scholarly community. Josh Malitsky, Clayton Brown,

Susan Ericsson, Katy Chiles and Margo Miller were excellent graduate comrades. Katie Gucer told me I could do it and showed the way.

Thanks to my whole Chicago circle for making my life here so sweet. Thanks especially to Lara Burrows, Moira Hinderer and Tracy Kostenbader. These women are my other sisters and have sustained me with healthy meals and in many other ways. I am in awe of their love. Cecilia

Lucas, Chloe Smolarski, Jen Tilton and Amy Ahlstrom are my girls on the coasts, and these righteous women also have my undying loyalty. The art, activism, and scholarship that these women create give me hope for the world.

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My family has grown in so many ways as I worked on this dissertation. There has always been my dad, Howard Heitner who has supported me through so much. My sister Sarah grew into adulthood as I worked on this project and I am incredibly proud, as well as grateful for her support. My partner Dan Weissmann became part of my life as I was sowing the seeds for this dissertation. His incredible family soon followed. Lenore Weissmann, a fellow PhD, has been exceedingly encouraging, always ready to celebrate the next achievement with champagne, and to proofread over chocolate. While I worked on this dissertation my father married Lois, and she and her wonderful sons Glen and Seth have added so much to my life in these last few years. My cousin Ethan Heitner’s art and activism always challenges me to do my work and live right.

My DePaul colleagues Jay Beck, Daniel Makagon, John McMurria, and Shayla Thiel Stern saw me through my first full-time teaching gig with their humor, feedback, generosity and clif bars.

My DePaul students, especially those in my Civil Rights and Media classes, helped me think through many of the issues presented here.

Finally, I wish to offer my deepest thanks to my partner, Dan Weissmann, who knows a thing or two about activism and media. He also is very knowledgeable about commitment, love, laughter and the sweat of a long project. His consistent faith in me, excitement about this work, and sense of humor boosted my spirits and propelled me to the finish line.

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This work is dedicated to my father, Howard Heitner.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction: Negotiating For Black Power on the Small Screen ...... 11

Chapter 2 Welcome to Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, Your Community Program!: Producing a Black Counter Public in Brooklyn, 1968–1971 ...... 44

Chapter 3 Say Brother and Boston “New Principles of Blackness” ...... 94

Chapter 4 Envisioning National Community on PBS: Black Journal and Soul! ...... 140

Chapter 5 Getting Soul Behind the Camera: Producing Black Media Workers ...... 175

Chapter 6 Urban Planned and Moynihanned: Televising Black Women’s Liberation ...... 204

Conclusion ...... 249

Bibliography ...... 252

Appendix 1 Interviews by the Author ...... 271

Appendix 2 A Partial List of Black Public Affairs Programs by Region ...... 272

Appendix 3 List of Archives Consulted ...... 275

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Black Power TV: A National Movement for Black Public Affairs Television 1968-1980

Devorah Heitner

Chapter 1

Introduction: Negotiating For Black Power on the Small Screen

“They [the news media] have not communicated to a majority of their audience—which is white – a sense of the degradation, misery, and hopelessness of living in the ghetto. They have not communicated to whites a feeling for the difficulties and frustrations of being a Negro in the United States.” From the report of the National Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968.

“There is no substitute for the control of our own communications. Black publications and Black controlled electronic media must now be made to serve the Black masses more adequately in our struggle for liberation. They must be catalysts for social change … As we work to control our own communications we must also convince white media that they can no longer invade our communities and lie about us at will.” National Black Political Agenda presented to the National Black Political Convention Gary, Indiana, March 11, 1972.

This dissertation examines a national movement of Black public affairs television, created by Black media workers and activists in the Black Power era and beyond (1968-1980.)

The urban uprisings in this era, combined with a concerted demand for access to the airwaves, brought about Black public affairs programs such as Brooklyn’s Inside Bedford Stuyvesant,

Boston’s Say Brother, Chicago’s Our People, and national shows such as Black Journal and

Soul!. These Black television shows documented African American artistic and political achievements. They created a space for publicizing internal debate in Black communities; they gave African American spectators a chance to see themselves and their communities represented positively on television; and they served as a training ground for a new generation of African

American producers, journalists, and technicians. This programming was a sharp contrast to

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mainstream television news which marginalized African American communities. These programs

also contrasted with (and directly criticized) the stereotypical representations of Blacks offered

by prime-time shows. The history of African American exclusion from televisual representation

before this period is well documented, as are the stereotypical nature of those images of Blacks

that were broadcast. While in the postwar period, Black owned print media (and in a few cases

radio) was central to shaping a national Black political consciousness and identity, in the 1960s

television was a medium that many African Americans distrusted, especially as a source of

news.1 Critically, while increased broadcast regulations and enforcement by the FCC during the

Black power era supported the wave of new Black public affairs television, both the programs

and the increased regulatory enforcement were products of the same social, cultural and political

forces. This study focuses on the history of Black public affairs programs, their content, and the

broader climate of Black media activism that created and sustained them.

The urban unrest in the 1960s made both government officials and station executives

more open to considering Black demands for media access. As Peniel Joseph aptly concludes,

“Watts exposed the bitter reality behind [President Lyndon] Johnson’s plea to end black isolation

in the urban ghettoes by waging war on the poverty that stifled dreams.”2 The regularity of

uprisings each summer during the 1960s made clear that the “War on Poverty” sponsored by

Johnson was not enough to stem the tide of Black discontent. In 1967, President Johnson appointed a committee led by Illinois governor Otto Kerner to investigate the civil disorders that

1 See Adam Green, Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940-1955 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Green offers an account of how Black print media fostered this sense of identity. See the Kerner Report (cited in footnote 4) for documentation of African Americans disgust with and distrust of mainstream news in this era. 2 Peniel Joseph, Waiting ’til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006): p. 122.

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rocked American cities from Los Angeles to Newark in the years from 1964–1968. The Kerner

Commission’s report offered an analysis of a racially polarized country in which Black

discontent was growing.3 The report found that the uprisings were the result of racism that

created poor living conditions for African Americans. The report recommended broad changes in

federal policy to improve schools, healthcare, housing and employment outlooks for Black

people. Central to the Commission’s assessment was a critique of U.S. media’s exclusion of

African American perspectives on the “civil disorders” and their root causes.4

Chapter 15 of the report focused on mass media, calling for change in clear terms.

The Kerner Commission took print and broadcast media to task for exacerbating the riots by

sensationalizing them and ignoring their root causes. They also criticized media outlets for

sending poorly prepared reporters into riots with no real understanding of the issues that caused

the “civil disorders.” Furthermore, the report castigated television stations and newspapers for

reporting and writing “from the standpoint of a white man’s world” ignoring the “slights and

indignities that are part of a Negro’s daily life,” a perspective that might have helped viewers

outside of Black communities to contextualize the uprisings.5 The report’s recommendations for

hiring Black journalists, and for community collaboration such as meetings between journalists,

community residents and police, had a lasting and profound effect on the standards and

sometimes the practices of media organizations.

3 Kerner Commission, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968). Henceforth, referred to as the Kerner Report. 4 Kerner Report. The uprisings included Watts (1965), Newark and Detroit (1967), and Philadelphia and Chicago (1964). See also: Joseph Loftus, “News Media Found Lacking in Understanding of the Negro: Less Fault Seen in Riot Coverage than a ‘White World Seen with White Eyes’—an Urban Press Institute is Urged” New York Times, March 3, 1968, p. 71. 5 Kerner Report p. 366.

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While the Kerner Report was neither a law nor a policy statement, its

recommendations were read and in some cases followed. Although the election of Richard Nixon

in 1968 and the conservative backlash that brought him to the presidency ensured that few of the

Kerner Commission’s recommendations became law, the report did have a significant impact. It is a testament to the impact of the uprisings and the fear they engendered that so many in positions of power were willing to consider the recommendations and criticisms of the Kerner

Report. This dissertation offers a history of a wave of Black television programs that resulted in part from the uprisings themselves and the fear they engendered, and in part from the recommendations by the Kerner Commission report that Black perspectives be incorporated into mass media. By arguing that “the failings of media must be corrected and the improvement must come from within the media” the Kerner commission left little ambiguity about where responsibility lay. The report never calls for government regulation of media outlets, but simply calls for broadcast and print outlets to change. The report cites examples of television reports on riots that exaggerated the violence taking place. In a section titled “Ghetto responses to the media coverage,” the report describes African Americans as extremely skeptical of the news.

The average Black person could not give less of a damn about what the media said. The intelligent black person is resentful at what he considers to be a totally false portrayal of what goes on in the ghetto. Most Black people see the newspapers as mouthpieces of the “power structure.”6

The Kerner Report, as well as the unrest it addressed, were catalysts for stations to create

these Black television programs. How much influence did the report have? Emmy winning

television producer Angela Fontanez remembers that “the ink was still wet” on the report when

6 Kerner Report p. 374.

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she was hired to work on first national Black public affairs television program, Black Journal in

1968.7 Like Fontanez, many Black media workers who entered the field in this era attribute their access in part to both the disorders and the report. Additionally, the murder of civil rights leader

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and the resulting wave of shock, grief, anger, and remorse that saturated the nation, as well as the resulting “King riots” in some cities, lent additional urgency to the movement for more and better Black representations on television. This assassination catalyzed the movement for Black media representation—many of the Black public affairs programs analyzed in this study began in the aftermath of the murder. Following the critiques in the Kerner report, King’s murder offered further evidence that the U.S. racial divide was growing, not diminishing. The assassination felt like the last straw in a divided nation.8 Despite

having become a more outspoken critic of the war in Vietnam, and of the slow pace of Civil

Rights changes, the slain leader had been a powerful symbol for the hope of racial consensus. In

the wake of the assassination, many more television stations moved from the “What can we do?” discussions that had begun in the wake of the Kerner Report to concrete action.

While the “disorders” and the Kerner report were under discussion, it was in the

immediate wake of the King assassination that stations in Chicago, Detroit, New York, and

Boston rushed to hire African Americans to host and write new Black-oriented public affairs and

arts programs. In Chicago, the ABC owned WLS, (Channel 7) hired African American print

journalist Vernon Jarrett to cover the King funeral. This initial assignment led the station to

7 Angela Fontanez, Interview with author, October 2004. 8 “Racial Crossroads: King’s Death Heightens Threat of Lasting Rift in American Society” proclaimed the Wall Street Journal headline on April 8, 1968.

15 16 create Vernon Jarrett’s television program, For Blacks Only, which remained on the air until the

1990s as Face to Face with Vernon Jarrett. 9

In cities such as Chicago, New York, Boston, and Detroit, stations initiated Black- oriented public affairs, news, and arts programming. They also hastily developed training programs to add Black workers to their ranks, addressing the Kerner Commission’s admonition that more Black workers were needed in the media industry. This new window of access to media representation for African Americans emerged at a moment that powerful institutions from local governments to broadcasting outlets felt that they had to answer to Black discontent.

Television stations’ intentions in offering this new access were never explicitly stated—but were widely understood: in exchange for their own TV programs and a few jobs in the broadcasting industry, government officials hoped that African Americans would address their discontent on the airwaves instead of engaging in street protest and uprisings.

Apparently, station managers expected these African American media workers to accept without question whatever the stations offered in the form of low budgets, marginal broadcast times, and a lack of full editorial control. They were in for a surprise; the newly hired workers used their newfound insider status to make demands. Moving quickly beyond tokenism, these newly minted television hosts and producers demanded editorial control of their own programs, theme music and set design that differed from what white producers had planned, access to increased funding for their programs, and the hiring of Black technicians.10 Once the door to television had been cracked open, these media workers used their positions to create a

9 Vernon Jarrett, telephone interview, 2003. 10 For a discussion of the theme music debate, see interview with Vernon Jarrett, and Gil Noble, Black Is the Color of my TV Tube (Secaucus, N.J.: L. Stuart, 1981). For a discussion of the Black Journal Strike for a Black executive producer and editorial control, see chapters 3 and 4 of this dissertation.

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politicized national movement for Black public affairs television that went far beyond the idea of

a simple salve for Black discontent.

Television as a medium had assumed greater importance in the 1960s as both a marker of cultural inclusion and as a source of news. The broadcast of events such as the

Kennedy assassination and the 1963 March on Washington began to solidify television as a central part of American culture. Ownership of television sets proliferated in this period to the point where almost all Americans had access to television. Yet in the 1950s and early 1960s, television appearances by African Americans were so rare as to make these appearances a special event for African American viewers, a form of destination viewing.11 In the early 1960s,

television had played an important role in documenting the Southern Civil Rights Movement by

broadcasting news footage of nonviolent protesters being attacked by police clubs, hoses, and

dogs. This footage was often credited for attracting Northern sympathies to the movement.12 Yet

for many non-African Americans, the tide of sympathy quickly turned against Black protest

when Black disappointment and anger over the slow pace of actual change turned to uprisings in

the summers of the mid-1960s. As the Kerner Report documented, broadcasters’ role in

representing these uprisings did little to address their root causes such as unemployment,

substandard housing, and segregated and inferior schools and even less to enlist sympathy for

those involved.

11 In Marlon Riggs’ video documentary on African American relationships to television, Color Adjustment, individuals recount experiences of planning to get together with friends to watch all-too-infrequent appearances by African Americans on television in the 1950s and 1960s. Jet Magazine listed Black television appearances, and in those decades, the list was relatively short. 12 Robert Donovan and Ray Scherer, Unsilent Revolution: Television News and American Public Life, 1948–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1992).

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Clearly though, despite its frequent elision of Black points of view, television had become central to a national dialogue about race. However, African Americans were not included, and these discussions tended to situate Blacks as the “problem” of race relations, as opposed to engaging with Black perspectives. Even on the television special Black History: Lost

Stolen or Strayed (1968) starring Bill Cosby, focused on the problem of racism, but presented no sustained dialogue, despite Cosby’s active involvement in shaping the program. A few Black journalists such as Mal Goode and Melba Tolliver began television careers in the 1960s, but for the most part these career paths were closed to African Americans. Prime-time programs still featured only a few African Americans. With the premier of Julia, in 1968, African American spectators received a televised Black family, but, problematically, in the wake of the controversial Moynihan Report’s (1965) rhetoric about the “tangled pathology” inherent in

“matriarchal Black families,” this television family lacked a father.13 Furthermore, as Julia’s star

Diahann Carroll said of her role, she played “the whitest Negro” that television writers could concoct.14

African Americans who had been alternately ignored or stereotyped on prime-time shows, and sensationalized and criminalized by news programming, struggled to make their perspectives known in the increasingly important medium of television.15 This dissertation addresses the fruits of this struggle for visibility and analyzes the negotiations for power between

13 Daniel P. Moynihan, (1965). The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. U.S. Department of Labor. This dissertation addresses the Moynihan report and its implications for policy in more depth in chapters 2 and 6. 14 Christine Acham, Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Struggle for Black Power (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), p. 114. 15 For an overview and critique of Black television representations from the 1950s through the 1990s that focuses on stereotype analysis, see Donald Bogle, Prime Time Blues: African Americans on Network Television (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001).

18 19 individual media workers, audience members, television guests, station managers, and public and commercial television executives. In providing this account, this dissertation demonstrates that under certain conditions, subaltern groups can achieve significant pockets of self-determination within the context of a mass medium controlled by a dominant group. This research highlights the importance of the uprisings and media activism in achieving this possibility. Broadcast regulations, for the most part, were propelled by the same activism that created Black public affairs shows. This study highlights how the anxiety about regulation could and did compel stations to change their practices. It situates broadcast regulation as part of a broad movement in the era from 1968-1980 for media empowerment for all citizens; at the forefront of this movement were African American media activists and media makers.

In this era, African American media workers transformed television from a site of oppression and exclusion to a site for liberation. Black public affairs programs played a key role in this transformation, documenting and encouraging activism, celebrating Black artistic and political achievements, and providing a mode of rhetorical self-defense to racist discourses circulating in the culture. Television became a vital staging ground for struggles over African

American citizenship and justice. Black public affairs programs documented both the activism of

The Black Power movement from 1968–1980 and the simultaneous Black Arts movement. The programs enabled a heightened visibility for these movements. By showcasing welfare activists, and Black political candidates shows such as Inside Bedford Stuyvesant and Black Journal documented national and local African Americans organizing on many fronts. By starting a news bureau in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia when no mainstream network had a bureau there, Black Journal

19 20 highlighted the Black movements connection to postcolonial, global issues.16 This was a period of both intellectual and artistic emergence that saw the growth of Pan-Africanism, Cultural

Nationalism, and Black feminism, each of which posed serious challenges to the status quo.

Black public affairs television programs are both constitutive and important documents of this flowering of political, cultural, and intellectual developments.

Media activism, in addition to struggles for fair housing and better schools, was central to the Black struggle for full political and social power in this era. The Black Power era of 1968–

1980 was a pivotal period in the development of Black agency, not only in relationship to social organizing and government policy but also in the realm of media representation. The Black public affairs programs discussed in this dissertation gave exposure to a diversity of Black perspectives on Black power, local and national politics, Black aesthetics, and gender roles among African Americans in an era when these historic debates were largely ignored or misrepresented by mainstream media. Despite being marginalized by low budgets and unpopular broadcast times, these productions burgeoned in cities such as New York, Boston, Washington,

Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco from 1968–1975, appearing on both public and commercial

16 For an overview of scholarship on the Black Power movement and the Black Arts movement, see Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams & the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Jeanne F. Theoharis and Komozi Woodard, eds. Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940–1980 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements in America (New York: New York University Press, 2005); James Edward Smethurst, The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Alphonso Pinkney, Red, Black, and Green: Black Nationalism in the United States (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Peniel E. Joseph ed., The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights- Black Power Era (New York: Routledge, 2006), Waiting ’til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006), and “Black Liberation without Apology: Reconceptualizing the Black Power Movement,” Black Scholar 31 (2001): 2–19; Addison Gayle, The Black Aesthetic (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1971); Steve Estes, I Am a Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1996); Farah Jasmine Griffin, “‘Ironies of the Saint’: Malcolm X, Black Women and the Price of Protection,” in Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement, ed. Bettye Collier-Thomas and V. P. Franklin (New York: New York

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television. Programs such as Say Brother were kept on the air by viewer and staff protest, which

ranged from letter writing campaigns to strikes. Archived viewer mail shows how important

these programs were to their audiences.17 While a handful of them remain on the air, by 1976 the

proliferation of new programs had abated to a great degree. By 1980 the majority of those Black

public affairs shows that persisted to this point began to be cancelled, or transformed beyond

recognition. As I document in Chapter 6, during the 1970s Black public affairs programs offered

an important forum for discussions of and celebrations of Black feminism on shows such as Like

It Is, Say Brother, Black Journal and Soul!. Additionally, new programming in the period

between 1974 and 1980 period included For You Black Woman, the first Black public affairs

program explicitly aimed at Black women. While the program eschewed Black feminist critique

for the most part, it nonetheless acknowledged Black women as an audience worthy of specific programming before narrowcasting was a common strategy for broadcasters and cable outlets.

Interspersed with episodes on beauty and relationships were episodes on self-defense, and the rights of women in the workplace. Another nationally syndicated program, America’s Black

Forum, which began in 1977, became increasingly conservative in the 1980s and 1990s.18

Despite the transformation and/or cessation of many of these programs due a decline in activism,

increased deregulation, and a backlash to civil rights/Black Power in the Reagan era, some

important programs persist to this day. Notably Like It Is, in New York City is still broadcasting.

University Press, 2001), pp. 214–29; Cheryl Clarke, After Mecca: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005), p. 10. 17 Viewer mail Black Journal, National Public Broadcasting Archives; African American Collection; Say Brother, WGBH Media Archives and Preservation Center, Say Brother Collection; Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bedford- Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation Collection) 18 See “America’s Black Right-Wing Forum” Black Commentator. Issue 20. December 12, 2002.

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Like It Is host and executive producer Gil Noble is as outspoken today on issues such as drug use and Palestine, as he was on social issues when the show began in 1968.19

Additionally, as I will address in both Chapter 5 and the conclusion, the programs left a legacy that included a number of trained and experienced Black producers and media makers.

They also opened the door to contemporary genres ranging from Black Internet sites to the Tavis

Smiley Show. Alumni of the Black public affairs genre have continued to leave their mark in television and film, from Stan Lathan’s pioneering entertainment series Hill Street Blues to

Henry Hampton’s groundbreaking Eyes on the Prize. While this movement was very successful in intervening in Black exclusion from media access, the process of building empowered spaces on television was a process of negotiation, as Black media makers were incorporated into a larger system that still marginalized them.

This critical tradition of African American self-representation flourished at a time when the Civil Rights/Black Power movement was in transition. Intriguingly, more than ten years later, when a number of uprisings rocked the United Kingdom, a dramatic increase in media access for minority voices in Britain also followed.20 In both cases, these programs were

seen as an outlet for oppressed people, providing an alternative venue in which to express

dissatisfaction that those in power found preferable to street protest and uprising. Black public

affairs television, through a process of negotiation and struggle, did become significantly Black

controlled—at least much more so than prime-time programming.21 These programs functioned

as both outlets for Black discontent and showcases for Black achievement. Programs such as

19 Philip Nobile, “The Invisible Man: Gil Noble.” Village Voice. October, 8 1991. p. 34-42. 20 Sarita Malik, Representing Black Britain: Black and Asian Images on Television (London: Sage 2001). 21 Bogle, Prime Time Blues: African Americans on Network Television (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001).

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Inside Bedford- Stuyvesant showcased the beauty of the neighborhood and the achievements of its residents, demonstrating that life in the “ghetto” transcended the popular stereotypes of degeneration, crime, and “bad values.”

Frightened into Action: A New Regulatory Climate for Television

During the period from 1955, when local activists in Mississippi demanded that segregationist owned WLBT television change their racist practices, to their eventual censure in

1973, and beyond, a struggle for broadcast reform and affirmative action for film and television employment was waged through the courts and by activists. The threat of new regulations and of increased enforcement directly contributed to the sustaining Black public affairs programs, but the wave of programs that began in 1968 preceded the FCC’s equal opportunity laws. As regulations were repealed in the 1980s, those Black public affairs that were still airing largely disappeared, but as I will show, many were already losing steam prior to deregulation. Thus, while the importance of these regulations seems clear, this study argues that the uprisings and

Kerner report had a greater impact in transforming industry practice. The convergence of these catalysts, more than FCC regulation, created the conditions for both increased regulation and

Black pubic affairs television. In other words—Black public affairs shows and the regulations had the same causes. The new regulatory climate was a product of activism, just as shows like

Say Brother and Black Journal were.

African American media activism grew in the 1960s transforming from a long history of African American spectator activism that campaigned against the most egregiously racist representations in cinema, radio, and television, to demanding positive change in the form of new programs, greater visibility, and increased employment. The earlier mode of protest, with

23 24

its legacies in protests over literary and theatrical representations, including minstrelsy, coalesced

around the racist film Birth of a Nation and continued with protests against first the radio and then the television version of the comedy program Amos ’n Andy. 22 A separate Black film industry of race films was another strategy by African Americans early in the film era to move out of a spectatorial role into the role of authorship. Prominent civil rights organizations, especially the NAACP, recognized the importance of media and the potential harm that racist

images could cause. Yet by the 1960s, Black invisibility in media was as prominent a problem as

the occasional hyper-visibility of racist imagery. The activism of organizations such as Black

Efforts for Soul in Television was instrumental in changing media policy; this regulation made a

significant difference to both opportunities for Black workers and the content of television

programming.

Previous to this period, the FCC served as “reluctant regulators.” 23 Even if the

commission investigated a station that activists targeted for racist on air statements or

employment practices, real censure was rare, except in a few highly publicized cases. The

censure of segregationist-owned television station WLBT in Mississippi was a notable victory

against the overwhelming racism of news coverage.24 Activists struggled against WLBT for

censoring national news concerning African Americans, airing racial slurs, and refusing to grant

airtime to Black political candidates. As television historian Erik Barnouw points out, these

22 The expression, “The birth of the protesting audience,” is from Catherine Squires’ article “Black Audiences Past and Present: Commonsense Media Critics and Activists,” in Say It Loud! African American Audiences, Media and Identity, ed. Robin Means Coleman (London; New York: Routledge, 2002). Squires traces Black media protest to organized Black protests over the racist film Birth of a Nation. 23 Barry G. Cole and Mal Oettinger, Reluctant Regulators, The FCC and the Broadcast Audience (Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1978).

24 25 forms of overt racism in broadcasting were so prevalent that the FCC was surprised to receive complaints about it.25 The threat of WLBT’s possible censure was enough to send some stations scurrying to address their relationship to their communities. In 1966, Judge Warren Burger’s initial decision on the WLBT case assigned the FCC to investigate the matter and stated that communities did need to be represented by their local stations and that stations have a responsibility to their communities. Despite this fact that WLBT was not initially penalized, the judge’s expression of broadcaster’s public responsibility made stations nervous. In 1946 the FCC had issued the “Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees,” which theoretically defined public service and provided a rationale for the FCC to choose between competing applicants for broadcast licenses based on these factors. 26 Yet it was never clear what form this public service had to take. After 1966, a climate of increased enforcement of broadcast regulations (or merely the perception of increased enforcement) empowered local and national media activist groups to demand policy changes from other stations with considerable success.27

Even with overwhelming evidence of WLBT’s infractions, the FCC did not take away the

24 For an account of the behind-the-scenes work of local activists in Mississippi that waged the struggle against WLBT’s racist policies, see Steven Classen, Watching Jim Crow: The Struggles Over Mississippi TV, 1955–1969. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004). 25 Erik Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television (New York: Oxford. University Press, 1990), p. 345. Barnouw writes that the FCC commissioners were “mildly embarrassed” in reference to complaints about WLBT. 26 Christopher H Sterling and John Kittross, Stay Tuned: A History of American Broadcasting. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, 2002, p. 331. 27 The Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to schedule time for controversial points of view and to air opposing points of view. In the 1960s, this was frequently operationalized as an imperative to give “equal time” to “both sides” of an issue. It did not adequately address the fact that issues may have more than two positions, and did not actually stipulate “equal time.” Advocacy groups such as Black Efforts for Soul in Television (BEST) worked with local groups to teach them the most effective pressure tactics to use to address Black issues with their local television stations. Of all of the demands made by local groups, demands for increasing hiring of African Americans were by far the most successful, possibly it was the easiest to measure. For more information, see Bishetta Merrit, “A Historical Critical Study of a Pressure Group in Broadcasting—Best Black Efforts for Soul in Television” (Ph. D. diss, Ohio State University, 1974).

25 26

station’s license. Ultimately, this decision was overturned by a higher court in 1971, and WLBT finally lost its broadcast license.

Rules about public service and “fairness” had long been part of broadcast law in the

United States, but were not rigorously enforced. 28 The “fairness” provisions in the 1934

Communications Act were interpreted in the 1950s and 1960s as meaning that stations had to air

“both sides” of controversial issues. In the 1960s, rules governing “ascertainment” stipulated that

stations must “ascertain” and serve community interests. Although the FCC was empowered to

take away or fail to renew station licenses, stations were infrequently censured and the FCC

depended on self-regulation, leaving stations to decide for themselves how well their

programming upheld the rules of fairness and public service. The result betrayed the civic

intentions of the regulations, as many stations simply avoided controversial programming for

both financial and regulatory reasons. According to Joseph Straubhar and Robert Lerose in

Media Now, “By the 1980s, some broadcasters were arguing that the ‘right of reply’ called for in

the Fairness Doctrine actually led stations to avoid controversial programming. The FCC in 1985

therefore stopped enforcing the doctrine and it was finally struck down by the Supreme Court in

2001.”29 Furthermore, ascertainment rules “disappeared with the coming of deregulation during

the Reagan administration.”30 Indeed, throughout the history of the Federal Communications

Commission (FCC), critics have held that commissioners held the interests of the broadcast

industry higher than the interests of citizen-viewers.31

28 Mark Lloyd, interview. 29 Media Now: Understanding Media, Culture, and Technology (Wadsworth: 2005) p. 435. 30 Stanley J Baran, Introduction to Mass Communication: Media Literacy and Culture (Mcgraw Hill 2005) p. 469. 31 James L. Baughman, Television’s Guardians: The FCC and the Politics of Programming, 1958–1967 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985). p. 146–7.

26 27

In response to this atmosphere, a few broadcasters spoke out. After many outspoken years working at CBS, Fred Friendly resigned as president of CBS news to protest the station’s refusal to air the 1966 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Vietnam in order to air more profitable reruns of I Love Lucy. 32 Ultimately, Friendly’s commitment to public service would lead him to participate in founding public television. Some FCC commissioners also spoke out in the 1960s. Famously, FCC Chairperson Newton Minow, labeled television content a

“vast wasteland” in 1961 and advocated that broadcasters take on more civic responsibility.

Local and news broadcasts increased after the Minnow speech, only to decrease again in the

Johnson era.

Who was to hold stations to a standard of public interest? As it turned out in the

1960s era of citizen broadcast activism, stations had more to fear in terms of accountability to their local communities than they did from the overworked and often disinterested commissioners at the FCC. The WLBT decision was a turning point in broadcast history. It encouraged public engagement with media and generated empowerment and a feeling of entitlement to fair representation. As a result of grassroots pressure and activism, many stations increased their public affairs programming. Through the efforts of advocacy groups, viewers became educated about their legal authority to challenge station licenses. The United Church of

Christ funded a highly effective media activist lobbying group called the Black Efforts for Soul in Television (BEST); groups concerned about fair representations on television sprang up all over the United States. BEST served as a national clearinghouse for media and civil rights, and traveled around the country training local groups in pressure tactics for media activism. These

32 “Suddenly he emerged from the relative obscurity of the control room to become a hero of the anti war movement” Baughman, p. 148.

27 28 efforts exposed the lack of well-defined standards for broadcast fairness and public interest.

Groups that trained with BEST tended to be successful at convincing stations to make changes in hiring and programming, without invoking actual censure—the threat was often enough.

In addition to activism and the threat of FCC censure, urban rioting and the Kerner report’s spotlight on media’s role in the rioting compelled some stations to hire African

Americans. While this hiring was often limited and sometimes exploitive, (i.e., sending unprepared workers with minimal training to do “riot coverage”) the seeds of change were sown.

Still, the FCC’s actual affirmative action requirements remained weak, and their enforcement, even weaker. On June 4, 1969, the FCC adopted a rule that required broadcasters to demonstrate nondiscrimination in their employment practices. Initially, this regulation did not apply to smaller stations, but in 1970, it was expanded to cover stations with at least five employees.

During the early 1970s, stations were simply required to report the number of minority employees. The FCC might investigate if the number was reduced significantly in a subsequent year but in actuality investigations of this nature occurred very rarely. Stations were also instructed to report their actions in relation to minority recruitment and “community ascertainment.” In practice, community ascertainment meant that stations were supposed to meet with different groups in their communities, from disabled veterans, to women, to African

Americans.

Some stations took this responsibility seriously, transforming their relationship with their constituents, while others did little or nothing to “ascertain” community priorities.33 Several new members of the FCC instigated the increase in regulatory activity in this era. Commissioner

33 Telephone interview with Mark Lloyd, October 2004.

28 29

Nicholas Johnson, who wrote the viewer empowerment guide How to Talk Back to Your

Television Set, was supportive of progressive broadcasting and Black programming. 34 In 1972,

President Richard M. Nixon appointed the first African American FCC commissioner, Benjamin

Hooks. Hooks’ appointment to the previously all white commission was symbolically powerful, as the FCC had conspicuously avoided pursuing racial justice. Although Black media activists

had put forward another Black candidate, most African American media activists supported

Hooks after his appointment. With Hooks and Johnson on the Commission, the FCC enforced

equal opportunity laws somewhat more rigorously.35 Hooks was an advocate for Black public

affairs programming, especially Black Journal. Ultimately, despite the laxness of FCC

enforcement, the changes in regulatory climate “encouraged” stations to hire Black workers and

create or continue Black programming. This regulatory climate was brought about by the same

forces that created the wave of new Black public affairs programming, and the regulations

sustained the programming throughout the 1970s.

PBS is Born

While many Black public affairs programs were broadcast on commercial television

stations, more than half of the programs were broadcast on educational television. Before a

national public television system was created, there was a group of loosely organized but essentially similar stations called ETV stations, (the acronym stands for educational television,) that existed in the newer ultra high frequency (UHF) part of the broadcast spectrum. At this time many consumers had yet to purchase a television set that could receive both the VHF and UHF

34 Nicholas Johnson, How to Talk Back to Your Television Set (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970). Brian Ward, Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), p. 286.

29 30

signals, thus some viewers did not have access to UHF stations.36 While an informal network

among educational stations existed in the 1960s, it had few resources to create programming.

President Lyndon Johnson appointed the Carnegie Commission to study educational television, and the commission recommended “a tax on the sale of TV sets … to subsidize a corporation for public television, which in turn would loosely oversee all noncommercial outlets.” To avoid an over-centralization of power, most production funds would go directly to the stations, not the public network of independent educational stations. The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 created public television as it exists today in a politically effective move designed to appeal to both to liberals and conservatives.37 Liberal critics were grateful for the creation of any alternative to

existing commercial fare, while conservatives and broadcasters were relieved that the new

service’s meager funding insured that the new entity would mount no serious challenge to the

private sector.38 Despite the elitism of some PBS executives, and the racism of station managers

who sometimes refused to program Black public affairs shows, local educational stations

produced more than half of the new Black public affairs television programs. The national

educational network, National Educational Television (NET) distributed several more programs.

The educational network’s desire to appear inclusive and critiques by Black viewers influenced

PBS stations to air these programs, as did the network’s public service mandate and the advocacy

of individual employees.39 Yet despite these efforts, on both the local and national level,

35 Ward, p. 287. 36 Laurie Ouellette, Viewers Like You?: How Public Television Failed the People, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. 41–3. 37 Baughman. p.160. 38 Baughman. 161–2. Sterling and Kittross, p. 423. 39 Interview by author, Madeline Anderson. See Also James Day and Laurie Ouellette.

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educational television’s relationship with Black issues and representations was complicated by

the elitism that under girded PBS’s self-image.40

Methodology: Black Media and Black Public Spheres

This dissertation owes its life to a rich archive of extant episodes of Black public

affairs programs. Additional insights were gained through interviews with some of the producers,

journalists, and cinematographers who created this genre, and with alumni of the Black Journal

Workshop.41 Methodologically, this research was challenged by the fact that archiving television

was not a priority in the 1970s. Video tape was seen as a renewable resource to tape over, and

over again. Black programs, especially controversial ones, were especially vulnerable to this

kind of loss. While I was able to analyze one or two episodes of more than ten different

programs, this dissertation focuses on those programs for which a more complete archive exists.

My analyses of Soul!, Black Journal, Inside Bedford- Stuyvesant, and Say Brother, are based on

the availability of twelve episodes of each of these programs, a textual depth that did not exist for

most of the other programs. Analyzing a number of episodes of each program opens

opportunities to analyze this genre’s visual and aural aesthetics and to engage dialogues across

the Black political spectrum from cultural nationalism, to Black capitalism, to Black feminism.

Interviews with some of the professionals who created these programs illuminate the behind-the-

scenes struggles. This combination of archival research with oral history enables an

understanding of the ways that activists and media makers attempted to reframe Blackness in

40 For an overview of the history of PBS see: James Day, The Vanishing Vision: the Inside Story of Public Television. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.) 41 Most of these are conducted by the author, in person or over the telephone. In some cases, published interviews are also cited. Altogether, I interviewed 22 people associated with this movement.

31 32

America in the years after 1968 by creating a new public forum for addressing racial justice and

by rebuilding television from the inside out.

Building on feminist and critical race critiques of public sphere theory, I analyze the way Black public affairs programming fostered the building, reinforcing, and coalescing of

Black public spheres in an era of significant growth and change in the Black liberation movement. Catherine Squires argues that a group’s access to mass media (as well as other resources) is a crucial factor in defining the different possible activist strategies. She reconceptualizes definitions of Black publics, nuancing previous theories of the Black public sphere by paying attention to the differential uses of strategies and tactics. Squires’ work builds on scholarly critiques of Jurgen Habermas’s iteration of a “public sphere” which emphasize the

formation of “marginalized counterpublics,” such as Nancy Fraser’s concept of “subaltern

counterpublics.”42

According to Squires, a marginalized public could employ enclave, satellite, or

counterpublic strategies, depending on external pressures and available resources. According to

this model, a marginalized public may need to employ an enclave strategy of “hiding counter

hegemonic ideas and strategies in order to survive or avoid sanctions, while internally producing

lively debate and planning.”43 The same group may, under more flexible circumstances, employ

a counter public strategy of debating with wider publics whether through legal means, media

critiques, or protest techniques such as boycotts and civil disobedience. A third strategy, that of a

satellite public would be a strategy of a marginalized public “that seeks separation from other

42 Catherine Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere: An Alternative Vocabulary for Multiple Public Spheres” Communication Theory (November 2002): pp. 446–68. 43 Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere: An Alternative Vocabulary for Multiple Public Spheres” Communication Theory (November 2002): pp. 446–68.

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publics for reasons other than oppressive relations but is involved in wider public discourses

occasionally.”44. Broadly, in the Black Power era, greater independent media resources and distribution channels facilitated a counterpublic strategy of African Americans speaking both within their own communities and to a wider public. Yet certain shows, especially on the local level also functioned partly as enclave as they spoke to Black audiences with “insider references” fully aware that Black audiences might have different understandings than other audience members.

Despite the strengths of Black public affairs television, “even when Blacks create their own media vehicles to redress stereotypes or present alternatives to dominant representations, they circulate simultaneously with representations of Black deviance.”45

Because of this prevailing racist logic of television, Squires argues that there is sometimes still a need for an enclave strategy, in which African Americans in a specific public speak primarily to one another. When the dominant media distorts Black representations and appropriates even

“positive” representations, an enclave response can facilitate “regrouping.” In this dissertation, I offer examples of Black public affairs programs that employed both enclave and counterpublic strategies. Whether or not the programs were aimed at a “wider public” of non-African

Americans, responses from white critics and viewers demonstrated that these encounters were prevalent and significant. Furthermore, the producers of Black public affairs programs were very aware of the other images on television with which their programs circulated. Producers and artists used the space of Black pubic affairs television to parody and critique mainstream

44 Squires, ibid. 45 Squires, ibid.

33 34

television and film, highlighting the limits of these representations and calling attention to their congealed racism.

The creation of Black media by and for African Americans is a tactic of an enclave public while the struggle to be recognized, represented, and employed in an integrated mass media is a counterpublic tactic. Programs such as Say Brother, in which radicals sat down and talked with liberals and emerging Black conservatives, and were deeply engaged with one another, demonstrate the political and strategic diversity among Black publics, as well as the overlap of Black public spheres in this era. In the emerging Black women’s public discussed in chapter 6, Black women employed Black public affairs television towards both enclave and counterpublic strategies as they criticized the patriarchal aspects of Black Nationalist discourse as well as the racist and sexist imagery that predominated in U.S. culture in the Nixon era.

While Black public affairs programs shared a mission to be a source of relevant news and dialogue for African Americans, their point of view varied, reflecting a broad range of Black political perspectives. For example, the first African American FCC commissioner, Benjamin

Hooks, went on to chair the NAACP and in that capacity hosted his own program, Ben Hooks

Reports, which advocated Black capitalism and Black-owned businesses. The Afro-centric program For The People focused on Egypt as the source of African-American cultural heritage as well as a source of world civilization. Revolutionary nationalist groups such as the Black

Panther Party were represented sympathetically on PBS’s Soul! and Black Journal as well as

local programs such as Chicago’s For Blacks Only, at a time when mainstream news coverage of

34 35

the Panthers alternately portrayed them as superheroes or super villains.46 These programs gave

voice to a mix of Black liberation ideologies, representing a Black political spectrum that was far

more diverse than mainstream television news’ obsession in this period with binaristic liberal and

conservative points of view. Programs such as Black Journal, Say Brother, and Like It Is serve as valuable documents of the cultural and political disputes internal to the Black community in the immediate post-Civil Rights era. In addition to the variance in political orientation and aesthetic style among the programs, long running programs changed over time, perhaps most notably,

Black Journal. When Tony Brown took over that program from William Greaves in 1970, the program increased its coverage of electoral politics and advocacy for Black capitalism, following

Brown’s own orientation.

This political diversity meant that programs such as Black Journal, Soul!, Inside

Bedford- Stuyvesant, and Say Brother represented the possibilities of a Black public engaged in

both enclave and counterpublic strategies with guests who represented satellite publics as well.

These programs modeled intense engagements between disparate philosophies. Say Brother, in particular had an explicit consciousness-raising mission. Demonstrating the possibilities for a new mode of performing Blackness and showing examples of psychically liberated Black people was central to its mission. Inside Bedford- Stuyvesant’s host modeled an inclusive attitude towards a wide range of guests with differing viewpoints. The national broadcast, Black Journal demonstrated the possibility of a national Black public, building on the history of Black print media, and showcasing the innovations of local Black communities across the country.47 On

46 For an overview of mainstream news treatment of the Black Panther Party, see Michael E. Staub, “Setting Up the Seventies: Black Panthers, New Journalism, and the Rewriting of the Sixties,” In The Seventies, The Age Of Glitter In Popular Culture, ed. Sheldon Waldrep (New York and London: Routledge: 2000). pp. 19–40.

35 36

Soul!, African American women, a marginalized public within a marginalized public, stage their

own performance of counterpublic discourse.

Ownership: The Problem of Black Media

What can legitimately be called “Black media” in a situation where fully Black-

controlled, Black-owned media is a rarity? This dissertation addresses the challenges of finding

empowered spaces from which to speak in a mass medium in which few Blacks had control.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell encourages us to see it from the audiences’ position: if they perceive it

to be Black it is. “Actual fiscal ownership is less important than psychic ownership in defining a

media source as part of the Black counterpublic.”48 However, while ownership is inadequate to defining a media outlet or program as “Black media,” the ultimate fate of much of the programming discussed in the dissertation demonstrates the limits of “psychic ownership.” What

I document in these pages is that due to the uprisings, station owners and executives felt enough

fear about the situation to relinquish some control to African Americans. Yet this ground shifted

over time as the cancellation of Boston’s Say Brother, described in Chapter 3, demonstrates.

Ownership of broadcast networks and cable stations was a persistently posed solution during the

1970s in many discussions by Black activists, including those at the 1972 Black Power

convention in Gary, Indiana. Yet, despite some broadcast regulations encouraging station owners

to sell to minority buyers, a massive shift in ownership never took place.

Given the overwhelmingly white power structure of the television industry, the

designation “Black Power Television,” speaks of the struggle for Black control and the

48 Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004): p. 10.

36 37 negotiations for over agency and resources that defined these programs. I document media makers’ struggle and negotiation to offer an authentically Black voice in a white-dominated medium of television; this struggle is represented in the text of many of the programs and nuances the programs’ claims to provide a Black point of view.

Black Liberation 1968–1980

As will be evident in the historical analysis that follows, a variety of Black liberation strategies intersected with and shaped Black public affairs television. By the late 1960s, after several celebrated civil rights victories, a significant number of African Americans had grown increasingly impatient with the federal government’s promises to transform the deprivation and oppression that many African Americans still faced. This discontent encouraged an interest in the notion of self–determination, a slogan popularized by many Black Power proponents. By 1968 there were multiple ideas circulating within Black political and intellectual groups as to what constituted, and would most quickly accomplish, Black self –determination. Black public affairs programs offered in-depth coverage of revolutionary nationalist groups such as the Black Panther

Party. Gil Noble, host of New York City program Like It Is (WABC 1968-present) is an advocate of Malcolm X’s ideology of Black self-determination and nationalism. South Carolina

Educational Television’s For The People focused on countering Western conceptualizations of the origins of civilization claiming Egypt as an important source of African and European civilization. Numerous programs represented Pan-Africanism, sometimes simply by incorporating the symbolic colors or red, black, and green into the titles or sets of the program such as Black Journal’s title sequence featuring a red, black, and green borderless map of the

African continent. Pan Africanism promoted two primary goals: striving for unity among all

37 38

Black people, and supporting specific African nations’ anti-apartheid and anti-colonialist struggles.49 African Americans displayed their affiliation with Pan-Africanism by learning

Swahili, demonstrating against apartheid, or using the imagery of a united African continent.

Cultural nationalists were also interested in some African traditions, but did not necessarily

participate in actual African liberation struggles. Adherents to cultural nationalism sometimes took African names, wore Dashikis and Afros, and conceptualized a Black Aesthetic for the arts.50 On Black public affairs television, these outward signifiers of cultural nationalism and pan

Africanism were ubiquitous. Hosts and guests on Say Brother and Black Journal sometimes

wore dashikis and Afros. On Inside Bedford- Stuyvesant, host Jim Lowry’s change from a suit to

a dashiki was an important visible symbol of his transformation in the show’s second season.

The guests on the programs similarly voiced a variety of political perspectives.

Amiri Baraka, a prominent writer and activist who appeared on many of these programs, was a

cultural nationalist who enacted a controversial shift to Marxism in the mid-1970s.51 It is

important to understand that these ideologies were not entirely separate strands of thought or

action: New York’s Black Panther Party’s membership included strong Cultural Nationalists even

though the West Coast Panthers engaged in violent battles with the cultural nationalist U.S.

[United Slaves] organization. Amiri Baraka was a cultural nationalist but he also got very

49 Ron Walters, Pan Africanism in the African Diaspora: An Analysis of Modern Afrocentric Political Movements (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997). 50 For an excellent overview of the Black Arts movement, see: Smethurst. For a detailed consideration of the importance of Black fashion, style and beauty in this era, see Maxine Leeds Craig, Ain’t I a Beauty Queen?: Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 51 President Richard Nixon had his own perspective on “Black Capitalism,” advocating “Black ownership, Black pride, Black jobs, Black opportunity and yes Black power in the best sense of that often misapplied term.” [Dean J. Kotlowski, Nixon’s Civil Rights: Politics, Principle, and Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. 126)]. Under Lyndon Johnson, the federal government had already begun to support Black businesses and Black

38 39

involved in electoral politics, including Newark, New Jersey’s mayoral campaign.52 Pan-

Africanism attracted the interest of many African Americans whose primary commitment was to

other ideological camps. While significant differences and rivalries existed between the groups

that subscribed to these ideologies, there was also substantial collaboration and friendship among

adherents to these different schools of thought. Individuals, particularly the media workers who

created Black public affairs programs, tended not to be unilaterally influenced by one ideology

only but rather to have primary sympathies towards one or more strands of Black liberation ideology.

Literature Review

African American media organizations such as Black Efforts for Soul in Television

(BEST) were not alone in their struggle for media reform. The Chicano media activists in the

1960s and 1970s studied by Chon Noriega in Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema agitated for changes in Hispanic media representation from both advertisers and networks.53 They attempted to refigure their public image of Chicanos in both film and

television by critiquing media stereotypes in the Chicano press and making a presentation in the

House of Representatives deploring these stereotypes. One set of protests focused on the Frito

Bandito advertising campaign. These activists used varied techniques including boycotting

media advertiser’s products, monitoring media to control and focus such boycotts, and letter-

entrepreneurship. In the wake of continued Black discontent, Nixon found it a prudent course to continue in this vein. (Kotlowski, pp. 125–36). 52 Komozi Woodard, A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) and Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). 53 Chon A. Noriega, Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

39 40

writing campaigns that would alert advertisers to their concerns. Simultaneously, these activist

groups pushed the television and film industries to hire more Chicanos. Between 1974 and 1984,

Chicano media makers also made demands to the broadcast industry; they became more

radicalized. Noriega sees the Chicano media making as a movement in and of itself, arguing that

the work of ethnic minorities who have become producers of media is inherently activist, a

contention that my research builds on.

In addition to public sphere theory and histories of media activism, my work builds

on recent scholarship about public television and its conception of its “public” with respect to

civil society. One important work which historicizes important aspects of this debate is Robert

McChesney’s Rich Media, Poor Democracy, which argues that corporate control of media

counters the democratic process.54 Organizations such as the Center for Social Media at

American University, under the direction of media scholar Patricia Aufderheide, offer a nexus for

scholars who further this approach. This dissertation adds to this scholarship on the political

economy of media in a multicultural democracy.

The cultural pressures that gave rise to PBS are discussed in Laurie Ouellette’s

Viewers Like You?: How Public TV Failed the People. This text provides an insightful analysis of public television in the United States which lays significant groundwork for my analysis of Black public affairs television, as approximately half of these programs were broadcast on public television. Ouellette analyzes how the inequities that characterized PBS at the end of the 1960s continue to determine PBS content and reception, refuting the idea that because public television is noncommercial, it is inherently more democratic. Ouellette documents how the elitism of

54 Robert McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).

40 41

PBS’s architects structured reception during the Great Society era. Ouellette also describes the

reining style of “rationality” that dominated political discourse on PBS in this era. She argues

that programs such as Black Journal differed from other public affairs programs on PBS by not

attempting to appear objective and by unabashedly claiming advocacy, an argument I extend in

my close analysis of Black Journal.55 This reinforces my interpretation of Black public affairs

programs as a form of “advocacy journalism” deeply shaped by the social movements and

political milieu of the Black Power era.56

My dissertation also adds to recent scholarship on the politics of African American

respectability, social class, and gender in relationship with television such as Christine Acham’s

Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Struggle for Black Power, which explores the

challenge that working class Black representations on prime time posed to a Black “politics of

respectability.” Steve Classen’s Watching Jim Crow: the Struggles Over Mississippi TV 1955–

1969 offers an archival and oral history of the behind-the-scenes struggle by activists on the

WLBT case.57 Path breaking scholarship on African American participation in and activism

around access to radio also grounds this study. Brian Ward’s Radio and the Struggle for Civil

Rights in the South demonstrates the complex relationships between civil rights activists, radio station owners, and listeners during the tumult of the civil rights movement.58 Barbara Savage’s

Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938–1948 demonstrates that the

history of African American involvement in and activism around the medium of radio is integral

55 Ouellette. Viewers Like You. 56 America Rodriguez, Making Latino News: Race, Language, Class (Thousand Oaks, CA, and London: Sage, 1999). 57 Acham, Revolution Televised, and Steven Classen, Watching Jim Crow: The Struggles Over Mississippi TV, 1955–1969. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004).

41 42

to twentieth century Black liberation.59 Moreover, Savage provides historical accounts of two local radio programs by African Americans that addressed political and social issues and

criticized racism. These programs, New World a-Comin’ and Destination Freedom, were pioneering precursors to the Black public affairs television programs that I analyze here.

Chapter Overview

Each chapter of the dissertation addresses a different facet of the movement for

Black Public television representation between 1968–1980, focusing on the programs themselves, the issues they addressed, and Black media workers who created them. In Chapter 2,

“Welcome to Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, Your Community Program!” outlines the history of

Inside Bedford- Stuyvesant, emphasizing the program’s unique relationship to Brooklyn’s

Bedford- Stuyvesant neighborhood. Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant asserted a counter narrative to

“ghettoizing discourses” such as the Moynihan Report.60 Chapter 3, “Say Brother and ‘New

Principles of Blackness,’ demonstrates that Boston-based Say Brother’s staff members modeled a

progressive Black Power pedagogy for African American television viewers. The staff

endeavored to portray Black Boston as it was, while striving to claim a revolutionary vision to which members of the community might aspire. Chapter 4, “Envisioning National Community on PBS: Black Journal and Soul!,” examines the contradictory messages about race emerging from PBS and the challenges of the problem of popularity as well as the challenges of fitting

58 Ward, Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South. 59 Barbara Dianne Savage, Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938–1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). 60 The term “ghettoizing discourses” was coined by Robin Kelley, see, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997).

42 43

national representation to diverse local communities. Chapter 5, “Getting Soul Behind the

Camera: TV Training in the Affirmative Action Landscape” traces the history of the Black

Journal Workshop, which trained many Black media workers in this era. I also analyze workplace politics at Black Journal. The chapter demonstrates how the training programs fostered a “critical community” of Black media professionals, many of whom became highly acclaimed producers and cinematographers. In chapter 6, “Urban Planned and Moynihanned:

Televising Black Women’s Liberation,” I demonstrate that the space made available by Black public affairs television created an exceptional opportunity for gender issues and Black feminism

to be explored on television.

43 Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 44

Chapter 2

Welcome to Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, Your Community Program!: Producing a Black Counter Public Strategy in Brooklyn, 1968–1971

Everybody talks and everybody educates the children to look at Inside Bedford- Stuyvesant, it’s really not only a swinging hope and a swinging show for young people … its become the kind of thing that all of the young people are looking forward to it—I wanted you to know that everybody’s talking about it—not only talking about, everybody’s making everybody else look at it. Radio Personality Hal Jackson, from an episode of Inside Bedford- Stuyvesant, 1968.

In the months before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, newspapers

informed Americans of the findings of the Kerner Commission Report on racial uprisings.

Headlines stated that there were “two Americas, Black and white.” Despite the publicity the

report garnered, few television stations took up the commission’s recommendations to hire more

African American journalists and make other substantive changes in representing Black

communities. One of the few exceptions to this inaction occurred in New York City, at the heart

of a new social experiment. In New York City, the nation’s first Community Development

Corporation, the Bedford-Stuyvesant Redevelopment Corporation collaborated with local

television station WNEW to create the first Black public affairs television program documenting

the Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn community. The broadcast, Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, painted

a living portrait of Bedford-Stuyvesant, one of the largest African American communities in the

country with at least 400,000 residents in 1967. Bedford-Stuyvesant was at the epicenter of the forces documented in the Kerner Report, and the program documented both the challenges faced

by the community and, significantly, the achievements of community residents and organizations. Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant provided a sharp contrast to the pervasive media

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invisibility that had preceded it. After the demise of the program, the community would not see a

substantial mass-media representation again until Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing created a fictionalized portrait of the neighborhood in 1989.61

Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant presented an innovative blend of performance and news,

and invited and spontaneous appearances by residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Now television, a

medium that many African Americans distrusted, offered a living portrait of this vibrant and

populous community. This portrait, as I will show, was embraced and celebrated by community

members. The program was almost lost to historians and contemporary viewers, but through the

efforts of two former staff members, a number of episodes were discovered in a warehouse in the

1990s. Former producers of the program, Charles Hobson and Marian Etoille, facilitated the

recovery and restoration of the surviving episodes. Fortunately, fully one third of the episodes of

the three-year run escaped the loss that befell so many other Black programs allowing for an

extensive analysis of the program’s message and aesthetic.62 The recovered tapes from this “time

capsule” provide a window into an emerging Black public in one of the largest African American

neighborhoods in the United States, a community that had previously only been visible to itself

and outsiders through the marginalizing lens of media racism and the pathologizing lens of social

61 As St. Clair Bourne demonstrates in his documentary The Making of Do The Right Thing, representing Bedford Stuyvesant in 1989 made for complex ethical choices. 62 Former Producers Charles Hobson and Marion Etoile Watson contributed to the rediscovery of the program. Charles Hobson, interview by author, August 2005; Marion Etoile Watson, interview by author, February 24, 2006. After the discovery of the stored tapes, there were a series of public events during which former staff members spoke and episodes were screened at locations such as Columbia University. The Ford Foundation, which had been a major funder of the program, contributed to preserving and distributing the program. Christine Choy, the Executive director of Film News Now Foundation, the nonprofit sponsoring organization for the Ford grant, wrote to Andrea Taylor at the Ford Foundation in support of the program’s preservation grant, stating that the preservation of Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant “will have a tremendous impact on the advancement of understanding between peoples.” Letter from Christine Choy to Andrea Taylor, 17 August, 1990, Ford Foundation Archive, grant #09051517, record #6257.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 46 scientific discourse on “the ghetto.” 63 These “ghettoizing discourses” were dominated by Daniel

Patrick Moynihan’s infamous The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, as well as the

“culture of poverty” thesis, originated by Sociologist Oscar Lewis. These discourses had a significant influence over welfare and other public policy in this era and beyond.64

Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant simultaneously mobilized a politics of respectability with a radical politics of Black liberation and Black power, thus registering a markedly divergent representation of a community that government officials and social scientists had consigned to the “culture of poverty.”65 In contrast to Moynihan’s depictions of the ghetto family as wounded or pathological, Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant showed the neighborhood as a community where families are formed and parents care about their children.66 Without directly referencing the

Moynihan Report, Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant showed viewers an alternate reality by documenting concerned and active parents and well-behaved, engaged children. In contrast to circulating representations of a “culture of poverty,” or bad cultural values, Inside Bedford-

Stuyvesant featured people who cared about their homes, their safety, and the quality of their children’s schools. Episodes featured well-scrubbed children in their best clothes singing in their

63 “Film scholars and social historians consider it [Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant] a rare video time capsule.” Jim Yardley, “Black America Made Visible: TV Show Illuminated Culture Through Lens of Bed-Stuy,” New York Times, 25 June 1998, Sec. B, p. 1. 64 “Culture of poverty” was a term coined by anthropologist Oscar Lewis in his 1966 ethnography: La Vida; A Puerto Rican family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York. Lewis believed that the poor were held back by “present time orientation, poor speech patterns, fatalism and resignation, and low aspirations.” According to Sociologist Jill Quadagno, this type of research, along with the Moynihan Report that blamed the problems faced by African Americans on the “broken” and “matriarchal” Black family, were used by the U.S. government to argue that the state should be an agent of socialization, and that poor people were unfit for significant self-determination. Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 35–6, In addition to the Moynihan Report’s significant and lasting influence on U.S. Welfare Policy making, feminist critics have also critiqued the report’s influence on Black Arts movement poets and some Black Nationalists. See, for example, Cheryl Clarke’s After Mecca: Women Poets and The Black Arts Movement. 65 See Kevin Gaines in Uplifitng the Race on the Black political strategy, the “politics of respectability.” 66 This report is usually remembered by the surname of its author, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

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school choirs, welfare activists attempting to educate recipients about their rights, and many

ordinary people making an impact on their community. The same episodes often featured radical

political activists, such as Julius Lester, and artists, such as Amiri Baraka.

In addition to bringing leaders from outside Bedford-Stuyvesant such as Lester and

Baraka, the program almost always featured residents of the neighborhood, positioning them as

experts. This positioning of community members and activists as experts turned the television

conventions of quoting experts on issues such as welfare upside down. On Inside Bedford

Stuyvesant, local people were the experts on schools, housing, policing, family life, politics, and

a host of other issues. The appearances of local experts demonstrated the effective leadership of

African American women and men in the community, from teachers at Boys High School, to antiwar activists.

By depicting a thriving community, Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant presented an array of

contradictions to the Moynihan Report’s narrow outlook. In contrast to discourses blaming Black

women for problems with welfare, Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant featured Welfare Union activists offering solutions to poverty and survival strategies for welfare recipients. By portraying a draft resistor recently released from prison as a quiet hero for risking incarceration to avoid serving in a war in Vietnam that he considered racist and colonialist, Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant countered

Moynihan’s argument that the “utterly masculine world” of military service would provide a

“desperately needed change, a world away from women,” and again, positioned a community

member as an expert.67 Altogether, the producers of Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, working with

67 Moynihan Report 42–3. see also Dionne Bensonsmith, “Jezebels, Matriarchs and Welfare Queens: The Moynihan Report of 1965 and the Social Construction of African American Women in Welfare Policy,” in Deserving and Entitled: Social Constructions and Public Policy, ed. Anne L. Schneider and Helen M. Ingram (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), p. 251.

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very few resources, created a popular program that challenged many of the dominant media and

government messages about Black communities, while creating an intimate portrait of one of the

United States’ largest African American communities.

Bedford-Stuyvesant Redevelopment Corporation: The Origins of Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant

Historically, Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn was a stable working and middle class neighborhood with a solid residential core of brownstone row houses. As recently as the early 1950s, it was a racially and economically mixed community with a comfortable standard of living.68

Between 1940 and 1960 the neighborhood became 85% African American and

Latino. Prior to this, it had been 75% white.69 Real estate speculation and the practice of

“redlining,” intensified Bedford-Stuyvesant’s demographic shift. “Redlining” involved banks refusing to grant loans or mortgages to African American homeowners and businesses. Political scientist Kimberly Johnston also cites suburban home ownership and highway expansion as reasons for the population shift and economic downturn. With at least 400, 000 residents by the early 1960s, Bedford-Stuyvesant was considered by many outsiders to be “one of the largest ghettoes in the United States.”70 Because of conditions created by redlining, many African

Americans in Bedford-Stuyvesant in the 1960s paid high rents for substandard housing.71

68 Kimberley Johnson, “Community Development Corporations, Participation, and Accountability: The Harlem Urban Development Corporation and the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 594 (July 2004): p. 116. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid. 71 CDC Oral History Project, “Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation (BSRC), Brooklyn, NY,” Pratt Center for Community Development website (http://www.prattcenter.net/cdc-bsrc.php). For a fuller account of this history tracing back to the 1930s, see Craig Wilder, “Chapter Nine: Vulnerable Places, Undesirable People: The New Deal and the Making of the Brooklyn Ghetto,” in A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), especially pp. 184–5. For a very critical account of the Poverty Program,

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Despite these pressures, the neighborhood had a substantial middle class of African American

and Caribbean American homeowners, and a large number of beautiful brownstones.

Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant grew from a mix of racial conflict and media neglect.

Communities such as Bedford-Stuyvesant were part of the “inner city” that scholar Robert Allen

considered analogous to an internal colony of the United States.

In these cities we do not control our resources. We do not control the land, the houses or the stores. These are owned by whites who live outside the community. These are very real colonies, as their capital and cheap labor are exploited by those who live outside the cities. White Power makes the laws and enforces those laws with guns and nightsticks in the hands of white racist policemen and black mercenaries.72

In the summer of 1964, unrest turned into an uprising in Bedford-Stuyvesant. An

incident between young people and police sparked a riot by residents who were also angered by

poor conditions in the neighborhood. Journalists labeled this and a nearly simultaneous uprising

in Harlem the beginnings of “the long hot summers.”73 Despite the unrest, and the substantial

size of the community, media coverage of Bedford-Stuyvesant was minimal even in comparison to other maligned and misrepresented Black communities such as Harlem. The only media attention the neighborhood received commented on the abysmal living conditions that some

residents endured. In 1966, in an attempt to address these conditions, activists from the Central

Brooklyn Coordinating Council (CBCC) invited U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY)to tour

which argues that funds associated with the Poverty Program were misused in Brooklyn, see Walter Thabit, How East New York Became a Ghetto (New York: New York University Press, 2003) Thabit was a planner hired by the Lindsey administration in 1966 to work on urban renewal projects in East New York. 72 Robert Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969). 73 The phrase “long hot summers” became synonymous with the urban uprisings of the 1960s. To get a sense of how this phrase was used in media accounts to describe urban uprisings, see Fred Powledge, “Civil Rights—Another Long, Hot Summer?” New York Times, 13 June 1965, p. E3.

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Bedford-Stuyvesant.74 At the end of the tour, the activists challenged Kennedy to address conditions in the community. The activists included CBCC leader Elsie Richardson, and Thomas

Jones, a prominent local judge.75 While Kennedy proposed to study the area, Richardson responded emphatically “No more surveys. We’ve been surveyed to death.”76

Eventually, Kennedy’s collaboration with activists in Brooklyn became Bedford-

Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation (BSRC), the country’s first Community Development

Corporation (CDC). Franklin Thomas became the first director of the organization. Thomas had grown up in Bedford-Stuyvesant and had been the Police Commissioner.77 The concept of

Community Development Corporations developed as part of the Special Impact Program (SIP), a piece of 1967 anti-poverty legislation that amended the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.78

The Economic Opportunity Act was part of a War On Poverty, one component of President

Johnson’s efforts at building a Great Society.79 Jill Quadagno cites links between the war on

74 The CBCC was a diverse coalition of civic leaders, church leaders, block clubs, and other local leadership. This leadership was especially important because gerrymandering had effectively prevented Bedford-Stuyvesant from having elected Black leadership that was politically empowered to represent them. The CBCC was active in Lyndon Johnson’s War On Poverty. Their invitation to Kennedy should be seen in context: the practice of politicians touring neighborhoods in the 1960s was a way to bring attention to a certain area. 75 “Thomas R. Jones, 93, Judge Who Agitated for Urban Revival,” New York Times. (November 1, 2006): 9. 76 Kimberly Johnson, p. 116. 77 Significantly, Thomas went on to be the head of the Ford Foundation after many years at BSRC. The BSRC is still in existence and receives Ford funding. The “twin corporation” structure was criticized, but some people found it an effective way to bridge the race divide. Ben Gelascoe, former board president of the BSRC said, “The legislation was unique in that it made for a marriage between the community and the business world. And in those days that meant the black world and the white world.” (Ben Gelascoe telephone interview, December 22, 2005) 78 SIP was sponsored by Senators Robert Kennedy (D-NY) and Jacob Javits (R-NY). Political Scientist Kimberly Johnson writes, “On the federal level, the desire to “do something” for the cities while responding to demands for community control resulted in the introduction of legislation such as the Special Impact Program, SIP; Title VII Amendment to the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.” Johnson calls the SIP “a somewhat muted federal response to those calls for community control” The roots of CDCS are evident in the wording of the SIP legislation, which called for “locally initiated community corporations for the solutions of the critical problems.” 79 President Johnson announced his “War on Poverty” in his state of the union address on January 8, 1964.

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poverty and the 1963 march on Washington that preceded it and the urban uprisings that exploded not long after the “War on Poverty” was declared. (Quadagno, pp. 35–63)

CDCs were intended to “address critical problems” by attracting private investment

into neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant. This appealed to some local activists, as well as to

some liberals who wanted to contribute to improving life in “the ghetto.” Quadagno explains that

community action that provided direct service to the poor was expected to replace cumbersome

bureaucracy. “While the War on Poverty began as a top down effort, civil rights activists rapidly

seized the opportunity that the local initiatives had created, pushing the Great Society Mandate

one step further.”80 Additionally, the emphasis on private, nongovernmental response appealed to

conservatives. Kennedy did not choose Bedford-Stuyvesant for his experiment with Community

Development by chance. One possible reason for the choice was that Bedford-Stuyvesant did not

have a powerful Black elected official comparable to Harlem’s Congressman Adam Clayton

Powell.81 Kennedy also claimed that he was “impressed with civic life” in the area.82 Bedford-

Stuyvesant had enough poverty to justify the corporation’s necessity, yet also a middle class base

and a strong set of institutions, including the Pratt Institute, that had a vested interest in working

to improve conditions in the community. Furthermore, the community had beautiful housing

stock that could be restored.83

Initially, Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation sponsored employment

programs and neighborhood improvement programs that trained unemployed local people to

80 Quadagno p. 31. 81 James Lowry, interview with author. 82 Pratt Website (http://www.prattcenter.net). 83 Kimberly Johnson, p. 117.

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rehabilitate the area’s ailing housing stock. An enthusiastic article about the Restoration

Corporation appeared in the March 8 issue of Life Magazine. Calling the Corporation a “A Ray of Hope,” the article’s writer, Jack Newfield, took a positive, even promotional view of the promise of Community Development Corporations for poor neighborhoods. Newfield, the white journalist who authored the article, grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Newfield acknowledged that

the Restoration Corporation had mixed results. Many of the programs’ graduates, even those

with demonstrable skills, were nonetheless shut out of jobs by racist unions and employers.

Despite this discouraging result, Newfield still described the BSRC in idealistic terms:

The project is a holistic, systematic attack on urban poverty starting with the idea of convincing private enterprise to invest massively in the ghetto. “Because of Vietnam there just isn’t enough federal money available to do the job” says Senator Kennedy who developed the project with his staff, “so we must convince the private sector that it is their responsibility too. They can create dignifying jobs—not welfare handouts—for the poor.”84

Recognizing the potential role of media in altering the image of Bedford Stuyvesant,

Fred Papert, a BSRC board member proposed that the BSRC start a television show of its own.

Papert’s suggestion, shortly after the release of the Kerner Report, also came in response to the report’s criticism of the media for ignoring Black issues while sensationalizing riots.85 Papert suggested that the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation could organize a television show illustrating the achievements of individuals and groups from the neighborhood. 86 Initially, BSRC

staff members asked Leslie Lacey, an African American children’s author to produce the

84 Jack Newfield, “A Few Rays of Hope,” Life, 8 March 1968, p. 84-96. 85 Kerner Commission. The report criticized media for “failing to communicate,” both by sensationalizing the uprisings and catering to white fears, and by ignoring or misrepresenting Black concerns. The report called for a major change including substantial coverage of Black communities in all media. 86 Papert was chair of the advertising agency, called Papert, Koenig and Lois, Inc.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 53 program. According to Charles Hobson, Lacey found the “Kennedy people” difficult to work with and passed the job on to Hobson, who worked in at WBAI, an independent progressive radio station in New York City affiliated with the Pacifica Network. Hobson, who had grown up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, prepared a proposal for the program describing the beauty, character, and vitality of the neighborhood as he hoped to represent it.87 The BSRC approached WNEW

(Channel 5 in NYC) and worked out an agreement to air the show. At the premiere of Inside

Bedford-Stuyvesant, Papert spoke of the paucity of media resources available in the community:

The series is a perfect example of television being as good for the audience as it is for the sponsors. It’s responsive to the basic communications needs of the nearly half million people who live in this community who up to now have boasted no radio, television or daily newspaper of their own.88

The format of the program was more varied than the designation “Black public affairs” might imply; it was an outdoor variety show, a news program and a purveyor of “high” art. The range of features were linked together by a pair of windblown hosts interviewing Black

Panthers or Black Congressional hopefuls. The hosts were the connection that linked performances by musicians such as The Persuasions and Max Roach to politicians and activists.

Episodes frequently featured these seemingly incongruous elements. For example, in one episode a discussion with activists from the “Brooklyn Refugee Committee” which aimed to help residents who were (ironically) displaced by Poverty programs such as the Model Cities

Program, follows a performance by the Agroma African dancers.

87 Charles Hobson, interview. Unfortunately, the proposal has been lost, but Hobson was able to describe the proposal from memory to some degree. 88 George Gent, “TV Series for Bedford-Stuyvesant Begins Monday,” New York Times, 5 April 1968, p. 93.

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Premiere: The “Good Side” of the Ghetto

Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant was a very miniscule production … minimal production values … in a way, if the content weren’t so interesting and historic it would almost be like an embarrassment … we worked with what we had.89

Upon its debut in April 1968, the New York Times described Inside Bedford-

Stuyvesant as “a mixture of neighborhood news, interviews, and entertainment television.”90

Newsweek quoted the producers saying that the show focused on the “‘good side’ of the ghetto.”

The thirteen episodes of Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant’s first season were created with a low (even

for 1968) budget of $45,000.91 Evidence of the low-budget production abounded in the footage,

which was clearly hastily filmed and edited. First National City Bank, Commonwealth Edison,

and NY Telephone all funded the initial episodes. 92

The decision to film outdoors, likely because of budget limitations, nonetheless

created a distinctive aesthetic. This style emphasized the accessibility of the program and created

a significantly different “feel” than that of a studio-based program.93 This accessibility made the

program porous; individuals could and did walk on camera during the filming and as a result

were featured in the broadcast. This accessibility was very unusual for television practices in this

era. Most of the local news coverage of African American communities consisted of “breathless”

style journalism and eschewed the sustained engagement of Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant.94

89 Charles Hobson, interview. 90 George Gent, “TV Series for Bedford-Stuyvesant Begins Monday,” New York Times, 5 April 1968, p. 93. 91 WCBS press release, from the files of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation (unarchived) April 8, 1968 Prof. William Wood. 92 Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation Press Release, April 5, 1868, from the files of the Bedford- Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. 93 All but one episode of the twenty-three that I have viewed were filmed outdoors, in the neighborhood. 94 Donovan and Scherer, “The Urban Riots” p. 74.

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Filming the program throughout the neighborhood invited viewers from many parts of Bedford-Stuyvesant community. Furthermore, the program showcased the diversity of

Bedford-Stuyvesant’s architecture, public spaces, and institutions. By naming these locations

“Inside” as the title suggested, the program claimed them as being part of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Claiming specific neighborhood sites was a way to establish the parameters of Bedford-

Stuyvesant and proudly mark it as a beloved and thriving community. This was a strategic way to improve the community’s image, in the mind of both residents and nonresidents.

This defining of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s boundaries in a positive way, claiming inclusion rather than exclusion, also addressed the notion that the community was an ill-defined, disgusting, growing slum, as the Life article on the BSRC describes it: a “growing slum with amoeba-like boundaries that render its exact geographical limits uncertain.” Pointing out this amorphousness, Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation’s own Thomas R. Jones said,

“Bedford-Stuyvesant is wherever Negroes live.”95 Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant’s strategy of the claiming of spaces within the neighborhood recontextualizes this designation of amorphousness which, in the context of the Life article, is layered with thinly veiled fears about New York’s growing African American population. The program asserts that being located in the Bedford-

Stuyvesant area is a positive attribute, and that the neighborhood is not a festering, amorphous space but a vibrant community. The choices of location emphasized attractive public spaces such as Brower Park, Fulton Park, and educational establishments such as the Pratt Institute. The program was able to document Bedford-Stuyvesant’s buildings and infrastructure in keeping with BSRC’s mission of architectural renovation and preservation. Another advantage of filming

95 Newfield.

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outdoors was that the hosts and crew became a familiar sight in the neighborhood, increasing the

comfort level Bedford-Stuyvesant residents felt with the program.

The show’s array of funders reveals that both corporations and foundations were

aware of and responsive to a changing racial atmosphere in the years after the uprisings. Each of

Inside Bedford Stuyvesant’s (IBS) funders had their own interest in African American

representations or Bedford Stuyvesant as a community. Public affairs programming on

commercial television continued to require noncommercial subsidy—contributions from both

foundation and corporate sponsors. In this case, the distinction between public and commercial

television was somewhat blurred. For example, the Ford Foundation and the Stearns Foundation

helped fund IBS. These foundations funded many antipoverty organizations and efforts more

broadly as well.

Corporations also had powerful motivations to help programs like Inside Bedford-

Stuyvesant, motivation rooted in their increased vulnerability to critiques by African Americans

for discrimination. Thus it is not surprising that IBS obtained corporate sponsorship from

Consolidated Edison, New York Telephone, and First National City Bank. In subsequent seasons,

the program also received funding from Coca-Cola.96 According to former BSRC staff member,

Ben Gelascoe, companies such as Consolidated Edison had many African American consumers

in areas such as Bedford-Stuyvesant; contributing to the program was an effort to promote

themselves as bearing goodwill toward the Black community.97 These companies felt a need to promote their goodwill for a reason. Dating back to the 1930s, civil rights groups had targeted

96 This funding demonstrates that the division between “public” and “commercial” television—at least in the Black public affairs genre—is more blurred than one might imagine. 97 Gelascoe, interview.

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the utilities companies, Consolidated Edison and New York Telephone, for employment

discrimination against African Americans and other groups.98 According to Newsweek, these

companies used the advertising space in IBS’s first season to attempt to broadcast these companies’ change in employment practices, a change undoubtedly due to both new legislation

and the urban uprisings of the previous summers.99 Thus, in the case of corporate funding,

companies chose to give funds in part to address negative perceptions by African Americans as

well as to begin to redress past wrongs by signaling an interest in hiring Blacks. In addition to

attempting to improve their image by funding the programs, IBS broadcasts were interspersed with occasional employment advertisements by the utilities. This direct solicitation for African

Americans to apply for these jobs was clearly influenced by a rising tide of support for affirmative action and greater enforcement of equal opportunity regulations.100

Beauty or Decay: Picturing Bedford-Stuyvesant

The program’s desire to convey both the decay of the community’s infrastructure and

Bedford-Stuyvesant’s beauty is evident in the program’s first press release.

98 See also Wilder, pp. 156–7. He recounts infamous employment discrimination by Consolidated Edison and NY Telephone. 99 For an account of the history of labor discrimination in the telephone industry, see Venus Green, Race on the Line: Gender, Labor, and Technology in the Bell System, 1880–1980 (Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001). 100 Unfortunately, there is no data about the effectiveness of this employment advertising in increasing the number of African Americans applying for or securing employment with these companies. Nonetheless, the fact that the companies wished to broadcast their search for employees on a Black program is a significant change from their historical discrimination against Black workers. Furthermore, using television to solicit applications for employment for anyone, let alone African American workers, was a new practice. One important example of this practice in action was a contemporaneous program in which advertising jobs for African Americans was the sole focus. South Carolina ETV’s Job Man Caravan 1968–1970 was a program that advertised mostly blue collar jobs to African Americans, interspersed with musical numbers and purportedly humorous sketches on “how not to behave” as a job applicant.

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The scenes of Bedford-Stuyvesant … will show beauty and squalor side by side— brilliant people in the midst of decaying homes. Restoration Corporation intends to make Bedford-Stuyvesant once again the garden spot of Brooklyn through the wonderful people who live here.101

Airing images of decay had the potential to catalyze reform, justifying the private

and government funds channeled into the community. Nonetheless, the show chose to emphasize

beauty more than decay. This choice shows that the makers of IBS felt that that the need to win

the image war over depictions of ghetto pathology was as great as the need to demonstrate the

necessity to obtain funds from the “war on poverty.” Furthermore, the effort to foster community

pride shows that community members were the program’s first priority, and that the potential

audience of government officials, foundations, and corporate funders was secondary.

While the program was certainly innovative, an examination of the episodes displays

evidence of time and budget constraints. For example, the opening theme of the program

conveys that the neighborhood itself will play a starring role in the program, but the theme

clearly suffered in the production process. Many of the shots include text which appears on-

screen too briefly to be legible. In a series of very brief consecutive shots, the viewer sees the

neighborhood. The first image is the Brooklyn bridge, the next shows the street sign at Fulton

and Nostrand at the heart of Bedford-Stuyvesant and very close to the BSRC office. Several

shots pan down from tall, ornate buildings to street level. A final series of images shows

neighborhood residents coming out of the subway and getting on the bus.

The casual nature of some of the cinematography and editing added to the program’s spontaneous style. This improvisatory style was explored by some of the musicians who appeared on the program. The music in the opening, an instrumental version of Aretha Franklin’s

101 Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, press release, 5 April 1968, n.p., Ford Foundation Archive.

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“Respect,” aptly summarized the attitude the program hosts displayed for neighborhood residents

and their audience. Yet the broadcast time contrasted with the ideal of “respect,” markedly

demonstrating the minimal resources devoted to IBS. The 1:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. timeslots created cognitive dissonance with the feeling of immediacy to the broadcasts, as the show was always shot in bright sunshine with many people milling about. Thus, the 1 a.m. viewer would be absolutely certain they were not watching a simultaneous, live broadcast.

Naturally, the patently marginal time slot was criticized by guests on the program and by audience members. Audience members regularly wrote to the program to ask that it be moved to a more convenient viewing time, demonstrating that Black audiences refused second- class viewership status. The most notable on-air critique of the time slot came from Harry

Belafonte, who asked on air, “is this the best they [the station?] can do for us?” BSRC officials were more circumspect in their criticism of the program’s marginal timeslot. Franklin Thomas, the director of the BSRC, interviewed by the New York Times the day before the program’s premiere, acknowledged that the time was far from ideal, but called it was “a start.”102 WNEW

did offer the BSRC a discount on air-time, but apparently it was not enough to buy a more visible

time slot.103

102 George Gent, “TV Series for Bedford-Stuyvesant Begins Monday,” New York Times, 5 April 1968, p. 93. 103 For the most part, the program took on an identity and life of its own, beyond the BSRC, although there were important connections between the show and its sponsor. In the arrangement between the station and the CDC, BSRC paid for “above the line expenses” (Hosts Roker and Lowry’s salaries as well as the producers’ salaries) and WNEW paid for the crew and film. In Lowry’s case, the IBS salary was an additional and separate salary from his Restoration Corporation pay, which not everyone at BSRC appreciated. The projects and staff of the BSRC were occasionally featured on the program. The hosts interviewed Restoration Corporation director Frank Thomas in the first episode. Another example of a multilayered connection between the CDC and the program was the “discovery” of the Persuasions, whose careers launched after they appeared on the show. The members of the group took one of the BSRC’s surveying classes, and they let Jim Lowry at Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant know that “they could sing.”

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Performing Community

The community itself was the star of the show. Many of episodes of IBS showcased a live audience of community members watching the hosts and other performers; these onlookers became a central part of the program text. In an episode featuring Max Roach performing outdoors on the Pratt campus, young people surrounded Roach, rapt with attention when he

played. As music journalist Jake Austen, reflects, Roach seems to appreciate and be especially

comfortable with performing for a Black audience, and the “vibe” that the audience’s enthusiasm

creates may have enhanced his performance.104 In this particular episode, the credits rolled over

images of people performing and smiling for the camera, some still dancing, apparently to music

still playing on the campus. In the final shot, a woman leans over her young child in a carriage

and turns his or her head towards the camera. This gesture of offering the child to the camera,

when so many negative ideas were circulating about African Americans and residents of

neighborhoods such as Bedford-Stuyvesant, demonstrates that residents felt comfortable with the

presence of the program and had a desire to be represented. This pervasive excitement made

Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant compelling viewing despite the low-end production values. While

liberal journalists such as Jack Newfield in Life Magazine sensationalized conditions in Bedford-

Stuyvesant with phrases such as “rorschach tests of vomit,” and descriptions of violent youth,

stench, and filth, one sees a different side of the community in the hopeful gesture of the on-

screen mother in the park.

104 Jake Austen, TV a-Go-Go: Rock on TV from American Bandstand to American Idol (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2005).

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Hosts As Ambassadors: Mediating a Counterpublic

Welcome to Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, your community program: …I love to say that, I feel good…You gonna billboard us, Roxie?

Roker: Oh yes, I’d like to say the program was brought to us by Con ed, NY Tel, and Coca Cola.

Lowry: Right, and I understand you are going to have a very interesting guest.

Roker: Yes, her name is Ms. Jordan and she has her own dress manufacturing company in New York City, but she’s right from this community, here in Bedford-Stuyvesant, in fact just a stones’ throw away.

Lowry: You gonna model?

Roker: Oh no, no … I don’t think I’ll model, Maybe some day, our producer will work it out so I can wear Ms Jordan’s clothes on our show.

Lowry: Very smooth Roxie! Very smooth … another thing, I think we’re going to have a forum, a new thing on the show, we have invited civic-minded people from the community.

This exchange underscores the warmth and casualness of the banter between the two

hosts that permeates the program. Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant’s hosts were integral to the

program’s popularity which led to a longer-than-expected run. In the first two seasons, the hosts

were Roxie Roker and Jim Lowry. Roxie Roker, an actress with some television experience,

worked at NBC where her husband, Sy Kravitz, was an executive. Roker had recently appeared

off-Broadway in Genet’s The Blacks.105 Her recognizability and respectability attracted viewers,

although her presence and style was reportedly criticized as being more theater than television.106

Numerous journalists applied for the job as Roker’s co-host, but ultimately James Lowry, who

105 “Roxie Roker, 66, Who Broke Barrier In Her Marriage on TV’s’ Jeffersons,” obituary, New York Times 16 December 1995, p. B-17.

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had been on staff at Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation for two years, auditioned and

was selected. Lowry was a prominent worker at BSRC who had been featured in the previously

mentioned Life essay about the work of the organization.107

The choice of Roker and Lowry, with their middle-class linguistic styles and

appearance, to host the program was a subtle nod at “uplift,” a strategy invoked by elite African

Americans of countering racism by “calling attention to class distinctions among African

Americans as a sign of evolutionary race progress.”108 Lowry’s looks probably did not hurt his

selection. According to viewer mail, both of the hosts were very popular, with 29-year-old Lowry

garnering special attention from viewers for being “tall and handsome,“ or “charming,

personable, and handsome.”109 Roker was a celebrity in her own right, and undoubtedly attracted

viewers to the program because of this.

James Lowry’s route to working at the BSRC and IBS exemplifies the ethos of the

era. Lowry, an African American Chicagoan and Grinnell graduate, met Robert Kennedy in Peru

where Lowry was serving as the associate director of the Peace Corps. He was asked to give

Kennedy a tour of the area. They talked extensively, and Kennedy prevailed upon Lowry to

106 Charles Hobson, interview. 107 Newfield. 108 In Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (1996) Kevin Gaines characterized uplift as a countering ideology to white supremacy that protested segregation and physical and economic violence against African Americans (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1996), p. 22. Furthermore, in his study of uplift, Gaines calls attention to the rhetorical and ideological power of images in the struggle for Black self-representation. (p. 67.) Gaines describes middle class Black use of the medium of photographic portraiture (p. 68–9) as “a medium well suited for trying to refute negrophobic caricatures.” Gaines maintains that African Americans, particularly from the middle class, tried to use photographic technology to insert a new and different image as “representative” to contradict circulating racist images. This is important because individuals could gain access to cameras and the means of production … while in the case of motion pictures, access to the means of production was less common. Discussing this attempt to reimage African Americans, Gaines wrote, “anything less than stylized elegance would hold the race back” (p. 69) To no small extent, programs such as Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant were engaged in this type of “reimaging.”

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 63 return to the United States to help “his own people” in a development model that was not unlike the Peace Corps.110 Eventually, Lowry acquiesced and joined the small but growing staff of the

BSRC in the Grenada Hotel on Fulton Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Lowry became very committed to the organization’s work. While working on Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, Lowry continued his full time salaried work at BSRC, thus forming the most substantial link between the program and the sponsoring organization. Sometimes this meant a few long looks from

BSRC’s management after a particularly radical guest had appeared on the program. Roker also continued her work at NBC while hosting IBS.

Working for Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant was challenging but invigorating for Lowry.

Roker also reportedly loved working on the show, and it launched her television career, which later included a starring role on The Jeffersons. Despite the excitement of making this pioneering program, the working conditions at IBS were far from glamorous. Lowry recollected that he and

Roker would bring three changes of their own clothes so that three episodes of the half hour program could be shot in an afternoon.111 Furthermore, the white union camera crews were often openly hostile or nervous about being in a Black community. Lowry observed that as afternoons turned to evenings the camera crews “couldn’t wait” to leave the area.112

109 Letters from viewers from BSRC files. 110 Lowry interview, Chicago December, 2005. For a critical account of the “modernization” discourse that informed the Peace Corps. See Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 111 Lowry interview. 112 Lowry interview.

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In the first two seasons, Lowry and Roker were the glue that held the disparate and

sometimes incongruous elements of the program together.113 The show’s inclusion of dissident voices was crucial to building a Black public sphere, and Roker and Lowry demonstrated this inclusion in every episode. According to grant applications, one of the program’s early generic models was the Today Show and the hosts’ sunny and warm demeanor bear out that resemblance.114 The hosts functioned as both as community members, and as ambassadors,

promoting a positive consciousness of a Bedford-Stuyvesant identity into people’s lives in the

community and bringing a new representation of the community to those beyond its boundaries.

This brought unprecedented media representation to the people of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Roxie

Roker and Jim Lowry were often surrounded by residents milling around and mugging for the

camera as they filmed in parks such as Brower Park, the Pratt Campus, and Fulton Park. They

modeled inquisitive attitudes toward different voices and points of view by being warm and

responsive to children, local activists, and artists on the show.

The hosts mediated a diverse Black public sphere that was porous, responsive, and

vibrant. When Lowry or Roker interviewed activists such as Herman Ferguson or politicians

such as Charles Kemp, their questions were open-ended, allowing guests a chance to speak for

themselves. They did not try to represent consensus about what was best for the community—

there was no consensus. When introducing particularly radical artists or activists, Roker and

Lowry were ambassadors while representing the ultimate in respectability and familiarity; they

113 Later this important role was taken over by producers Marion Etoile and Joe Dennis, who had worked as producers on the program in the initial seasons. The show launched Etoile’s media career as well. Maryanne Etoile Watson still works on Channel 5 news in New York as of this writing. 114 “Patterned after NBC’s Today Show, [Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant] is produced by Negroes, tells what Negroes are doing, and, most significantly, is aimed at Negroes.” Article from Newsweek, n.d., Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation microfilm reel, Ford Foundation Archive.

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helped to introduce new ideas to the community by modeling an attitude of friendly

inquisitiveness.

Both Lowry and Roker were relative newcomers to television, and Lowry had no

previous performance experience; his on-air persona grew visibly more comfortable over the

course of the two seasons. In the second season, he experimented with a new look. In the first

season, Lowry had worn a suit for each episode. In some second season episodes, he wore a dashiki, self-consciously modeling an openness to new ideas. On the days Lowry wore the

dashiki, he typically commented on it. In one of the first dashiki episodes, Lowry commented to

Roker that the women activists he had interviewed had been “all over him” and he attributed it to

the new look. “It must be the dashiki, I’m coming home, Roxie.” Roker smiles in response and

says, “you never left Jim, you never left.” Many in the audience might have taken pleasure from seeing Lowry’s fashion experiments. His self-consciousness about it likely reflected at least some viewers’ own experience with the evolving “Black look.”115 Roker’s appearance also

changed. In the first episodes her hair is in a curled perm, in later episodes her hair is in a coiffed

Afro.

While Roker and Lowry welcomed everyone warmly, Roker’s attitude was

especially gracious with personal friends. “Let me introduce you to my dear friend,” she would

say, when introducing guests such as actress Vinie Burroughs with whom she had performed in

The Blacks, or Hal Johnson, a friend from Howard University. Roker came out of Howard

University and from a civil rights milieu, and she clearly enjoyed having some of her personal

heroes such as Harry Belafonte on the program. In addition to Roker and Lowry’s general

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warmth and enthusiasm, their flirtatiousness with both guests and each other created another

mode of interaction with the audience. Roker and Lowry’s warm banter and Lowry’s flirtatious jokes created the appearance of a couple dynamic, despite the fact that Roker was older than

Lowry, and her marriage to Sy Kravitz was well-known.116 During its first year, the program

opened with Roker and Lowry walking toward the camera, often arm in arm, or holding hands.

The couple dynamic this created added interest and personality to the program.

The importance of the hosts’ roles as ambassadors is clear especially when they

practice explicit “framing” when introducing guests. Roker and Lowry attempted to represent

openness and “objectivity” alternating with “advocacy journalism.” Thus, their approach to each

guest anticipated a range of viewers’ responses. In cases of the most outspoken, Black-Power

oriented guests, they took what one staff member later called an “almost apologetic tone.117”

This can also be read as a plea for audience members to keep watching and keep an open mind—

even if the points of view on the air are quite radical. Two prominent examples of this type of

framing are illustrated here: Immediately prior to the performance of the Spirit House Young

Players, which I will describe later in the chapter, Roxie Roker stated, “what you are about to see

you may not agree with, but I think you will agree with me that it needs to be said.” Lowry

makes a similar framing statement when introducing Black Nationalist activist Sonny Carson.

115 See, Craig, p. 78. “In 1952 a Black woman wearing “nappy” hair was unfathomable. In 1960 she was a curiosity, in 1965 a militant, and in 1968 stylish. In 1970 she might have been arrested for too closely resembling Angela Davis. By 1977 she was an anachronism.” 116 Hobson—the show’s producer, told me that Lowry also fit a certain look by being very light skinned—while Roker fulfilled a goal of being very “pro-Black” because of her darker skin and “more African” features. In addition to Roker being visibly older than Lowry, this is what made them, at the time “unthinkable couple” for television according to Hobson. 117 Hobson interview, 2004.

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Today we have a very special guest on Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, someone I’ve known for some time and have a great deal of respect for, a person who always speaks his mind out. Sometimes you might not agree with what he says but you cannot deny the fact that Bob Sonny Carson speaks his mind out, he tells you what he thinks … and that’s why I’m glad to have Sonny Carson with us today on Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant. I’m glad you can make it this time.

In the episode, Carson castigates Pratt for ignoring minority applicants while holding up a painting by a young Black painter who he maintains was unfairly rejected for financial aid.

Lowry gives Carson a fair amount of space to make his point and his appearance is very much in the “soap box” or street corner tradition.

Yet another example of the hosts’ dialogue shows that they anticipated strong audience response (possibly both positive and negative) to their guests. In an episode featuring the Brooklyn Black Panthers, Lowry and Roker’s dialogue anticipates this reaction.

Roker: We have an interesting program, don’t we?

Lowry: Gonna shake a lot of people up, I think.

Roker: Inside Bedford Stuyvesant is always an interesting and versatile program presenting many sides.

In this episode, Lowry discussed the possibilities for a Black revolution with a radical guest. Lowry’s questions to Lt. Aponte of the Brooklyn Black Panthers reflected his own distance from the Panther’s methods and aims. Yet the interview does provide an entry point to the discussion with Black radicals for non-radical viewers. Lowry asks, in essence, “what about someone like me … A middle class, successful Black man?” He spoke for some African

Americans, who, having achieved material success under capitalism despite the pressures of racism, were doubtless concerned about the impact of a Black Marxist revolution on their own lives. Lt. Aponte responded by saying that “after the revolution,” the backlash against all African

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Americans would be so strong that even middle class people would be affected, and therefore

unable to maintain neutrality. The earnestness of Lowry’s attempt to connect with Aponte across

their different positions creates a range of identification possibilities for viewers, without

offering an easy resolution to these significant questions and differences of opinions.118

In a program that featured women activists as well as the all-female Agroma dance

troupe, it is again evident that Jim Lowry framed the guests in relation to his own interactions

with them, and his own relationship with their political perspectives. Introducing this episode,

Lowry says he is about to interview “some strong women” and laughs about his fears that

“they’re going to eat me alive.” In the conclusion to this episode, which featured the “strong

women” as dancers, housing activists, and welfare activists, Lowry returns to calling them strong

women and joking about how he had been irresistible to them in his dashiki. This episode’s

segment on the Agroma dance troupe showcases the genre flexibility of the program. As the

dancers, who appear to be talented amateurs, perform a children’s dance and a rain dance in the

park, Roker describes their movement and narrates the dances’ origins. For a moment, Inside

Bedford-Stuyvesant is an ethnographic documentary—albeit one with far more respect for

African traditions than was typical in documentaries of this period. This performance, like

several others on Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant is invested in recuperating African History and

traditions.

118 Lowry is currently the senior vice-president for Boston Consulting Group. He leads the company’s workforce diversity, ethnic marketing, and minority business consulting efforts.

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From Enclave to Counterpublic: Community Members Speak Out

Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant featured a space for debate, with several segments in

which community members could speak directly to issues. These were called the “speak out,”

and “community forum” segments. In these portions of the program, individuals from the

community could offer a critique directly to the audience. The simple knowledge that one could

be on the show to state one’s point of view and be heard within and beyond the immediate community transmitted something unprecedented to Bedford-Stuyvesant residents.

Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant showed young people as enthusiastic participants in society, as they actively worked on community issues. Sensitive to the importance of young people in the changing mood of the late 1960s, the staff of Inside Bedford Stuyvesant generated a myriad of opportunities for young people to appear on the show. In the episode featuring

Belafonte, several students from Boys High School conducted the interview. Another episode featured the class president, the valedictorian, the yearbook editor, and the football captain of

Boys High, declaring the problems facing the neighborhood and discussing their college plans.

The seniors, including Valedictorian, Henry Marietta, and Class President, Dewey Hickson, speak eloquently and forcefully about their desire to return to the community after they finish at

Harvard and of their struggle to get a Black principal for Boys High. In this episode and others, the show replaces an image of dangerous youth with an image of heroism, intelligence, and mature leadership. The recasting of youth in this context is a notable departure from the pervasive negative stereotyping of Black youth in most other media at this time.

In addition to this recasting of youth, the program introduced progressive notions of experts and expertise by citing indigenous experts on the community while critiquing or pointedly ignoring dominant discourses from governmental and academic “experts.” In one 1968

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episode, a community forum featured a group of adults from the community standing by a

sculpture on the Pratt campus. Jim Lowry introduced the guests, citing their names, professions,

and community involvements. When Lowry introduced Mr. Charles Thomas as an art teacher, he

mentioned Thomas’s degree, emphasizing that local people were highly qualified experts in their

fields. Lowry introduced Mr. Von King as a contractor and past member of the school board, and

former PTA president. Mrs. Lee Brown was introduced as “active with an adoptive parents’

agency.” Finally, Lowry introduced Mrs. Hortense Beveret as an expert on Bedford-Stuyvesant

history, validating her expertise whether or not she held a formal degree. His introduction also

valued volunteer work and community leadership in addition to paid positions.

In this forum, Lowry asked participants for their feelings about youth in the community and the Nixon presidential bid. One respondent, addressing the question of youth spoke of her admiration for what she termed the “new African identification,” a shift in hairstyles, fashions, and attitudes. She praised this change, calling it “wonderful” and saying that she hoped this new generation would be blessed with “wholeness as a person.” This positive intergenerational attitude coupled with fervent praise for African American young people markedly contrasted with prevailing portrayals of African American youth. This segment validates both formal education, such as a master’s degree, and community-based knowledge, situating Bedford-Stuyvesant residents as experts on their own community at a time when

“experts” were studying “ghetto communities” and drawing their own conclusions.119 Inside

119 Kelley. Yo Mama’s Disfunctional.

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Bedford-Stuyvesant offered a forum for this type of communication; the program both

foregrounded non-elites and documented “ordinary circumstances of black life.”120

In this case, television provides a venue for these individuals to assert their critiques

of government, fostering Bedford-Stuyvesant’s transition from an enclave public, in which

dissent is discussed internally, to a counterpublic, in which dissent is publicly voiced.121 For example, in response to Lowry’s questions about the recent nomination of Nixon and Agnew, from the Miami convention, one participant said, “I am not surprised that Nixon wants to cut funding to Bed-Stuy and Watts, etc. No matter what the platform is we are not benefited.”

Another guest described Nixon’s attitude towards African Americans in the city as abusive, “like a mother spanking a hungry baby to keep it from crying.” Airing these political critiques by individuals who would not ordinarily be interviewed on television repositioned the kind of private political talk that circulates in communities and made it available to engage the public .

This validated African American points of view while also presenting mystified outsiders with a deeper understanding of the Black counterpublic, which political scientist Melissa Harris-

Lacewell calls “life behind the veil.”

Making Culture In the “Ghetto:” Black Arts

The Black Arts Movement is radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from the community. Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power Concept. As such, it envisions an art that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America. In order to perform this task, the Black Arts Movement proposes a radical reordering of the western cultural aesthetic. It proposes a separate symbolism, mythology, critique, and iconology. The Black Arts and the Black Power concept both relate broadly to Afro Americans’ desires for self-

120 Harris-Lacewell. Barbershops, Bibles and BET. 121 Squires. “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere.”

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determination and nationhood. Both concepts are Nationalistic. One is concerned with the relationship between art and politics; the other with the art of politics. Recently, these two movements have begun to merge: the political values inherent in the Black Power concept are now finding concrete expression in the aesthetics of Afro- American dramatists, poets, choreographers, musicians and novelists. Larry Neal, 1968.122

Far from passive recipients of mass culture, Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant demonstrated that the “ghetto” was a place where culture is made. The artists featured on the show ranged from unknown amateurs to well-known professional artists. Nearly all of them had their roots in the neighborhood and many were current residents. Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant gave artists who were part of the Black Arts movement something unusual—television exposure.123 The Black Arts

movement, a Black modernist art movement, was an important source of art and artists featured on the program. The Black Arts movement was a diverse avant-garde movement spanning theater, dance, visual art, poetry, and film. Prominent artists associated with this movement include: poet and playwright Amiri Baraka, poets Sonia Sanchez, Larry Neal, and Nikki

Giovanni, and actor Barbara Ann Teer.124 The work was defined by “militancy, urgent tone, and multimedia-aesthetics.” 125According to literary scholar Kimberly Bentson, the Black Arts

Movement represented a

profound reorientation of energy and vision which took place among African American thinkers, writers and performers and their audiences during this period centering on a consideration of an intentional, autonomous understanding of the black self.”126

122 Larry Neal, “The Black Arts Movement,” The Drama Review 12, no. 4. (Summer 1968). 123 Some shows did center on the arts, such as Black Arts, and Soul! 124 Smethurst, The Black Arts Movement. Introduction. 125 Smethurst, p. 3. 126 Kimberly W. Benston, Performing Blackness: Enactments of African-American Modernism (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 3.

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While scholars such as William Van DeBurg see the cultural work and imagery of

the Black Arts movement as the primary legacy of the Black Power era, considering Black

Power’s political interventions a failure, scholars such as Smethurst see the political legacies of

Black Power and the cultural legacies of Black Arts as deeply intertwined and mutually

sustaining.127

Television provided artists from the Black Arts Movement new possibilities for

visibility both to non-theater-going African Americans and viewers outside Black communities.

Unlike theatrical events, and many visual arts spaces, television did not charge admission, thus

many more people had access to these performances on television. Furthermore, television could

reach people outside the immediate urban areas where Black Arts events took place.

Significantly, television presented an accessible venue to viewers who would not have sought out

a Black or avant-garde art space, and who might have been unaware of the aesthetic innovations

of the Black Arts Movement. Finally, television offered people who were not African American

the opportunity to witness Black Arts performance without needing to enter a Black space, which

would have undoubtedly presented a barrier for some whites, as Lisbeth Grant noted about

Harlem’s New Lafayette Theater in 1972.

The New Lafayette has never actually kicked whites out of their theater, but in the past they did actively discourage white reviews and with a theater located smack dab in the middle of the ghetto, they didn’t really have to worry about a bombardment of whites.128

127 William Van DeBurg, Black Camelot: African-American Culture Heroes in Their Times, 1960–1980 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 128 Lisbeth Grant, “The New Lafayette Theatre. Anatomy of a Community Art Institution“ The Drama Review 16, no. 4, (December, 1972): 54–5.

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Of course, Grant and others have noted that Black Arts performance also frequently

took place in front of mixed race audiences in downtown theaters “where whites (and some blacks!) felt more comfortable about coming.”129 Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant’s suburban viewers probably were as unlikely to come to Greenwich Village as they were to come to Harlem to sample such a performance. Thus, while much of the Black Arts Movement’s work circulated in independent, autonomous or semi-autonomous venues such as Black theaters, Black presses etc., television appearances by Black arts movement artists provided an important, alternative showcase for this work. Furthermore, archived television provides one of the few audiovisual records of these culturally significant works of art.

Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant featured a range of arts presentations that went far beyond even the diverse scope of the Black Arts Movement. The program also featured artists associated with the mainstream, such as Harry Belafonte, artists from diasporic cultural traditions such as the Agroma African Dancers, and Calypso musician Lord Inventor, and undiscovered artists such as local amateur “finger poppers” bands that sang both original and well-known music.

Two performances by young people on the program demonstrate that youth was a powerful symbol whether employed by integrationist liberal adults (a performance of spirituals by an accomplished school choir), or by separatist nationalists (a Black Arts Movement performance of a text written by a central figure of the Black Arts avant-garde, Leroi Jones/

Amiri Baraka.) The Baraka poem is featured in an atypical episode in which Inside Bedford-

Stuyvesant was filmed indoors. Because of the outspoken content of the Baraka-written

129 Grant. p. 55. Grant does consider it possible that an advantage of a mixed-class audience is that wealthier audience members could subsidize “the black kid who can’t pay.” She concludes by writing “ I think a lot of the decisions on such issues have to take into consideration the unique aspects of the area in which the company is located.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 75 children’s performance, Roker prefaced this second performance with the framing statements,

“You may not agree with what they are about to say, but you will agree that it needs to be said.”

The Black Arts performance, labeled by journalists “powerful” and a “wild ride”130 since its rediscovery, featured the “Leroi Jones Young Spirit House Players And Movers of Bedford-

Stuyvesant and Bronzeville.”

The piece is performed by a troupe of children who appear to be between ages of eight and twelve. The Spirit House Movers’ performance proclaimed a strongly-worded critique of American apartheid emphasizing both physical and psychic resistance to racism. A small stage with a carpeted floor is the platform for a group of children. The boys wear dashiki-style tops and the girls wear dresses made from matching material. They are all in plain clothing with a simple abstract pattern. Roker spoke with their director, Joseph Washington who modestly mentioned that Leroi Jones, who wrote the poems and is the “real” director, should have been there taking the credit but he was not able to be there because he was too busy. In the interview it came out that several of the seven children performing are Washington’s own children.

The children stood in close formation with the tallest in the back. The performers may have been close in age, but because they are mostly of prepubescent age the girls tower over the boys. From the soundtrack, Inside Bedford Stuyvesant’s minimal production values are once again apparent. Although the indoor setting eliminates the wind noise that is common in the other episodes, this episode makes the lack of sound mixing or editing apparent. During the performance, when a child stands and speaks directly into the microphone, his or her voice is

130 William Cole, “Anomaly TV: Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Rail, (April 2003).

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 76 amplified significantly over the others. This lack of sound mixing adds to the spontaneous style that the program’s aesthetic represented.

The performance began with the children shouting in unison. “We are young, Black people of fine blood.” The chorus was “love and envy” and “America, America, Why did you bring us here?, America!” “Rape Your mother, Lynch your father” shouted one girl, and then the chorus replied, “America, America, Why did you bring us here?” Each child, save one, had a solo part, while the others served as an ongoing movement and speaking chorus. The children described a litany of physical, economic, and psychological abuses while calling for teachers to teach Black history in new ways. As each soloist shouted their part into the microphone, the other children gestured and proclaimed verbal responses in unison. “Do you like integration? OR would you like your own nation?” shouted one young boy. “America, America why did you bring us here?” is the choral refrain. I have transcribed some of the poem here:

To work all day for no pay, that’s right, no pay.

Made us a zombie … a Frankenstein.”

But when will we love ourselves?

Girl: Hey you and you and you too teacher! Why do they only teach Black children about George Washington Carver and Booker T? What about the great Black leaders of the African Past? Can’t you see—ALL these people are Black and a part of history? So why do they only teach black children about George Washington Carver and Booker T? Sojourner Truth! Yeah! Nat Turner! Yeah! Malcolm X! Yeah! Harriet Tubman–leader of the underground railroad! Yeah! H Rap Brown Be proud, proud, proud

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Boy: Are you proud, proud, proud. Do you like integration? Or would you like your own nation? Are you proud, proud, proud? Cause if you’re scared, scared, scared you’ll end up dead, dead, dead.

The children stomped on each utterance of “dead.” In response to one critique of

descriptions of fairy tales and education as white, the chorus responded—”No wonder Black

people hate themselves.” In this solo, Baraka has drawn on children’s fairy tales to examine the

insidiousness of racism embedded in American culture. He quickly moved from this culture of

racism to its devastating effects on Blacks.

Mary had a little lamb … But Mary was white, the lamb was white, and what about old snow white. Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to fetch her poor dog a bone.

I lied, she gave the dog a steak and gave the bones to Ne-Groes. Neck bones, Chitlins, made us Gut eaters, whiskey Drinkers.

Toward the end of the piece, a young boy who appeared nervous performed a final solo. “If there’s a song? … Lets sing it, Peace is good, let’s bring it” A close-up on his face revealed intense concentration and focus. The performance used the powerful technique of having children speak of profound subjects, counting on their symbolic power as the new generation of African Americans. The Black Arts Movement’s attempt at a “theorization of usable cultural past” was relevant to the children’s voicing of the critique of the Eurocentric history that they learn in school.131 The emphasis on a proud and heroic past in the performance

was part of many Black Arts texts. This poem resonates with James Smethurst’s description of

131 Smethurst, p. 66.

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Black Arts Movement artists’ focus on an “Edenic past” which considered contemporary Black

life to be existing “after the fall” in a culturally polluted world in the United States.132

The children’s militant stance and summons of “great black leaders of the African

past” invoked yet another central trope of the Black Arts Movement, the image of the warrior.

Smethhurst argued that artists such as Baraka were defining a new cultural space that mediated between an African American and an African space and identity.133 Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka’s

engagement with popular culture and folk culture was evident from the many references to Snow

White and other fairy tales. This engagement with and critique of popular culture was common to Black Arts Movement poetry. Furthermore, by placing this poem on children and having them vocalize these critiques, and by focusing on fairy tales and elementary school history lessons, the fairy tales are depicted as purveyors of racism deeply impacted in American culture, and children are shown, by rejecting these tales, to be harbingers of a conscious revolution.134

While an episode featuring a conventionally trained school choir singing “Negro

spirituals” may seem to be the exact opposite of this performance, the performances contained

important elements in common. In both performances, we hear children perform texts by adults,

we never hear the children’s own voices—what is central is the desires and influence of their

teachers. In the choral performances, the PS nine children’s chorus sang songs that their white

teachers called “African Folk Songs.” Many of the children appeared to be African American,

others were apparently white or Puerto Rican. The freshly scrubbed children were wearing their

best clothes, the girls in cardigans and short dresses, and the boys in pressed pants. Some of the

132 Ibid. p.77. 133 Ibid., p. 81. 134 Benston, p. 12

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soloists were quite talented and it was clear that the children had rehearsed considerably. The

footage of their performance was shot so that it could be used on different episodes, so that even

though the children were only there on one day, at one point Roker welcomed them “back” to the

show. Since the children were arranged in the same formation and are wearing the exact same

outfits, it is easy to tell that this is a television fiction.

While the children in the Young Spirit House players signified the wisdom imputed

to children, and carried the burden of the next generation, the children in the Public School 9

school choir performance represented the “innocence” of children. Children’s media scholar

Shari Goldin elucidated the ways in which children were used by liberal civil rights groups to

represent the ideals of integration.135 The PS 9 group, which is at least nominally integrated,

exemplified this ideal. She contrasted this with the use of children in a film by the Black Panther

party, saying that in a radical context, children were supposed to be more like little adults. The

children in the Spirit House performance spoke as children—addressing and critiquing adults

who purport to teach them history based on a Eurocentric model of the world, but they do so

from an adult-informed perspective.

While the director of the performance of the Spirit House Players was not on stage

during the actual performance, the teachers and pianist appeared on screen during the PS 9 choral

performance. The teacher’s comments are revealing: “We’re working with all the schools in the

district with programs of other heritages.[emphasis added]And we are participating with music

of Negro heritage. “Are the majority of students at public school number nine Negro students?,”

asks Roker, as she stands in front of the chorus. “Yes” says the teacher. The teacher says that they

135 Shari Goldin “Unlearning Black and White: Race, Media and the Classroom,” The Children’s Culture Reader, ed. Henry Jenkins (New York and London: New York University Press, 1998).

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have sung during Christmas at Abraham and Strauss, a Children’s hospital, and “some of the

banks.” This discussion highlights the differences between the two performances: one that

considers the students at the school as the “other” inviting them to explore their heritage as exotic, and the other criticizing the centrality of white tropes in literary culture that serve to marginalize Black expression. It is difficult to imagine the Spirit House kids performing

“America” in front of a bank or at a department store.

That both of these performances appear on the same program is a marker of just how

diverse a Black public sphere could be. This space created by Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant has

room for both performances. While to many, the Spirit House performance might have been

more shocking and difficult to view than the virtuosic singing of the PS nine students, Roker’s

admonition that “it needs to be said” may have resonated with many who viewed the segment.

The next section, examines how audiences responded to the contrasting images of the Bedford

Stuyvesant community presented on the program.

Producing an Audience

I happened to come from the pool hall and turned the television set on, to my surprise I got my first look at your program. It is great! Primarily because it helps bring the need for identification which in the past has been missing in Bed Stuy. Furthermore, I’m quite sure it helps in other ways, such as showing the residents and all concerned people a true and positive picture of what this community is all about.136 Letter to Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant

Despite the inconvenient hour of the show’s broadcast and the program’s placement

on a non-”big three” network, Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant was immediately found and watched by

136 Edwin Mating [sic] April 29, 1968 Personal Correspondence. BSRC archives.

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viewers. 137 However many audience members mentioned the inconvenient viewing times in

their letters to the program. For example, in the quotation above, the writer mentions that he

happened upon the program when returning from playing pool. Other letters pleaded for a better

time slot: “Is it at all possible to have a show such as this broadcasted [sic] in prime time?” An

examination of the letters received by the program demonstrates viewing the program was profoundly gratifying to residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

The letters to Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant reveal some of the pride and ownership that

viewers felt over the program. Viewers offered support and proposed topics for the show. Often,

letters promoted the writers themselves as potential guests. For example, a letter from a singing

group of 12 and 13 year old girls enthusiastically praised the show and volunteered the group’s

talents as potential guests. Another writer, who called himself a “concerned Bedford-

Stuyventian,” wrote with numerous programming suggestions including a show on “ghetto

schools” and a documentary on black music schools. He also sent his own poetry for

consideration. 138 This same writer later wrote a very conversational essay to Jim Lowry entitled

“suggest-o log” asking Lowry to “dig these suggestions” and proposed an episode about “young

students of the lively arts classic rock group” and suggested they invite “Richie Havens, the

black Bob Dylan” onto the show, or “Milt Edwards, a talented community artist who sketches all

manner and size.”

Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant’s solicited audience reaction by frequently reciting their

address on the air. In addition to seeking letters, the staff created an audience survey with a

137 WNEW, Channel 5 was not one of the “big three” networks, ABC, NBC, or CBS. In the 1960s, WNEW-TV was one of three independent stations in metropolitan New York. By the 1970s, WNEW was New York's leading independent station. The station was purchased by FOX Broadcasting in 1986. 138 Walton, Wilson 876 Sterling place Brooklyn NY 11216. April 24, 1968. Personal Correspondence.

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return postcard. Undoubtedly, one of the aims of the audience survey was to justify a move to a

better time slot. While many viewers simply filled out the surveys, others wrote extensive

comments. One question asked the respondents to check whether the broadcast times were “a

good time for a program like this?” None of the few extant completed indicate that audience

members thought this was a good time. Indeed, while the time may have made the show

accessible for some second- or third-shift workers, no one affiliated with the program wished to

keep the program airing only at 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. Thus, this survey question attempted to amass

data that might convince the station to air the program at a more convenient time. Despite this

audience demand, such a move never occurred.

Some of the letters and postcards show that viewers saw Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant

as an alternative to and critique of other media representations of African Americans. One short

postcard says “the image was great, the clarity of faces good!” The “clarity of faces” likely refers

to the way that film stocks, designed to give detailed representation of white faces, often did a

poor job of representing Black faces. This well-documented phenomenon cut across film and

television, often rendering African Americans less than accurately represented, and was an oft-

repeated excuse for their exclusion.139 This same writer goes on to praise the people on the show

for having “no beards,” or “stockings on the heads,” referring to the kind of respectable imagery

139 For considerations of the way both film stock and Hollywood lighting conventions favor light skin tones, see Richard Dyer, White (New York and London: Routledge, 1997). This issue also came up in my interview with Madeline Anderson, during which Anderson recounted looking for a sensitive (fast) film stock from a supplier to whom she explained she needed a stock that would produce good detail in reproducing darker skin tones. The supplier, assuming that he was speaking with a white producer, compared her task to “shooting a nigger in a woodpile.” Anderson ordered her stock elsewhere.

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embraced by Lowry, Roker, and some of the program’s guests. The writer was pleased that

“everyone was neat and well behaved.”140

Viewers expressed their appreciation for the way Roker and Lowry, as college

educated, middle-class people, represented an image of African Americans that was seldom seen

in the media.141 This “respectability,” was a conscious strategy that aimed to appeal to African

Americans who were tired of being represented as impoverished people who spoke differently,

dressed differently, or groomed themselves differently, and to non-Black viewers as well. The

importance of diction in Black representations was hardly new; African American radio

announcers had been praised as far back as 1947 for not being readily identifiable as Black over

the airwaves.142 This letter came to the program shortly after its release, so its possible this

viewer would have been less comfortable with or approving of some of the community activists

who would later appear on the show in house dresses or kerchiefs. In addition to Bedford

Stuvesant residents, many letters came from African Americans outside of Brooklyn, such as a

letter from Newark that praised the program for its documentation of a Black bookstore in

Bedford-Stuyvesant and proclaimed the writer’s desire that such a bookstore might open in

Newark.

The program was frequently educational for white viewers who happened upon the show, or chose to tune in. Letters from viewers outside the neighborhood demonstrated how these

140 Author unknown, Wednesday May 1, 1968. Postcard. 141 While none of the viewers declare their self-identification on the basis of race in their letters, I use context, neighborhood, and names to infer racial/ethnic identity when it seems relevant to do so. Thus, except for self- identified Puerto Ricans, I assume that most if not all Bedford-Stuyvesant residents who wrote in praise of the program were African American or Caribbean American. Furthermore, I infer that the residents of Astoria Queens and Valley Estate NY who wrote to the programs, and sometimes used phrases such as “you people” that separated themselves from the program, were most likely not African American. A few writers do mention that they are white, as well.

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viewers found answers to some of their questions about race issues on Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant.

For example, one suburban viewer writes that seeing the show made him want to walk around

Bedford-Stuyvesant and see Black people face to face despite his fears.

Many of us are tempted to take a weeknight or a day on the weekend to come to Bedford-Stuyvesant to see for ourselves the world you are putting on TV. However, the “fear” which keeps Negroes and white people apart makes many people look upon such as trip as not quite possible.143

The fact that a television program could even begin to bridge this considerable

divide offers evidence of television’s civic potential. A few letter writers mention that they are

white, that is, the “white, middle class Jew” or the aforementioned “suburban writer.” A number of people wrote directly to Lowry and Roker, showing that for many people, the hosts were the show. One white writer displays both liberal support of the program and its ideals and some of the vestiges of white patronization of African Americans in building “race relations.” Addressing his letter to “Dear Insiders,” Astoria, Queens resident Russell Locasia praised the program, but saw it more as positive civil rights propaganda than as entertainment or art. “Yours is one of the most constructive, down to earth, most alive and refreshing social programs I was so truly happy to watch.” He identifies himself as a working or middle class person, who cannot contribute money to the program, but he reiterates a theme common to both Bedford-Stuyvesant residents and outsiders—that the show expands narrow conceptions of ghetto life. However, his outsider status is evident in his comments. Locasia is grateful to the show: as he puts it, the show

“demonstrate[s] to an unknowing public just what goes on in a ghetto besides degeneration.” By saying “besides degeneration” the writer reveals that he is familiar with “ghettoizing discourses”

142 Brian Ward. Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South, 2004, p. 80–2. 143 Letter to Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation from Thomas George, Valley Cottage, NY 26 April 1968.

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that predominated, and appreciated the alternative presented by the program’s upbeat and

comprehensive look at the neighborhood.

However, the writer expresses strong distaste for some kinds of Black liberation

discourse. While Locasia praises the show for eschewing the use of what Locasia terms an

“irritating phraseology … Black power,” if he had continued to watch the program, he would

have seen the phrase Black Power invoked. Indeed, many guests on the program elaborated the

contours of Black Power from a variety of perspectives, suggesting that the writer’s alarmist

view of the phrase reflected limited exposure. Locasia also praises the program for not exhibiting

“helplessness” and for eschewing communism. In another vein, Locasia praises the hosts’ middle

class, accent neutral, speech patterns. “The fact that you have no southern drawl,” the writer

states, is praiseworthy; he argues that although there is nothing “wrong” with a drawl, it

represents “the unfortunate situation of the south” which for Locasia, sets up a “psychological

block immediately.” Locasia’s interpretation of Lowry and speech patterns mixes admiration for

their “fluid” speech and what they say. Locasia praises hosts and, seemingly other African

Americans, who he refers to as “you people,” for their abilities to speak the

American Language … without strain, without ghetto traces, without fanatical reproaches, without tyrannical demands, without persecution complexions [sic] without sympathy gimmicks, in brief, without vinegar.

In this description, Locascia is referring both to the accessibility of their middle class

speech and his comfort with what they are (and are not) saying. Calling the hosts “heroes” the

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letter ends with praise that “The dignified humility you so beautifully reflect is evidence that you

are not looking for laurels, but rather harmony in people and love.”144

This writer does not reference Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. whose assassination a

week before had prompted a “national spasm of remorse,” yet the letter displays a clear nostalgia

for the nonviolent civil rights discourse that Dr. Martin Luther King represented to many

Americans.145 The writer, by calling the phrase Black Power “irritating,” makes clear that his

sympathies lie with a particular brand of civil rights ideology. Yet Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant rode the line between these differing ideologies. The fact that it could appeal to an anxious white New

Yorker like Locascia, yet also appeal to audiences interested in hearing from Sonny Carson,

Julius Lester, the Black Panthers, and the Leroi Jones Spirit House performers demonstrates the complexity and diversity of Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, and its appeal to diverse audiences.146

Far from rendering the program irrelevant to outsiders, the local nature of IBS

modeled a community that individuals in other locales could relate to in profound ways. In

addition to the letters the program received, segments such as the interview with Hal Jackson

demonstrate that viewers in neighboring Newark, New Jersey, another Black metropolis, avidly watched Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant. Other evidence of the show’s impact both within and beyond

Bedford-Stuyvesant came from references guests made on air to the program’s devoted audience.

Many of the guests praised the program but few spent as much time lauding the program as radio

144 Letter to Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, Russell Locascia, April 18 1968. From the collection of the Bedford- Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. 145 Staub. “Setting Up the Seventies.” 146 It is also possible that Locascia, who wrote to the show soon after the premiere, might have felt less favorably toward the program once IBS began to host Black Power-oriented guests such as Lester and Carson.

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personality Hal Jackson. Despite Roker’s encouragement for him to speak about his own work,

he complimented Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant at length on the air.

You know, so often when you are as close to the scene as you and Jim are and bring people out, you can’t really know how much reaction you’re getting from all over. Now in NJ and also in New York where I do a lot of “stay-in-school” programs, I have found that this is the byword for all of the students, and, well, all of the areas in the community centers, everybody talks and everybody educates the children to look at Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant. It’s really not only a swinging hope and a swinging show for young people … it’s become the kind of thing that all of the young people are looking forward to it—I wanted you to know that everybody’s talking about it— not only talk about, everybody’s making everybody else look at it.

Jackson’s perspective makes clear the dissemination of IBS, beyond the borders of New

York City, and emphasizes that people made an effort to view the program despite the inconvenient air time.

‘Model Cities’ and Alternatives to ‘Ghettoizing Discourses’

The very night I was elected to the Better Housing Committee, the mayor’s committee said “let the churches incorporate and take over the people’s property.” While they told us to pray, they were politicking with the politicians, going on with the program. One lady said “I’ll speak to my preacher”—he said “you can’t fight city hall.” He should have said I can’t fight city hall ‘cause I have already sold you out!” … Non profit is a joke! I am not in favor of nonprofits. Black people have no right to be nonprofit … Black people are born with no profits. Ruth Shannon, Ad Hoc Refugee Committee

The BSRC’s mission to rehabilitate housing and stimulate economic development in

Bedford-Stuyvesant did not prevent the show from hosting guests who were critical of some of

the effects and methods of redevelopment there. In one episode, host Jim Lowry sits on a stoop

in Bedford-Stuyvesant with three women from the Ad Hoc Refugee Committee in Brooklyn, a

group of housing activists led by Ruth Shannon. The three women were on the air at the

invitation of Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant to answer the statements of Horace Marantzi of the

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model cities program, who had appeared on the program previously. The “ad hoc refugee committee” had the word “refugee” in their name because they felt that housing initiatives such

as the Model Cities were turning some Bedford-Stuyvesant residents into refugees.147 Ruth

Shannon criticizes the terms by which some officials deemed certain buildings unsafe. She spoke

of planners who said one thing to residents and another to government funders about the viability

of local housing. Shannon described rejecting a paid position with the Better Housing committee

(which was aligned with the housing “rehabilitators”) in order to maintain her integrity and not be co-opted. She said angrily:

Better housing committee don’t live here— I was elected to the BHC—it wasn’t intended for me to be on it— I was offered a job but I refused.

In the interview with Lowry, Shannon is especially critical of churches and business owners in Bedford-Stuyvesant that she considers to have been co-opted and to be colluding with developers to evict residents, thus “selling out” the neighborhood. This opportunity for local activists and other “ordinary people” to get time on television and enter into a dialogue is part of what made IBS a visionary and unique program. Points of view such as Shannon’s were almost never visible in mainstream media. The fact that Shannon’s group could appear on a program to refute statements made on a previous episode was nothing short of revolutionary—this was not the prevailing logic of television. Indeed, this possibility for dialogue is what made Inside

Bedford-Stuyvesant a model for Black public-sphere formation.

147 For a critical insider account that paints Model Cities as ineffectual, due to infighting, see Thabit.

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In his essay “Looking for the Real Nigga: Social Scientists Construct the Ghetto,”

historian Robin Kelley critiques the “ghetto ethnography”148 that regarded communities such as

Bedford-Stuyvesant as pathological places where a “culture of poverty” doomed residents to

repeat the cycle of poverty for endless generations to come. Kelley argues that these essentialist

findings “continue to shape much current social science and mass media representations of the

‘inner city.’”149 Kelley argues that these narrow concepts of ghetto life have “contributed to the construction of the ghetto as a reservoir of pathologies and bad cultural values.” 150 While social

scientists developed and reinforced images of ghetto pathology, journalists tended to

sensationalize even as they attempted to document the abysmal conditions in some communities.

Despite potentially liberal intentions to expose ghetto conditions, articles such Newfield’s Life

profile of Bedford-Stuyvesant treated the problems of the “inner city” without fully examining

government and private sector culpability for the creation of the conditions in the first place. 151

The implications of this social scientific pathologizing and the narratives created by sensational journalism cycled on themselves and informed government policy.152

Reports such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s infamous The Negro Family: The Case

for National Action (1965), and designations such as the “culture of poverty” thesis had a

significant influence over policy making in areas such as Bedford-Stuyvesant.153 In Blaming the

148 Robin D. G. Kelley, “Chapter One: Looking for the ‘Real’ Nigga: Social Scientists Construct the Ghetto,” p. 21. 149 Kelley, p. 22. 150 Kelley, p. 16. 151 Newfield. “A Few Rays of Hope” 152 Bensonsmith. “Jezebels, Matriarchs and Welfare Queens” 153 “Culture of poverty” was a term coined by anthropologist Oscar Lewis, in his 1966 Ethnography La Vida; a Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York. Lewis believed that the poor were held back by “present time orientation, poor speech patterns, fatalism and resignation, and low aspirations” (Kelley). According Sociologist Jill Quadagno, this type of research, along with the Moynihan Report that blamed the

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Victim (1971), William Ryan wrote “Pointing to the supposedly deviant Negro Family as the

‘fundamental weakness of the Negro Community’ is another way to blame the victim.” He

pointed out that “broken families” were a result of systematic discrimination, and that

“fatherless” families were hardly unique to the African American Community.154 Political

Scientist Dionne Bensonsmith asserts that the Moynihan report fed stereotypes about Black

women that have been used to justify the injustices of U.S. welfare programs since the 1960s,

and that social policy continued to be shaped by ideologies that are manifest in the report, such

as the characterization of women as “welfare-reliant, emasculating matriarchs.” 155 Defending

themselves against this racist and sexist report, Black feminists such as Angela Davis also voiced

strong objections to blaming Black women for “illegitimacy, crime and delinquency.”156

Government officials used the report as justification for practices that punished Black women in a misguided attempt to foster success among Black men (such as firing female teachers).

Ultimately, Inside Bedford Stuyvesant countered the notion that Bedford Stuyvesant was trapped in a “culture of poverty” by addressing both articulate critiques of the structural (as opposed to cultural) causes of poverty, and by offering examples of community members’ cultural creativity and productivity. The middle class presentation style of the hosts mediated

problems faced by African American’s on the “broken” and “matriarchal” Black family, were used by the U.S. government to argue that the state should be an agent of socialization, and that poor people were unfit for significant self-determination (Quadagno, pp. 35–6). In addition to the Moynihan Report’s significant and lasting influence on U.S. Welfare Policy making, feminist critics have also critiqued the report’s influence on Black Arts Movement poets and some Black Nationalists. See, for example, Clarke. 154 William Ryan, Blaming the Victim (New York: Pantheon, 1971). Other prominent critics of the report included Civil Rights leader James Farmer, one of the founders of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). 155 Bensonsmith, p. 246. 156 Bensonsmith, p. 244, recognizes the report as the product of many discourses, including some of the findings of Black social scientists.See also page 252 for accounts of criticism of the report.

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stereotypes, enabling the program to examine the problems of the community without reifying

negative impressions and expectations.

Conclusion

Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant presented a contrast to media and social-science

representations of “ghetto life” and “ghetto dwellers” by showcasing the achievements of individuals and organizations from the community. The program offered a platform to a range of politicians, activists, and artists, most with direct ties to Bedford-Stuyvesant. Given its neighborhood focus and low-budget, the show had a surprisingly wide audience, and letters from audience members document the sense of ownership and pride that Bedford-Stuyvesant residents felt toward the program. While some cultural critics in this period and afterward considered

television to be privatizing and a destructive force to the civic space and community, this

program provides a counter example in its conscious attempt to foster a Black public sphere.157

The intimately local nature of the program allowed the program to be responsive; individuals

could appear on the air to refute the claims of those that had appeared previously.

By increasing the resources and visibility for African Americans in Bedford-

Stuyvesant, Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant facilitated a transformation of the Black public in

Bedford-Stuyvesant from an enclave to a counterpublic. The program was not the only factor in

this transition, but it was a crucial one. Building on Squires’ consideration of counterpublicity as

one of several active strategies that marginalized publics such as African Americans can use, I

have shown that Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant’s writers and hosts consciously employed a

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counterpublic strategy in building and supporting a Black public sphere in Bedford-Stuyvesant

that was open and responsive to individuals and groups in the neighborhood and beyond. The

program, coupled with urban uprisings and other changes in the political and social climate in

New York, were central to the transformation of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Community from an

enclave public to a counterpublic.

Ultimately, Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant represented community residents as citizens for whom political ideas for transforming the space and community are omnipresent and debated, as opposed apathetic, non-participatory “ghetto dwellers.” The program featured critiques from teachers, parents, and high school students both as part of activist groups and regular citizens.

Episodes featured local, community-based activists, artists, school choral groups, and teen bands, as well as well-known activists such as Sonny Carson and Julius Lester. In this era of multiple and contested ideas about Black liberation, the show portrayed Bedford-Stuyvesant as a place where Black nationalist ideas had permeated and were debated, and a place where housewives, welfare moms, and high school students held and articulated strong political beliefs. Finally, because the program hosts were known figures in the neighborhood that embodied respectability, and the show regularly featured Black nationalist ideas, a subtext of the program was that Black

Nationalist ideas were not mutually exclusive from respectability.

The idea behind Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant was not to contain unrest by providing an

outlet as stations intended with other Black programs. Rather, the strategy of IBS was to document and showcase other aspects of the community. The program is unique among the wave of Black public affairs programs as an intimately local document of a specific community,

157 See especially Newton Minow’s “Vast Wasteland” speech, given to the National Association of Broadcasters convention on May 9, 1961. See also Joshua Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on

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Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant. One of the central strategies for the program involved claiming

specific locales in the community, a practice in keeping with the mission of BSRC. Ultimately,

the show exceeded the BSRC’s initial expectations that it would run only for a single season.158

Instead, IBS remained in production until 1971, launching the careers of its hosts, producers, and

several of its guests while offering Bedford-Stuyvesant unprecedented visibility. In the process of showcasing what was going on in and around Bedford-Stuyvesant, the program aired a multiplicity of viewpoints, but was more subtle and understated in presenting its own politics.

This subtlety differentiated Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant from the “outlet” programs such as Say

Brother, the subject of the next chapter.

Social Behavior (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 158 Both James Lowry and Charles Hobson stated in interviews with the author that the program was intended to run for only one season, but due to its success, ran for several more seasons.

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Chapter 3

Boston’s Say Brother Promotes “New Principles of Blackness”

In the week following Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination on April 4, 1968 an

unusual television event was widely credited with enabling Boston to escape relatively unscathed

from the uprisings that swept many other cities in the wake of the murder. An April 10 Wall

Street Journal editorial subtitled “Nonviolent Rock” described the broadcast as an unprecedented

collaboration between city government, local educational television station, and a popular

musician. In this case, Boston’s WGBH, James Brown and the city of Boston collaborated in

producing, airing and broadcasting a James Brown concert credited with helping the city avert

“King riots.” The story provided a contrast to the upheaval described elsewhere that week; it was one of the few “positive” stories among newspaper headlines trumpeting millions of dollars in property damage and describing racial tensions severe enough that whites were reported fleeing cities such as Washington DC.159

As a direct result of the acclaim they received for this broadcast, WGBH hastily

assembled a Black public affairs program called Say Brother. Utilizing archived episodes and

program documents as well as oral history interviews with seven former staff members of the program, this chapter examines how Say Brother’s staff attempted to represent Boston’s Black

community in its first three years from 1968–1970. The youthful and inventive staff members

used advocacy-oriented journalism to offer a progressive, Black power oriented pedagogy

message to African American viewers. The staff endeavored to portray Black Boston as it was,

while striving to articulate a revolutionary vision to which members of the community might

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aspire. An examination of the program reveals how this vision was influenced by their youth as

well as the Boston area’s particular combination of a tolerant self-image and the reality of pervasive racism. This chapter examines how Say Brother embodied an “outlet show” in expressing a point of view deeply influenced by Black Power. Unlike Inside Bedford

Stuyvesant’s hosts, who represented a range of political perspectives with nervous enthusiasm,

the younger and more radical staff at Say Brother had an overt political orientation that they

emphasized in every episode. The following analysis of performances of Blackness on Say

Brother, in artistic performances as well is in the reporting of news stories, offers an

understanding of a Black counterpublic strategy in action. Say Brother moved between acting as

a direct outlet for community protest and modeling a counterpublic strategy with disseminating

cultural and political practices to their audience. In a city where Blacks were often made

invisible in the city’s national image, despite a growing Black population, Say Brother provided

an important and visible contrast to this marginalization.

Furthermore, Boston’s liberal self-image as the racially tolerant “cradle of liberty”

was openly questioned on the program. .160 The program’s frequent and specific indictments of the racist practices of Boston’s police force and school board, and of local businesses challenged

Boston’s white establishment’s self-image of their city as the “Cradle of Liberty,”161 an island of

relative tolerance. This historic reputation for tolerance and progressive race relations had

159 Gansberg 1968; Janson 1968. 160 While the current WGBH program Basic Black claims uninterrupted history from the original Say Brother, the program is currently quite different. 161 Jeanne F. Theoharis, “‘We Saved the City’: Black Struggles for Educational Equality in Boston, 1960–1976,” Radical History Review, no. 81 (Fall 2001): 61–93, demonstrates that African American Activists such as Ruth Batson were calling attention to the hypocrisy of Boston’s self-congratulatory moniker, “Cradle of Liberty,” much earlier in the decade through their grassroots struggles over school desegregation in Boston. See also Theoharis’s chapter, “They Told Us Our Kids were Stupid: Ruth Batson and the Educational Movement in Boston.”

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 96 already been vigorously contested by African American activists in Boston, but Say Brother’s television presence offered enhanced visibility for these critiques, ultimately landing them close enough to those in power to bring about numerous attempts to cancel the program.162

Finally, Say Brother was both addressed and embodied a generational shift to Black

Power. Unlike Inside Bedford Stuyvesant, where the hosts featured the young generation and attempted to refigure representations of youth, Say Brother’s hosts and staff were young generation and their politics were markedly more radical than the hosts of IBS. Say Brother’s staff strove to make Black Boston visible as it was, calling attention to the community’s challenges, while simultaneously offering a revolutionary vision to which members of the community might aspire. This approach represented a type of progressive pedagogy, empowering as opposed to edifying. Thus Say Brother was an educational show, but it not emulate the middlebrow educational programming such as the gourmet cooking program, The Julia Child

Show, which was more typical of the fare offered by WGBH. Contrary to concern that television mollified the citizenry, Say Brother and its eponymous theme song were named for a salutation used by some African Americans in this era. This name offers viewers an instruction, inviting them to “Say brother!” The title, and the content of the show constituted a call to action. The show openly encouraged viewers to see themselves as part of a Black community, one that was actively and successfully struggling for change and recognition. Say Brother provided an unprecedented forum for the struggles of local activists by offering them the opportunity to contest official points of view in a very accessible public forum. A typical episode featured dance

162 Theoharis 2001.

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or musical performances in the WGBH studio, a talk segment on an issue such as racism in

Boston’s schools, a reading of the news by a newscaster and an experimental documentary.

Ultimately, the program’s own momentum and tremendous community support allowed Say

Brother to survive cancellation and censorship for more than a decade.

Say Brother’s staff in the first few years of the program was deeply influenced by the

“crisis” of the shift from Civil Rights to Black Power. Analyzing the performances of the staff

members and guests on the program demonstrates Say Brother’s outlet function, and its

educational/empowering mission. E. Patrick Johnson calls attention to the contradictions of

“performing Blackness” by pointing out that the definition of authentic Blackness is always

contested. Johnson argues that Blackness can be constituted by performative acts and yet

performance is an inadequate frame to understand the ontology of Black American experience.

Referring to moments when these performances become central to authenticating racial

belonging among Black publics, Johnson writes “Often it is during times of crises (social,

cultural or political) when the authenticity of older versions of Blackness is called into question.

These crises set the stage for ‘acting out’ identity politics, occasions when those excluded from

the parameters of blackness invent their own.” 163 Each effort to locate authentic blackness yields new exclusions, according to Johnson. Each episode represents an attempt to convey a form of

Blackness. The program investigated cultural practices and throughout Boston’s African

American communities in order to document, validate, and celebrate these efforts. While, as

Johnson cautions, this effort to locate an authentic Black performance had its exclusions and

163 E. Patrick Johnson, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity. Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003.

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blind spots, examining the effort demonstrates the power of access to local television, as well as

the dynamism of the dialogue around “new principles of Blackness” in this era.

In this chapter, I analyze performances of the Say Brother theme song, the young

newscasters on the program and the Black citizens of New Bedford, Massachusetts during Say

Brother’s coverage of the 1970 uprising there. I also consider some of the implications of the

performances of Black identity that the program reports on without directly televising, such as

reports of self defense in the face of police brutality, and new approaches to celebrating rituals

such as marriage. These performances demonstrated a range of possibilities for individual and

community self-definition at a time when African Americans were reassessing their relationship

with mainstream cultural and political practices. Say Brother documented this exploration which

was typically sensationalized, misunderstood or ignored by mainstream media.

Say Brother’s early history exemplifies the ways in which local television was

frequently more accountable to African American viewers than national television. Through

advocacy and risk taking, Say Brother rapidly became a trusted presence in Boston’s African

American community. In one case, when a student was expelled from a Boston high school for

wearing a dashiki, a large group of young people took their protest directly to WGBH’s offices

knowing they would have an audience with Say Brother’s staff.164 Say Brother covered the

protest in the next episode. Say Brother demonstrates how local television could broadcast

pointed critiques that landed dangerously close to their targets. Its portrayal of Black Boston

contrasted with the city establishment’s sense of itself as the “Cradle of Liberty,165“ an island of

164 For example, according to Hazel Bright (interview, May 2005) students from Boston’s English High School marched to WGBH after walking out to protest the expulsion of a Black student for wearing a dashiki. 165 See Theoharis. “They Told Us Our Kids were Stupid.”

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relative tolerance compared with the overt Jim Crow segregation in other parts of the country.

The program’s frequent and specific indictments of the racist practices of Boston’s Police, school

board, and some businesses and public figures put the program in the firing line. At the outset,

WGBH allowed Say Brother’s staff an unusual amount of autonomy, which enabled the program

to tackle controversial issues more pointedly than the similarly-styled national Black public

affairs program, Black Journal, which started the same year at NET in New York.166

Furthermore, Say Brother tended to name names, criticizing local businesses and public figures

as racist. Local television could galvanize also citizen response, even to the point of returning

Say Brother to the air after cancellation in 1970, a rare achievement for concerned viewers. The

political, economic, and social critiques stated on Say Brother were integral to the program’s

visionary hopes for their viewers. In this heady era the program’s staff members worked together

as a collective to produce a program that emphasized “new principles of Blackness” that could

apply to work, culture, and religion. Say Brother openly encouraged viewers to see themselves as

part of a Black community that actively and successfully struggled for change and recognition.

One of the show’s challenges was to create an expressive language that was both

authentically recognizable as Black and acceptable to WGBH and their audience. The staff

members were largely college students and recent college graduates. Some were Boston natives

and others had grown up in other locations. While the on-air talent occasionally nodded at Black

vernacular expressions, the program mostly presented Standard English speech without an overt

Boston accent, or an overt attempt to speak in a Black vernacular.167 When they did attempt to

166 Black Journal was a groundbreaking program in its own right, but its white layer of management limited the kind of controversial critique that surfaced at Say Brother. 167 This differed, for example, from the Swahili greetings on Black Journal, as well as selective use of various interpretations of American Black vernacular speech on many of these programs. E. Patrick Johnson defines locating

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“sound Black,” they encountered the problem that Patrick Johnson points out; differences between class and geographical origins are obscured by an attempt to locate a uniform Black speech.

Say Brother contrasted markedly with the rest of WGBH’s programming. The program was an island of Blackness at WGBH; the station’s other programming such as The

French Chef 1963–1973, a gourmet cooking program featuring Julia Child, and Science exemplified affluent middlebrow tastes and targeted a white audience. The tension between Say

Brother’s position as an island of Black representation and the station’s orientation towards white affluent viewers created tensions around speech. Ultimately, demands placed on Say Brother over acceptable speech provoked a crisis for the program, a crisis that raised the question of how to represent the most oppressive aspects of African American ghetto existence.

Nonviolent Rock: The Origins of Say Brother

After Martin Luther King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, stories of violent uprisings filled major U.S. newspapers. In contrast, an April 10 Wall Street Journal editorial subtitled “Nonviolent Rock” narrated a story from Boston that contrasted with the overwhelming sense of chaos described elsewhere, ascribing Boston’s relative calm to a decision by Boston’s mayor to facilitate the televising of a James Brown concert on the tense day after King’s assassination. The editorial noted that Boston had suffered far less property damage and violence relative to other cities in the wake of the assassination, observing that, “James Brown might seem an unlikely apostle of Martin Luther King’s message of nonviolence. But one could hardly

a politics of authenticity in Black vernacular speech patters as “one of the most palpable examples of the arbitrariness and politics of authenticity.” (p. 5) and criticizes scholars Houston Baker and Henry Louis Gates for

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have found a more effective one last Friday night.” 168 Televising the concert in an attempt to

quell pending civil disorder was a unique solution, and the editorial was clearly impressed with

the results. There were few precedents in the United States for using television in this way, and

ultimately, the recognition WGBH received for televising the concert would be a critical factor in

the station’s decision to create their first ongoing Black television program, Say Brother.

The concert, planned long before King’s assassination, was scheduled to take place

at the Boston Garden, a downtown amphitheater, on the evening of April 5, 1968. However, by

that day, the so-called “King Riots” were beginning. Concerned about the possibility of violence,

the concert organizers moved to cancel the event.169 However, Tom Atkins, the Mayor’s only

Black aide, convinced him that canceling the concert would be unwise. Atkins had spent the

previous night trying to calm people in the streets and feared violent consequences if concert

organizers turned grieving young African Americans away at the door.170 Holding the show as

planned presented its own problems; James Brown’s Black Power message was not what city

officials thought Black residents needed to hear in the wake of the King tragedy. Atkins

suggested they hold the concert but televise it live, thus encouraging people to stay home.171

Despite concerns from other Boston officials about Brown’s message, the Mayor compelled the

Boston Garden to go ahead with the concert and arranged for WGBH to televise it.

their emphasis on Black vernacular as the ““ultimate” sign of difference.” (225). 168 Arthur Hunt, “Themes and Variations,” Wall Street Journal (April 10, 1968), p. 18. 169 J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (New York: Alfred a Knopf, 1985), p. 32. 170 Ibid., p32. 171 Ibid., pp. 32–3.

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Journalists hailed the decision to televise the James Brown concert as a success in

terms of quelling potential civil unrest.172 Just as city council members hoped, the live audience

was far smaller than the 15,000 originally expected, as many fans stayed home to watch the

WGBH broadcast.173 When a few fans tried to get on stage, Brown successfully prevailed upon

the audience to stay calm and demonstrate self-control. Brown smoothed the way for Mayor

White’s appearance on stage in front of the African American audience at this racially tense

moment by pronouncing him “a real swinging cat.”174

While Mayor Kevin White and James Brown were unlikely costars in the April fifth drama, Boston’s public television station and the city government proved to be natural

collaborators, particularly in an era when public television’s role was transitioning from a group

of small independent educational stations to a national network.175 In the wake of the concert,

WGBH expanded its program efforts for Boston’s African American population. In a speech

three weeks after the concert, WGBH’s director Hartford Gunn took credit for the station’s role

in pacifying Boston.176 He stressed the uniqueness of public television’s freedom from

commercial sponsorship, which enabled WGBH to preempt scheduled programming during a civic emergency. Characterizing James Brown as a “soul singer and a dancer of the most frenzied

172 Hunt. James Brown, I Feel Good: A Memoir of a Life of Soul (New York: Penguin, 2005), pp. 31–2. 173 Many young people doubtless would have been compelled by their parents to stay home for fear of their safety. 174 The Wall Street Journal account idealizes the situation, as do other published accounts of the concert, notably in Brown’s two autobiographies, I Feel Good and The Godfather of Soul. The concert took place after a tense negotiation between the City of Boston and Brown, who wanted to be compensated for what he knew would be less than usual attendance. Mayor White promised Brown the sum he demanded, and nervously went on stage to introduce him (Lukas, pp. 33–4). The concert was also later rebroadcast in other U.S. cities, such as Washington DC, in an attempt to quell protest. 175 Day, Vanishing Vision; Ouellette, Viewers Like You. 176 [Hartford Gunn] speech, unpublished manuscript, WGBH archives, Boston. The untitled typed manuscript is annotated in pencil: “Written for Hartford Gunn - don’t know for what audience” and “City Council Hearing.”

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sort,” Gunn claimed that Brown was a performer who could “whip a crowd into lather in no time

at all.” Positioning WGBH as a risk taker who had made the right choice, to save Boston from

the presumed destructive alchemy of Brown and a live audience of Black youth, Gunn reminded

his audience that “to have Brown perform before 15,000 Negro kids the night after Dr. King’s

death seemed like an invitation to disaster.”177 In light of the frequent racial uprisings in the

1960s, it is not surprising that a public television station would attempt to engage this national

and local sense of crisis. Gunn emphasized the station’s mandate to serve all of Boston’s

communities revealing the station’s sensibility and outlook as Say Brother was launched.

A Black public affairs program represented a new forum for African American

expression and, importantly for WGBH, it signaled an effort to satisfy the new social and

regulatory landscape.178 Many employees of Black public affairs programs launched after King’s

murder felt strongly that the shows were created to prevent future rioting. Public and station officials saw the media as a safety-valve for Black expression, or a salve for Black discontent.

WGBH was not the only public television station that attempted to counter charges of elitism and tout civic involvement by providing programming for African American communities, but few stations developed a series as radical and outspoken as Say Brother. 179 Given that the Brown

concert was televised explicitly to contain Black audiences, it is ironic that Say Brother was far from a pacifying show. As I will show in this chapter, WGBH’s leadership would come to regret the decision to air Say Brother, periodically moving to fire outspoken staff members or to

177 Op cit. [Gunn] speech. 178 As I discussed in this dissertation’s introduction, educational television was highly criticized by many in this era, including African Americans, who felt that like commercial television, educational television did not have their interests at heart. Laurie Ouellette has documented and extended this critique in Ouellette. 179 For accounts of attempts by other stations to demonstrate civic involvement, see Ouellette, Viewers Like You and Day, Vanishing Vision.

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terminate the program entirely. Ultimately, the program’s own momentum and tremendous community support allowed Say Brother to survive (albeit in a very different form) to the present

time.180

Breaking Down Boundaries at Say Brother: Building the Staff

The young staff members’ urgent vision of Black Power shaped the program’s

message. Two choices made by WGBH leadership shaped the direction of Say Brother for the

next several years. The first decision was hiring a staff composed entirely of very young people.

In the 1968–1969 season of Say Brother, every staff member, including the director and producer,

was in their teens or twenties. In comparison with the hiring practices at many television stations,

WGBH’s second decision was even more unusual. Unlike virtually all of the other Black public

affairs television programs addressed in this dissertation, Say Brother was developed without a

layer of white supervision in the form of a director or executive producer.181

The series’ leadership and staff was entirely African American, as was the staff,

except for technicians and a white production assistant, Ellie Cabot. Cabot was a young woman

from one of Boston’s elite families, who started out at WGBH as a production assistant on

Science. She had participated in hiring and training Say Brother’s production assistants and chose

180 Say Brother is the ancestor of a current WGBH program called Basic Black, which is aesthetically and politically more moderate than Say Brother and has a far smaller staff (of two). Although politically progressive, Basic Black is not as radical or controversial as Say Brother was. WGBH considers the program to have a continuous, 37-year history, but my analysis suggests that the current program is significantly different. 181 For instance, Black Journal, Our People, For Blacks Only, and Like It Is all started with white management. Say Brother is unique among Black public affairs television programs because it was Black produced from the outset. Jim Boyd, the original executive producer, and Stan Lathan, the original director, are African American. Additionally, as Lathan mentions in an interview cited later in this chapter, there was at least one Black sound technician working on the program from the outset. As I will describe in chapter 4 “Getting Soul Behind The Camera:” While Black on-air talent and writers were employed by all Black public affairs programs, these programs

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to stay on. Despite not being involved with Civil Rights work prior to Say Brother, Cabot credits

her work on the program and friendships with Say Brother staff members with educating her

about Black issues and leading to further social involvement.182 While it might seem logical for a

program claiming a “Black perspective” to have African American leadership, this was not the

case at the inception of the other programs. While the white bureaucracy at WGBH placed

limitations on Say Brother’s staff, the initial environment for the program was relatively open in

comparison to other Black public affairs programs.183

The program’s first director, Stan Lathan, was a young man from Philadelphia who

had moved to Boston in 1967 to attend graduate school in theater at Boston University. During his brief tenure as a student, Lathan worked as a work-study student at WGBH. Lathan had previously worked at public television stations in Pennsylvania as an undergraduate at

Pennsylvania State University in the mid-1960s.184 During his Pennsylvania internships, Lathan had been the only African American. Indeed, few African Americans had worked anywhere in

public television during that era. Lathan’s African American identity and extensive background

in public broadcasting made him uniquely qualified to direct Say Brother. His experiences with

public television—both positive and negative—gave him insight into the ambivalent stance on

racial issues taken by stations such as WGBH. As a student worker, Lathan’s talent, diligence,

and outgoing personality endeared him to a number of people at WGBH, paving the way for his

return. By 1968, Lathan had left Boston University and his co-op job at WGBH to pursue work

almost always had a white executive with some authority in the background. Of course, Say Brother still had to contend with a white-dominated power structure at WGBH. 182 Ellen (Ellie) Cabot, telephone interview, July, 2005. 183 Although there were relatively few content restrictions, there were significant budget limitations. 184 Stan Lathan, telephone interview, April 2005.

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as an actor and director with a politically-oriented, multiracial theater company in Boston. He

had significant success, but when WGBH contacted him after the King assassination about

working on a Black-oriented television program, he immediately saw the program’s potential.

Lathan recounts:

And they [WGBH] were smart enough to know they should have African Americans running it, producing it, [a Black show] so the closest thing they could find to any African Americans with television experience was me ….

So they actually had to come back and ask me to come back to the station. There were several of us who came together. One of us was an audio man at the station, a sound man who was the only other Black person who worked there, and the other was a student named Ray Richardson, the three of us. There was another woman named Hazel Bright and we were brought together to produce the weekly show.185

Lathan credits his positive professional relationships at WGBH with their decision to hire him as director. Hiring a Black director for a TV show in 1968 was an unprecedented move.

In Lathan’s view, the wide latitude granted to Say Brother’s staff in the early years stemmed from white racial fears. This thought was echoed by two other Say Brother staff members, production assistant Jewelle Gomez and writer Hazel Bright.186 These Say Brother alumni surmise that their

seemingly free reign in the initial years of production came from a mix of white fears about

Black militancy as well as liberal hopes about the potential for Black self-expression. In addition

to his history at the station, Lathan credits this new mix of optimism with the terror induced by

the uprisings with throwing the door wide open—at least initially. By 1968, after years of racial

tumult, many whites, including the self-described liberals at WGBH, were willing to believe that

185 Lathan, interview. 186 Lathan, interview; Jewelle Gomez, telephone interview, April 2005; Bright, interview, Tufts University, Massachusetts; Kay Bourne, interview, May 2005. Bourne, a journalist for the Black Boston weekly Bay State Banner who frequently wrote about Say Brother, concurred with Lathan’s, Gomez’s, and Bright’s assessment.

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they did not “get it” and that Blacks should be given a wide berth for self expression. Describing

the atmosphere at WBGH during Say Brother’s first broadcast year, Lathan said:

We had absolute freedom for the first year; I think there was a tolerance that came about because at that time we were able to say “You don’t get it because you’re not Black.

These supposedly ultra-liberal broadcasters allowed us to do our thing. They started to tighten up the controls a little later when we were not the most responsible journalists in terms of showing a balanced point of view; yes it was advocacy journalism, but it was also on a publicly funded station—we got away with a lot of shit that wouldn’t fly anywhere today.187

After Lathan, the station hired African Americans with and without media

experience to create and run the program. The station hired Ray Richardson, the first permanent

producer, who also came from Boston University’s cooperative work-study program.188 When

Say Brother was still in the planning stages, WGBH recruited Northeastern University students to work as production assistants on the program.

Students in Charge

WGBH recruited Black students from Northeastern University which had made significant attempts to enroll African Americans. Northeastern is a cooperative study university where students earn a college degree after five years, alternating semesters of full-time employment with semesters in the classroom. In the early 1960s, Northeastern responded to requests from their partners in industry by dramatically stepping up their recruitment of Black students. In 1964, Northeastern received a $150,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to recruit

187 Lathan interview. 188 Jim Boyd, who had been on a one-year fellowship from WNET was the producer for the first few episodes before he returned to NET. Richardson took over as producer after Boyd returned to WNET.

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more Black students and to provide them with additional college preparation and full

scholarships. As Dighton Spooner, a Northeastern alumnus who worked on Say Brother in the

early and mid-1970s, pointed out, Northeastern was an accessible model of higher education for

working-class students.189 Northeastern’s president recognized that Northeastern was uniquely

situated to respond to efforts to desegregate workplaces and higher education. He promoted

Northeastern’s efforts saying, “We are convinced that the Co-operative Plan of Education, with

its alternating periods of study and on-the-job training, offers a particularly meaningful solution

to the problems faced by young Negroes as well as by employers seeking to hire Negroes.”190

Northeastern’s task of recruiting Black students was facilitated by the university’s

proximity to Roxbury, a center of Boston’s Black community. Once a critical mass of Black students attended the university (about 600 in 1968), some, like their counterparts at other

universities, began to engage in activism.191 Faced with a set of demands by Black students in

1968, Northeastern’s president, A.S. Knowles, responded by increasing Black student

enrollment, increasing scholarship money, and creating new courses focused on Black literature

and culture. The students in turn assured him that Northeastern would be spared the sit-ins and

other types of protest that were roiling campuses across the country.192

In addition to Northeastern’s stated interest in enrolling Black students, its

cooperative education program held another advantage for recruiting Say Brother staff members.

189 Dighton Spooner, telephone interview with the author, June 2004. 190 Northeastern University president Asa S. Knowles, Northeastern University Alumnus 27, no. 1 (Winter 1964), p. 2. 191 Ibid. 192 In actual implementation, scholarship aid among other demands, while significant, did not adequately meet student need, and more protests were held in the decade after 1968. Northeastern University News, May 21, 1971 (http://www.lib.neu.edu/archives/africanamericanactivism/pops/NUNews_5-21-1971_1.htm).

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Students in Northeastern’s program worked full time for several months as opposed to attending

classes while working part time. Thus, the student workers at Say Brother were full-time staff

members who rotated in and out of the program making substantial contributions to the content

and style of the show. Many of these students became committed to the program and returned for

multiple work periods. These students were important contributors to Say Brother throughout the program’s first decade and were considered full staff members during their tenure. In the early

years, in addition to recruiting students, other workers were drawn from the film world and print

journalism. Journalist Sarah Ann Shaw moderated discussions on the program. Henry Hampton, whose production company, Blackside Productions, would later create the landmark civil rights documentary television series Eyes on the Prize, also appeared regularly on Say Brother as a commentator. Writer Hazel Bright came from both Boston’s Black theater community and the

Black press.

Initially, the new program’s mandate was so vague that one of WGBH’s earliest student recruits, Jewelle Gomez, could not discern the nature of the proposed work from the interview. She knew that WGBH was a television station, but thought from the open-ended language of the interviewers that WGBH had planned some kind of off-site community outreach program and wanted to hire Black students:

When GBH came to interview me about working on Say Brother it wasn’t clear that they were talking about television program … I mean, I knew it was a TV station … but from the way they talked about it, I thought they would be giving out cheese, or teaching reading … at a community center in Roxbury … They kept saying that this “program … was going to help people, that it would be good for the community …” only at end of interview did I confirm that this was going to be an actual television program. That was in 1968. I was there from the first episode.193

193 Gomez, telephone interview, May 2005.

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Gomez was a nineteen-year-old woman with Native American and African American

heritage from Boston’s racially-mixed South End. Gomez, now a well-known writer and gay

rights activist, had a hard time envisioning the program that Say Brother would become because

a Black-oriented program expressing a Black perspective on the arts and politics simply had no

predecessor.194

In fact, WGBH themselves had no idea what the program would look like. It would

be up to the staff to make it up. When the new recruits arrived at WGBH, the station had no place

for them to work. Gomez recollected that the program staff initially met in a trailer in the parking

lot of the station before they were given an office.195 While Lathan was experienced in television,

the students hired as production assistants from Northeastern were not. Aside from the one sound

technician, WGBH’s only full time Black professional staff member, the station was at a loss to

find African Americans with media experience. Because of Lathan’s theater connections, he

suggested recruiting from the ranks of playwrights and directors in Boston’s vibrant Black

theater scene. Lathan suggested Hazel Bright, a produced playwright who had journalism

experience. She was happy to quit her poorly paid day-job at the Bay State Banner to become a

writer for Say Brother.196

The Black staff members were from different Boston neighborhoods or from out of

town, such as Ray Richardson from New York and Stan Lathan from Philadelphia. Hazel Bright, the only staff member from Roxbury, recollected that others looked to her for an “authentic”

194 Gomez is now a well known writer and activist for gay rights. 195 Gomez, telephone interview, May 2005. 196 Although pay scales for Say Brother staff would later be the subject of a class action suit, on the basis of both race and gender discrimination, the job reportedly paid well compared with many other employment options, particularly employment options available to Black women writers in Boston in 1968.

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Black Bostonian perspective. As a parent in her late twenties, Bright was a little older than many

of the other staff members. As Bright recollected,

Most of the people who worked on the show lived in Cambridge or somewhere near the station. I was the only one who came from “the Berry.” So they thought I had a different perspective. I was a single mom. I was often turned to for, like the … people’s perspective …It was nice.

Bright notes that she appreciated the recognition of her particular history and

knowledge as opposed to feeling marginalized. She was also one of the few staff member who

was not a college student or graduate while working on the program. She has since earned a PhD and teaches at Tufts and Roxbury Community College.

The young and multitalented staff at Say Brother created an exceptional and popular program in the first year. Unfortunately, most of the episodes from the first two seasons have been destroyed.197 Reports on school integration, interviews with Muhammed Ali, performances

by Gladys Knight, dramatic renditions of poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks, and creative dramas

examining alternative perspectives on the Black vote in the 1968 presidential election are just a

few examples of the topics explored in Say Brother’s first two seasons.198 The earliest surviving episode is episode 7, the next surviving episode is Episode 24.199 In order to write about the early

period, I use articles and interviews from the period, viewer mail, and my interviews with the

original staff members. The recollections of staff members have helped me to partially

reconstruct some of the lost episodes.

197 As will be detailed later in this chapter, WGBH’s relationship with the program was not always a friendly one, and archival preservation was not a priority in the early years. Video tape was expensive and difficult to store and all too easy to reuse. Taping over previously-recorded video tape stock was a common industry practice in this era. Radical Black programming, a shaky priority even in its heyday, was a low priority for preservation. 198 Bright interview. Jewelle Gomez interview. Jim Boyd interview. Lathan interview. 199 Many of the episodes from 1969–1971 are lost as well. From 1972 forward, a more thorough collection exists.

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Say Brother as Consciousness Raising: “New Principles of Blackness”

The historical context of the first year of Say Brother was informed both by local

events the changing racial climate nationally. 1968 was a year of transition in Civil Rights

politics with the advent of the Black power movement. Some activists moved away from an

emphasis on desegregation and towards building Black controlled institutions. Other activists

advocated militant tactics such as armed self-defense. Others advocated for community control

and self-policing. By 1968, Black cultural nationalism as well as a burgeoning Black Arts

Movement provided new arenas for expression and emphasized new aesthetic forms, attempting

to de-center the primacy of European culture in the United States. Say Brother’s first year both

highlighted and exemplified these political and cultural transitions.

Episode Seven, the earliest surviving episode, aired on August 29, 1968. It had a variety format, featuring an original theme song, musical performances, film documentaries, and several in-studio discussions. Episode Seven epitomizes the genre mix of Say Brother throughout

its first decade. This style allowed the staff considerable room for creativity and imbued the

show with a feeling of improvisation, innovation, and originality. Hazel Bright, a writer,

researcher, and associate producer, described the exhilaration of working on a show that defied

categorization:

Say Brother, during the year that I was there at any rate, never was boxed into being any type of a show. One week we were a musical show; another week we were political show. We might be dramatic; we might be filmic, anything we wanted to be or we’d be a mixture of it all, or we’d be a talk show … whatever we wanted. It was thrilling.200

200 Bright interview.

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By making African American Bostonians and well-known sites visible, the opening

theme of Say Brother hailed viewers and created a unique televisual location. Like other early

episodes, Episode Seven began with this opening theme featuring a photo montage and an

original theme song, “Say Brother.”201 This theme provided a signature that tied the program

together visually and aurally. The opening showcased ordinary African Americans, previewing a

central goal of the program: countering the invisibility of Black people, communities, and life.202

The visual portion of the theme features a montage of images of African Americans in Boston

with no diegetic sound. The first image depicts two African American men shaking hands and

then making Black Power fists, each with elbows bent. This salute obscures their faces; the

viewer sees only their arms.203 This powerful opening gesture provides a forceful greeting to the

program. It emphasizes Black communication with other Blacks and a dialogic relationship. It

also highlights a young, masculine image. The visual design of the theme presents a photo

montage of the hidden face of Black Boston: literally a montage of images of African Americans.

The images, which show African Americans in Boston working, commuting, eating, socializing,

and playing attempted to portray diversity within Boston’s Black community. For example, the

program made an effort to show religious diversity by including images of women with

headscarves who may have belonged to the Nation of Islam.

201 Analyzing the opening themes of a series is a key technique in Television Studies. The opening theme has much to say about a program’s ideology and aesthetic. 202 Based on my research, it seems likely that this theme was used to open the program for the first year. 203 Indeed, these gestures could take on large meanings in mediatized contexts. For example in the 1968 Olympics, when athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their hands in a Black Power Fist, the message was heard loud and clear. These athletes were suspended from their teams for this nonviolent gesture of protest, and banned form the Olympic Village. Thus Say Brother emerged in a time when gestures by African Americans were hyper visible in mainstream media contexts.

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In order to appreciate the power of the opening montage, it is important to remember

the prevailing invisibility of African Americans on television. At this time, the appearance of an

African American on TV was considered a destination viewing event and JET magazine, a

national Black publication, published listings of television appearances by African Americans.

Overwhelmingly, African Americans who were not celebrities or criminals were rendered

invisible.204 The opening theme’s power was in making ordinary Black people visible.

Furthermore, the use of the close-up when depicting African Americans in the opening sequence

and throughout the program was an ideological and aesthetic decision. Director Stan Lathan was

told by a white director during his tenure at Say Brother that he (the white director) never did close-ups of African American faces because white audiences would find their features grotesque. As Lathan said, “I’ve been taking extreme close-ups ever since.” 205 The opening

theme featured several close-ups, and Lathan has continued, throughout his career, to emphasize

close-up portrayals of African Americans.206

The opening theme emphasized gender divisions in a visual montage. A montage of

men was shown first, with a number of close-ups of men’s faces revealing diverse emotions such

as pride, joy, consternation, and thoughtfulness. A similar montage of women follows, showing

women enjoying one another, or carrying themselves with evident pride. The theme featured

women with both straightened hair and afros, but there was a definite bias towards young women

with afros. Neither montage portrayed a large number older people, a product of the program’s

204 See, for example, the documentary film Color Adjustment 1989 (dir. Marlon Riggs), which documents the limited and stereotypical nature of television representations of African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. 205 Interview with Stan Lathan in Kay Bourne, “Plans to Take the Stars,” New England Theater 1, no. 1 (1969): 59. 206 Lathan’s prolific and still active career ranges from documentaries to television serials such as Hill Street Blues, Sanford and Son and Redd Foxx.

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youthful vantage point. The final montage was of children playing in parks, eating ice cream, or

playing outside of buildings that appear to be housing projects.

The theme-song “Say Brother” complements the gendered nature of the vision of

Black Power suggested by the separation of men and women in the visual montage. Through its

lyrics and arrangement, the theme song describes a vision of Black power where men and

women both have roles and support one another in those roles. The song calls for these roles

implicitly, by separating men’s and women’s voices in a call and response between male and

female singers. A few key lines feature the men and women singing together. The arrangement,

music, and singing style are strident and upbeat with a rich musical track with drums, organ, thumb piano, upright bass, and tambourine. Here is a selection from the theme song’s lyrics:

I’m shouting loud (men) … and clear … (women) I’m feeling proud (men) you hear (women) Black is beautiful you know (together) the waiting years (women) … are gone (men) it’s time to run (women) … along (men) Black Power’s what we’re talking bout (together) Say Brother! (women) the Black man sings … (women) a soulful song (men) he sings for freedom. (women) loud and strong (women) cause freedom’s beautiful you know (women) you know (together)

you’re looking outta site, (women) your natural looks are tight … (men) and Black is beautiful you know …. Say Brother! (together)

One of the few theme songs written for a Black public affairs program the song was

created by an inter-racial band led by the white musician, Monty Stark who worked for WGBH

before Say Brother was conceived.207 Choosing the music for a Black public affairs program

207 Describing the creation of the theme song as the origins of his band, Monty Stark said “first thing we did was a theme for a show called Say Brother—which was a WGBH TV public broadcasting show that was put on after Martin Luther King got killed and cities were burning down they figured shit we’d better put something on TV. You know something black … and I had the heaviest black band in town (laughs) so I got the gig to do that, and that’s how the Stark Reality was born, from Say Brother.”207

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created an opportunity for the staff to identify the program as Black. Not surprisingly, these

choices were often contested by the (white) station leadership. For example, producer and host of

New York’s Like It Is, Gil Noble struggled with WABC to get a jazz theme for his program, as

opposed to a rock theme.208 Vernon Jarrett used the spiritual “Wade in the Water” for a theme

song to Chicago’s For Blacks Only.209 Not only did having an original song make Say Brother

unique, but the song is far more explicit in its politics than other theme songs for similar

programs, using the term “Black Power.” Once the term “Black Power” declined an instrumental

version of the theme song was used on the program. Later, the program substituted other theme

music, that did not have directly address the content of the program.

Reflecting the sense of urgency many felt at the time, the song addresses the

transition in Black politics from civil rights themes to a new militancy. The lyric “the waiting

years are gone” refers to a rejection of the nonviolent, integrationist phase of the movement.210

The lyrics proclaimed that African Americans no longer had patience to “wait” while rights were

“granted” but instead would “run along,” moving forward on their own using the strength internal of their own communities.

208 Noble. 209 Telephone interview with Jarrett (by author) 2003. 210 In his 1981 reflections on Boston’s Civil Rights history, Chain of Change: Struggles for Black Community Development (Boston: South End Press), Mel King, currently director of Boston’s New Urban League who also ran for Boston’s Mayoral office (unsuccessfully) in 1983, makes an argument Boston’s mid twentieth century Black community evolved in three stages. He considered the first stage, to be the “service stage” in which African Americans demanded better social services with mixed results. He considered the second stage to be the “organizing stage” of Black Power, in which the community began to organize to take control of issues such as Community Controlled Education, Policing, etc. He considered the third stage to be a moment of “institution building.” He considered the stages to roughly conform to the decades of the fifties, 1960s, and seventies. This type of analysis reflects popular understandings of the changes in political approaches that these decades witnessed. King’s analysis is resonant with the lyrics of Say Brother’s theme song because of this attention to a transition in mood and tactics.

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From the song’s opening with men singing the line “I’m shouting loud” and women

responding “and clear” the song creates both a division of labor and interdependence between

men and women. The women are recognizing the men’s strength and the men, in turn are

recognizing the women’s strength. While the visual representations that play during the theme

song feature women and men mostly in Western attire such as jeans and sundresses, the song

refers to an emergence of Black fashion, recognizing that some African Americans were

embodying a new look, moving away from straightened hair and western attire towards Afros

and new African inspired styles of clothing.

The years between 1962 and 1972, when demands for black power supplanted demands for civil rights, from a decade of accelerated rearticulation of racial meanings. During those years, African Americans explicitly and self-consciously reconsidered what being black meant as they rejected a timeworn language, oriented themselves toward Africa, adopted new names, created new rituals, and found new beauty in dark brown skin and the natural texture of African American hair.211

The song portrays men and women in a mutually appreciative mode. The women praise the men, saying “you’re looking outta sight!” a statement that praises their looks and also their achievements. When the male singers respond with “your natural looks are tight,” they are praising women’s beauty and encouraging them to wear their hair and other aspects of their visage “natural.” Together, the men and women sing the line “and Black is beautiful you know

…” Men’s and women’s voices are heard in the song; they are heard distinctly as opposed to blending together. By separating men and women’s voices, the theme song signifies the joint work of creating a world in which Black beauty is encouraged to blossom and is appreciated

211 Craig, Ain’t I a Beauty Queen. p. 10.

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where it exists. This song demonstrates how Say Brother attempted to envision and represent a

new ideal of men’s and women’s roles in furthering the goals of the Black power era.

With its theme song, Say Brother boldly proclaimed itself as a beacon of pride, (“I’m

feeling proud—you hear!”) and portrays a Black revolutionary mode in which both men and

women have a role, at times separate and at times collaborative. The opening theme provides an

accurate sample of the program that followed. After the song fades, Jim Spruill, the host of the

program, appears on the screen. Spruill makes two Black power fists, echoing the theme, before

introducing the show. Spruill’s repetition of the gesture, bending his own arms with his fists

clenched, takes the image of two men shaking hands from the theme and incorporates the

symbolic gesture onto his single body.

Performing the News: Representing Black Power

At the opening of the program, Spruill warmly welcomes people to the program and

then introduces singer Gwen Michaels, who renders a dramatic performance of Ruth Etting’s “10

Cents a Dance,”212 with a band backing her on the studio stage. After the song, Spruill introduces

Jacqueline Banks, whose seven minute news segment reveals the pedagogic and activist intentions of Say Brother’s writers. For example, she recounts a story on the upcoming Black

Power Convention in Philadelphia and then encourages viewers to take advantage of buses provided by various Black organizations in Boston to attend the conference.

the annual Black Power conference began today in Philadelphia—with the theme “For Black People Only,” this year’s conference is the largest attended so far. Boston will be well represented thanks to our brothers at CORE and United Front. A bus, appropriately painted all black was purchased to take people from the Core office.

212 Song credits: Ziegfield Follies and Columbia Records.

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This transportation will be provided for brothers and sisters … Its still not too late to attend, the conference is for us, and we must lend our support and all available help.

While Banks’ reading follows some of the conventions of television news, she does not pretend objectivity; Say Brother takes a position in the events she recounts. In addition, she does not just read the news, but indicates an immediate way to get involved, inviting viewers to get on the bus and go to the conference. Her delivery of a number of asides, along with selective emphasis of certain words and phrases further emphasizes the program’s perspective. Her script describes exciting events for Black Boston and presents a series of damning critiques of Boston

Police and other members of Boston’s mostly white establishment. Banks appears to be a college student. Her hair is pulled back from her face and she, like the singer Gwen Michaels, wears a floral mini-dress.213

Banks’ report captured well the social changes and transformations that Black

Boston underwent in this era. Say Brother’s location in Boston, home to numerous colleges and universities meant that campus related stories recurred with relative frequency. In this late

August episode, Banks also reports on a number of orientation events for Black students at

Boston’s colleges and universities, giving dates for events at Northeastern University, and mentioning events at Harvard and Tufts. Using contemporary expressions, she says “Black students at colleges and universities are getting themselves together to orient incoming Black freshman and transfer students to the college scene.” This demonstrates the importance of Black television programming; mainstream news programs would not have reported this story, especially at this length. However, to Say Brother’s audience the upward swing in Black college enrollment, and the activism of Black students on campus was relevant news indeed.

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Having addressed increasing Black access to higher education, Say Brother turned to

the question of the kinds of struggle that would create additional access to social and economic

rights. Banks describes two instances of grassroots protest. In both cases, Say Brother’s position

is unmistakable. First, Banks described a scene in which an activist group called “Mothers for

Adequate Welfare” were enroute to the main building of Boston’s welfare department to hold a protest. When they arrived, some with children in tow, they were assaulted by construction workers who threw rocks and tomatoes and “other debris” at them. According to Banks, “The alarm went out through the Black community agencies, and within a few minutes members of

Youth Alliance, CORE, the Black Panthers, and Puro Afro had converged on the scene. When the construction workers saw the turnout from the community, they immediately went back to their building project.”

Banks critiques the actions of Boston’s police, pointing out that although police

claimed they could not identify the attackers, the entire incident had been filmed by another

television station. Banks said, with heavy incredulity, “Even though a local television station had

taken pictures through the entire demonstration there was still not enough evidence for the

police. To date no one has been taken in to custody.” Banks disbelief is heavy in the italicized

words. She followed with an explicitly political question; “The question still remains whether

members of the Black community should be forced to respect a police department that offers us

no protection.” As she pronounces this question for her audience to consider, Banks further

underlined her disapproval of this police negligence by setting her jaw slightly and giving a

slight dramatic pause after the question.

213 No particular politics of Black skin color appeared to be operative at Say Brother in terms of screen talent.

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The final story read by Banks offers a searing critique of urban renewal. Bundled

with the critique, as in the previous story, the Banks script demonstrates the effectiveness of

activism and solidarity in the Black community, countering representations of African American

as victims that had predominated during the mainstream news coverage of the Civil Rights

Movement. Banks details the struggle over the Warren Gardens Apartments, a housing project

built by the Beacon Redevelopment Corporation. According to her account, the Boston United

Front presented the Development Corporation with a list of demands for better safety and

sanitation in the buildings. They demanded fire escapes, fire exits, and fire doors, metal stripping

to keep out rats and adequate maintenance. When the corporation took no action, local people

who Banks refers to as “the community” marched on the apartment complex, closing it and

sending the builders home until arbitration could occur. In arbitration, “the community”

demanded that new construction workers be hired from the ranks of Black “hard core”

unemployed people. Furthermore they demanded training for workers if they lacked the skills for

the project. Again, Banks openly advocates for the people of Warren Gardens and directly

criticizes the Beacon Hill Redevelopment Corporation. However, as in the previous example,

some of her strongest criticism comes when she shifts into her polished, reading the news as

usual mode, as when she points out that the “ostensibly nonprofit” Beacon Hill Corp, received

4.5 million dollar grant from the U.S. government “to build in Roxbury.”

After Banks reads the news, Spruill interjects a piece of late-breaking news. He

reads a letter received “just before airtime” lending an even greater immediacy to the news

segment of the program. The letter is urgent in tone, and benefits from the gravity of Spruill’s

slow and deep voiced reading of it. The letter begins, “Again this Black community has been

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 122 violated” narrating a story of a Black student who was shot by “young white boys” early

Thursday morning just days before the program aired. The student was reputedly “closely associated with the Black Panther Party” but is not otherwise identified. The letter describes how the student survived the shooting and was helped by other African Americans to get to the hospital. Their inclusion of the letter further underlies their unabashed use of advocacy journalism and also shows how connected Say Brother’s staff members were to Black Power activists in the Black Panther Party and other organizations.214 Spruill reads the letter:

There is a contradiction to the fact that a man is subject to the violence of an outsider in his own community—but then this condition has always existed in the ghetto, it is the essence of racism. A unique aspect of this incident lies in the fact that all the contradictions of racism have been heightened to the point that a Black man is not truly safe on the streets of his own community at any time whether during a rebellion or during periods of relative peace, one is forced to ask the question of himself, is revolution really possible inside the melting pot?

The letter questions the possibility of revolution, and signals that Malcolm X’s question of “the Ballot or the Bullet” was still salient. Spruill’s reading of the letter validates

African American efforts to increase community control over policing in this era, and some

Blacks’ willingness to consider alternative models of self-defense in light of being endangered within and beyond their communities. Spruill does not stop to digest the letter for the audience by providing even minimal interpretation, allowing them to draw their own conclusions. In this episode, Say Brother reveals that its informative style assumes an audience that is independent enough to think for themselves.

Immediately thereafter, blues music fades up slowly, and Spruill introduces the next segment:

214 In Making Latino News, America Rodriguez provides a definition of advocacy journalism and argues that notions

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Blues is the music of old people. Blues and old Black men can really get into a thing together. Let’s dig as the blues and the old blend naturally into their thing.

This short documentary equates the blues, a music of the rural south and urban

migration with the older generation, while the experimental soul music of Say Brother’s theme

song typified the staff member’s generation. By emphasizing blues music as “their thing,” Spruill

distances Say Brother’s youthful point of view from that of “old, Black men” yet claims the

importance of the Blues tradition. While the staff honored Blues music and traditions by showing

the short film, the uniformly youthful staff members also reveal their different taste culture and

set of associations. To them, Blues was the music of times gone by, and that for the Black Power

era, new artistic and cultural forms had relevance.

Culture Updates from a Teen Reporter

From the music of “old Black Men” the program moved to the other end of the age

spectrum with a segment called “young man about town” featuring a high school age reporter

named Stewart Thomas. Thomas was a regular on the first few episodes of Say Brother. The

culturally and politically informative intentions of the program are particularly evident in this

segment, in which Thomas shares his own insights and disseminates information on the latest

trends Boston’s Black community. This section is slightly longer than the hard news section

earlier, indicating that the program treated this cultural news with equal or even greater

importance as “hard news” or reporting of events.215

of “objectivity” are deeply cultural as opposed to absolute. 215 Although the first six episodes were lost, staff members recalled that Thomas had interviewed Muhammad Ali in one of the first four episodes.

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Thomas’s role on Say Brother demonstrates the centrality that cultural change played

in iterating and disseminating Black assertions of empowerment in this era. In this episode,

Thomas and his friend Nazalim Smith, discuss an African-themed wedding that they had recently

attended together. It was a wedding of close friends of theirs and clearly had been a deeply

moving experience for both of them. Thomas and Smith are visibly affected by having witnessed

their friends express their intentions to live their lives and raise their children in accordance with

“new principles of Blackness.” Thomas describes in rich detail, with polished confidence, the

Nehru jackets of the ushers, and the music of Hugh Masekela that served as the wedding march.

He describes the African headdress and silver shoes of the bride and explains that her attendants

wore similar attire. He also describes how the sermon addressed the special problems faced by

African Americans. His performance is assured: he looks at the audience when he speaks, he

does not rush, and he is highly descriptive.

Recognizing the importance of women’s points of view on cultural change, particularly those that involve life-cycle events, Thomas invited Smith to share a “young African woman’s point of view on the wedding.” While Nazalim Smith recounts similarly rich observations, she is clearly less experienced at appearing on television. Although she wrote out

what she had to say, and was relatively poised, she is obviously slightly nervous. Like Thomas,

Smith describes the wedding as “beautiful” and “unusual.”

This wedding gave me feeling of great strength and pride in one another and our race. I know they are ready to give their children all the things that were denied them.

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Her performance is very moving; she is obviously excited to be on the air. Her

diction moves between a far more pronounced Boston accent than other on-air talent on the

show, to a more subdued accent.

In this segment, Thomas and Smith introduced the salience of African heritage to

many African Americans at this time. The wedding ceremony to exclaimed a political and

spiritual commitment to challenging existing limited roles for African Americans, using ritual to

demonstrate political belief. By discussing their attendance at a friends wedding on a public

forum, Thomas and Smith blur the distinction between public and private, personal, and political,

extending the message of the wedding to the entire Say Brother audience. Like the wedding, the

program itself was about how to “live in accordance with new principles of Blackness.” Because

Stewart and Nazalim are so young themselves, their expression of desire for the next generation

to have pride and respect that had been denied their parents, is particularly poignant. Altogether, this segment provides a microcosm of Say Brother itself. Just as the marrying couple promised to live in a way that reflected their pride, so too did Say Brother’s staff attempt to represent and teach their viewers to do the same.

The final moments of the show are a collage of images, and sepia-toned photographs, including images of children before the title comes up, after images of raised fists and uprisings. One of the more striking and powerful images is of a young girl touching an adult woman’s pregnant abdomen with wonder in her eyes. This image is clearly hopeful about the future and perhaps even addresses fears of genocide that some African Americans felt in this era.

While the image is intended to exhibit confidence about the future, it was not an uncomplicated

representation; some Black feminists criticized male nationalists (and some female nationalists)

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for their emphasis on motherhood and birthing warriors for the revolution as an appropriate role

for African American women.216 The vision of hope in this image, which locates the future of

African Americans by looking to the next generation, recalls the image from Inside Bedford-

Stuyvesant described in the previous chapter, in which a woman offers her child to the camera.

In the ambitious first year of Say Brother, the program established its genre-

shattering attitude, and its collaborative work environment as well at its assertiveness and

willingness to be critical—even of the hands that fed them at the station. While Say Brother’s

first season pushed on the boundaries of what WGBH and the FCC would allow, it was in the

second season that the program finally went too far for WGBH, leading to cancellation of the

program.

In its first season, Say Brother addressed numerous controversial topics such as

police brutality and the overwhelming obstacles preventing Black children from getting a good

education in Boston’s Public Schools.217 The second season saw this atmosphere of critique

intensify. In the Bay State Banner Kay Bourne wrote, “The first two Say Brother shows of this

season have taken a decided turn toward a harder political and socially-conscious vision.”218

Bourne quotes producer Ray Richardson:

We want to direct ourselves to the masses of people, the people who are fighting off landlords in Roxbury and the South End and the people who are supplying troops for the war in Vietnam. We want programming which makes Black people aware of ourselves, not only to ourselves but in relation to other people … in relation to other poor people, Black, brown and white.

216 See Toni Cade Bambara’s The Black Woman, An Anthology (New York: New American Library, 1970); Jennifer Nelson. Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2003). 217 For more on Boston’s school desegregation struggle, see Theoharis “We Saved the City,” Ronald Formisano, Boston Against Bussing, and Jonothan Kozol, Death at an Early Age. 218 Bourne, “Plans to Take the Stars,” p. 10.

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Richardson clearly had a radical vision for the program, incorporating an international consciousness and critique alongside local concerns. Richardson’s goal of “making

Black people aware of ourselves” demonstrates an explicit intention to use the program to raise consciousness: to provide hard hitting analysis of racial problems, as well as suggestions for the means to solve them. Say Brother produced an episode ”historical role of Black soldiers. The episode addresses racism in the military and the important role that African Americans have always played in the U.S. armed forces.219

In the second season, the program also posed challenges to its station, WGBH. Early in the second season, Hazel Bright remembers Richardson directly critiquing WGBH at the end of one episode:

I remember Ray did a show … I remember he was advised against it, but we went on camera at the end of the show and I can remember Stan [Lathan] going in for this like, real close-up of Ray criticizing HARSHLY the management of WGBH … and I was so scared for him … but nobody said anything to us. He was very, very harsh, it was true, he didn’t say anything that wasn’t true …. He said that they [WGBH] don’t support the show, they don’t support Black issues they don’t have a [Black] show but this one and they have no interest in developing anything. He was just sort of telling them about themselves.

To Bright’s surprise, at least initially, Richardson’s critique did not cause trouble between Say Brother’s staff and WGBH. However there were hints of controversy between the station and the Say Brother staff in the first two years. WGBH management felt the show did not do enough to feature the “other side of the story” reflecting that era’s understanding of the 1934

“Fairness Act.” The staff felt that they did not need to yield their hour to oppositional points of view, as the entire program consisted of an oppositional point of view to the rest of what aired on

219 Kay Bourne, “The Call board: Say Brother,” Bay State Banner (October 30 1969), p. 10.

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WGBH and other stations. My analysis of this escalating assertiveness at Say Brother focuses on

a ninety minute special covering a weeklong uprising in New Bedford, Massachusetts, an episode that led to the program’s cancellation. The official reason for taking the program off the air was a violation of the FCC’s rules against profanity. To be sure, many forbidden words were spoken by interviewees in the episode, but clearly, Say Brother’s history of assertive critique was not in its favor when WGBH decided to cancel the program.

Given Say Brother’s reputation for getting the Black side of the story, it is not surprising that when uprisings/riots began in July 1970 in New Bedford, the Say Brother crew went there immediately to cover the Black residents’ perspectives. With their recognizable van and reputation, they felt relatively safe going into New Bedford, despite the fact that the city was under a police siege, and violence was ongoing. New Bedford is a small city about sixty miles from Boston and was in Say Brother’s viewing area. New Bedford had an African American

Community, which dated back to the antebellum period, as well as a community of Black residents from Cape Verde who were largely employed in the fishing industry. Dependent on fishing and manufacturing, jobs that were diminishing in this era, New Bedford was economically depressed and had a high rate of unemployment. Richardson cites statistics that the

New Bedford unemployment rate was 8% but for African Americans in the city, it was 35%. In this poor city, the African American and Cape Verdian community occupied the bottom rung of

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the economy. African Americans represented 12,000 out of a population of 100,000.220 The entire

Black community was confined to two segregated and cramped areas of the city.221

The program, which aired July 1970, began with Ray Richardson explaining that this

episode would be special. “Tonight we’re presenting a special program on the Black rebellion in

New Bedford.” An arrest on Thursday, July 8th of an African American man for “disorderly

conduct” escalated into a rock and bottle throwing incident between Black young people and the

police. According to Richardson, James Magnet, the director of “learning to learn” a community

program for young people, was shot at and beaten by police.” While Magnet sustained serious

injury, he was charged with assault and battery of a police officer. By the next day, tensions had escalated. Say Brother reported that a white man with a shotgun was arrested walking near the

African American west side of New Bedford. By early Saturday morning, the situation was severe enough that the New Bedford city council sent a message to community leaders on the west side that the National Guard would be summoned if things did not calm down. According to

Richardson’s account, local white construction workers met and pledged to act “as vigilantes in civil disturbances in the Black community.” African Americans in New Bedford began to riot.

During the violence, a young African American teenager, Lester Lima, was shot and killed by white vigilantes. Two other Black teenagers were also shot, but survived. U.S. Senator Ed

Brooke (D-MA) came to talk with the community and there was a simultaneous police raid on a

220 “More Violence Hits New Bedford, MA,” The New York Times (July 11, 1970), p. 18. “New Bedford Negro Killed; 3 are held,” New York Times (July 12, 1970). Bill Kovach, “New Bedford Gets Curfew to Ease Racial Tensions,” The New York Times (July 13, 1970), p. 1. “300 Youths Roam New Bedford Area, Burning Buildings,” New York Times (July 10, 1970), p. 36. 221 These statistics were cited by Richardson in the actual episode. Other information about articles in the Bay State Banner “New Bedford Blacks bitter over death,” Bay State Banner (July 16, 1970).

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 130 youth center. While these events echoed the events in other cities, in New Bedford, some African

Americans had the opportunity to have their say on television.

Richardson critiques the news media for focusing on “incidents” instead of probing deeper to explore “the real issues” behind the unrest, saying sarcastically,

We all know how it sounded—Black folks have gone wild again, you know, like we do every summer?

On July 10, after the situation turned irrevocably into what local government termed rioting, the Say Brother staff arrived in New Bedford. They spent 6 days filming numerous interviews with residents. Describing the atmosphere that Say Brother staffers found when they arrived in New Bedford, Jewelle Gomez recalled that things were quite grim. Groups of people were clustered in the streets in both of New Bedford’s segregated Black neighborhoods, the south end and west end. While New Bedford had received a substantial federal subsidy to combat its unemployment and physical decay, Richardson charges that urban renewal had made things worse for Black people, frequently displacing them from their homes. Over the course of several days of interviewing, teenagers and adults angrily recounted tales of joblessness, substandard housing, and jobs programs that did little but keep young people off the street and provide false hopes to youth and adults alike. Gomez recalled,

Everyone felt totally disrespected. What people were being given … The attitude of the authorities was just … pathetic.

While the small Say Brother staff was overwhelmed, and at times, frightened, they were galvanized by the extent of the economic and social oppression that they saw and heard about. Black residents of New Bedford, who had never had an audience for their experiences before, had a lot to say. Jewelle Gomez recalled:

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I think people felt enormously grateful to Say Brother. For the first time they were seeing themselves reflected, having a conversation where people actually listened to what they had to say. They felt a certain confidence that what they had to say would not be manipulated against them …. people in New Bedford really appreciated that Say Brother was going to tell the story.

One incident from the filming highlights the danger they were in as well as demonstrating the limits on egalitarian gender roles that the program staff strove for. While

Richardson, a cinematographer and two production assistants were shooting some footage in a bar, shots were fired into the bar. Richardson was concerned for the safety of the production assistants, both of whom were women, and sent them back to Boston. They agreed to leave, and

Richardson continued the interviews with only the (male) cinematographer. This incident demonstrates the risks the staff were willing to take in order to document the uprisings in New

Bedford.

The ninety-minute episode was packed with forceful critiques of racial conditions in

New Bedford. Say Brother’s staff spoke with groups of men, women, and young people in the street. Everywhere they went, people gathered around the cameras to share their perspective.

They criticized the overwhelming lack of employment opportunities. Many of the adult men interviewed told stories of training for a trade that had been eliminated, and of bureaucrats lying to keep them out of a job. One man recounted a story of going to the carpenters union with a note from the Mayor, and having the union lie and claim that he never showed up. Many recounted being trained for careers in the army that did not convert to paying jobs. Others told stories of being told to travel long distances to get to work, and then finding no work to be had, or of only finding poorly paid work as common laborers, despite having more experience and training.

I have a trade, and it’s specified in the handbook of the Department of Employment Security … and their gonna put me down as a common laborer. And when you’re

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Black and you’re a common laborer, you gonna get any shit job that they got out there. And when you go down when they give you a card, they tell you go down to so and so. … and I got to walk three miles for a man to say “I’ll call ya.”

Other men, gathered around listening to the man quoted above chimed in, saying

“They always say ‘I’ll call you.” Other men described the irony of having served the United

States in Vietnam, but returning to little or nothing.

The average Black cat that ever went to college did it because he had to first risk his damn life to do it. This is what happens you know. Most of our college graduates are GI bill veterans. Alright? We served, and we came out, and we got our problems in these cities and we think we know how to solve them. Man, postal workers in 1914 know how to solve some of the problems … before the riots first started. We’re out here now and we can’t solve it. … goddamitt my Black boy, goes to war and he comes back and he goes to school and he’s been Black a long damn time he’s hurt, he’s suffering, and then he can’t even use his goddamn education.

Ever since I got out the service some kind time of training 3 years I got myself a trade, kids look at us and say why should we get a training—I consider myself a carpenter. The man told me to work for 60 something dollars a week,—Sixty dollars a week! This other incident and got a note to go to the carpenters union, this goes to show you how they lie.

While the men spoke about unemployment, women spoke of the hypocrisy of welfare social workers who refused to help the women find childcare to go to college or work.

Young people made damning critiques of social programs with Orwellian names like “Learning to Learn.” One young man said that “You could shit in the street for all they care” during the program. The consensus was that these programs were little more than efforts to keep Black youth off the street. Repeatedly, during the ninety-minute special, people voiced convincing stories of wasted federal aid money, discrimination, and third world living conditions. This expression of African American points of view during civil unrest was exactly what the Kerner commission report had called for, yet WGBH’s management was unprepared for what New

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Bedford residents had to say. Certainly the episode provided those claiming to be mystified by

Black frustration and despair some very clear answers.

Ray Richardson felt strongly that the people’s voices had to be heard unexpurgated,

so he refused to edit out the profanity which, as is evident from the quotes, was rampant in the

interviews. While some people tried to speak without using profanity, most people were unable

to contain their rage into language “appropriate” for television. Richardson chose to air the program unedited, despite direct instruction from WGBH not to do so. Richardson, as well as other staff members felt that the language of those interviewed in New Bedford was the appropriate language to express their situation and point of view. Their conditions were profane, so their profane language seemed justified and true to the staff. Furthermore, it was so prevalent that it would have been quite difficult to edit out while conserving the content of the episode.

One question provoked by the cancellation is, how exactly did the tape get on the air unexpurgated? It is possible that WGBH management allowed the program on the air to have an excuse to cancel the program.

After the episode aired, Michael Rice, the program director of the station and

Stanford Calderwood, WGBH’s general manager decided to cancel the program. Rice said that in addition to this episode which clearly violated regulations about profanity, Richardson had, in previous episodes, “willfully defied the routes of fairness that govern public affairs programs.”222

Immediately after the cancellation was announced, sixty protesters converged on the station. One

of the chief complaints by management, beyond the profanity, was that allegations of personal

corruption against specific individuals had been aired on the program, both in this episode and

222 Rice is quoted in “Who has a Say in Say Brother,” Deac Russell, Tuesday August 18, 1970. (publication unknown, from the files of Kay Bourne, Bay State Banner reporter)

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previous episodes. Rice cited the statement, “The United States killed both Dr. Martin Luther

King and Malcolm X,” from Say Brother’s July 23rd 1970 episode as an additional example of

this, calling such statements unsubstantiated and one sided.223 After the initial protest, WGBH held an open meeting with members of the Black community which was attended by 200 people.

On August 12, 1970 Say Brother staff members released a protest letter to the Bay State Banner, criticizing the cancellation. The staff members charged the station with using the profanity as a subterfuge; they claimed the program was cancelled because of its political content. They criticized the station’s proposal to start a community news series with a single Black reporter, and a small training program for African American employees as insignificant in the face of removing Say Brother. Emphasizing their role as a pedagogical force, Say Brother’s staff wrote

“By Dropping Say Brother, which is the only Black-oriented and Black-produced television program in the area, WGBH has deprived our community of an important forum for airing issues, a powerful educational tool, and a wide audience for young black talent.” The letter calls for the firing of Michael Rice in light of what the staff considered to be his “consistent racist attitude toward the black community.” Furthermore the letter articulated that the station had failed in its mandate to serve low income people of all colors.224 They also called for the station

to implement an affirmative action policy immediately to address “past discrimination.” They issued a call for viewers to target Stan Calderwood in a letter writing campaign. Anticipating the

loss of their work, they also demanded that the tapes be archived at a local community center.

223 Rice is quoted in “Who has a Say in Say Brother,” Deac Russell, Tuesday August 18, 1970. (publication unknown, from the files of Kay Bourne, Bay State Banner reporter) 224 Letter to Michael Rice, (Say Brother Archives).

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After continuous and vocal protest from prominent community groups, the program was reinstated—without Richardson. Tragically, Richardson was killed in a swimming accident while vacationing in Mexico shortly after the Say Brother cancellation.225 Under no

circumstances would the FCC would have approved of the profanity voiced by Blacks in New

Bedford, but had the program generally had more support from WGBH, the station might have

penalized that program but stopped short of cancellation. Much of the original staff did not

return, and the program took a more national approach. The new producer, John Slade was not

from Boston, and some of the original staff members perceived the Slade’s appointment as an

attempt to dilute the penetrating critique of racism in Boston that had made the show so vital to

Back audiences and controversial for Boston’s establishment and WGBH’s management.

Journalist Sarah Ann Shaw, recollected:

John liked national stuff, it gave him more prominence, local issues were important, but he preferred to be more global, but he wasn’t tying global or national issues to local issues. You can always tie things together.

John Slade moved from Washington DC to accept the position, and was widely

perceived as an outsider. His emphasis was on national issues, which, although they could

certainly be controversial, did not as directly antagonize the station or local government. This

underscores the political importance of local media, which could take specific individuals to task

and mobilize a community in a much more dramatic way than most national media could.

Slade’s tenure was relatively short, and later directors such as Topper Carew and Barbara Barrow

did lead the program to cover controversial issues again.

225 See the biography of Richardson’s father, Virgil Richardson. Ben Vinson, Flight: The Story of Virgil Richardson, A Tuskegee Airman in Mexico (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 129–30. In the biography, Virgil

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The idea that

A second incidence of censorship shows both the increasing importance of global issues to African Americans as well as the importance of a local connection to the reception of a global story. Reflecting the push for corporate divestment from Apartheid South Africa, a Say

Brother episode from the mid 1970s challenged the Boston-based Polaroid company over their business in South Africa, which included making the identity cards that Black South Africans were forced to carry. This episode was filmed, but it mysteriously “disappeared” before it could be aired. The fact that Polaroid was a major WGBH sponsor undoubtedly played a role in this censorship; it was the local connection as apposed to the broader critique of South African

Apartheid that caused the episode to “disappear.”

Although the program was less controversial then it had been in the first two years, it continued to be responsive to ascendant currents in Black politics especially the rise of Black feminism. In the 1970s the program had several women directors and producers and produced an episode called Say Sister, examining black women’s roles. In the mid 1970s Say Brother briefly produced a national Edition and in the late 1970s the program transformed into a multicultural representation, broadcasting stories from the Asian American, Latino and African American

Communities. Despite these changes, there were still controversies and conflicts between the various program staffs and WGBH management. Ultimately, the program went back to its primary focus on African American Boston, and still broadcasts as of this writing, as Basic

Black.

Richardson recollects his son’s increasing radicalization, his connections to the Black Panthers, and that Ray was “in trouble” with the FCC for leveling corruption charges on Say Brother against Boston’s mayor.

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Conclusion

Say Brother’s youthful and ambitious staff created an entirely new and vibrant

representation of Black Boston. The show contained hard-hitting criticism of Boston’s power

structure, calling attention to the underside of Boston’s self-image as a racially liberal “cradle of

liberty.”226 The program represented new cultural practices and provided a forum where African

Americans could find an arbiter more open to their concerns than courts or police. By inviting

audiences to live “according to new principles of Blackness,” Say Brother aimed to incite audiences to greater activism and responsiveness. Say Brother’s producers attempted to legitimize and promote civic engagement and activism by documenting struggles against school segregation, university discrimination, substandard housing, and public officials’ lack of accountability to Black constituents. They countered the invisibility of Black artists by showcasing little-known local performers alongside national acts.

In a larger sense, the significance of local television to Black viewers demands further consideration. African Americans in this era were largely ignored by national networks.

For example, their preferences were ignored by Nielsen ratings which infrequently measured

Black families. Furthermore, television studies scholarship has not sufficiently examined local television—yet examining local television, especially urban television, is crucial to examining

African American television. The majority of African Americans in the United States live in metropolitan areas, where Black public affairs programs aired. These programs document this urbanization an are also a product of it.

226 Theoharis. “They Told Us Our Kids were Stupid.”

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African Americans in Boston, and in the wider viewing area of the program, felt

ownership over Say Brother, and demanded immediate access to the staff of the program by coming to the station with their stories. Incidents such as the protest by the students at English

High School, in which students came en masse to the WGBH offices to air their grievances, are examples of how African American Bostonians felt ownership over the program. The day of writer Hazel Bright’s job interview with Say Brother, she was put immediately to work covering this incident, which had delayed her arrival at the station. A student at Boston’s English High

School had been expelled for wearing a dashiki. Claiming the importance of their right to express

Black identity in this and other ways, the students protested, and Say Brother aired their protest, sympathetically. Hazel Bright was off to an exciting start with the young television program.

Say Brother’s local nature gave it the potential to be controversial in the extreme, yet fly under the radar of the national regulators—at least until their 1970 New Bedford episode.

Only the strength of community response brought about the reinstatement of the program. In

1970, Black audiences could still accomplish this, in part because whites were still fearful of

Black rebellion. The creators of Say Brother improvised as they went along, but always with an

ear towards the community. The community’s loyalty to Say Brother flowed directly from Say

Brother’s loyalty to them. While Black newspaper such as Bay State Banner reported on some of

the same events, Say Brother directly addressed audiences in a conversational mode. Without the

urban uprisings, a show like Say Brother never would have come about.227 While there is no

question that the unrest was also destructive, leaving scars on Black communities still visible

today, the fact that the uprisings created an empowered site for African Americans to expand the

227 Staub.

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Black public sphere contrasts with a historiography that depicts the immediate post-civil rights period as a moment of decline and destruction. The radical early period in Say Brother’s history was bookended by uprisings. The first potential uprising scared WGBH management into providing an outlet for African American expression, while the second incident made them wish they never had.

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Chapter 4

Envisioning National Community on PBS: Black Journal and Soul!

Next month NET will broadcast a similar nationwide show [to WTTW Chicago’s Our People] Black Journal. In discussing such plans at a recent NET affiliates meeting in Manhattan, the program manager of one station took to the floor to complain: “You are going too fast for our primarily white middle-class audience. After all, TV is still largely an escapist medium. They don’t want to be reminded of all that stuff” Responded NET program director William Kobin: “You’re wrong. We’re not going fast enough.” “Black on the Channels,” Time May 24, 1968.

When it comes to blacks, logic has never been the strong suit of the almost all-white Corporation. Created by the Broadcasting Act of 1967 to promote and help finance noncommercial radio and television the corporation has never been notable for displaying any real concern for blacks. “Blacks and Public TV: As Squeeze Play Misfires, Blacks Challenge White Control of Tax-Supported Medium.” Black Enterprise, January 1974.

In 1968, a newly formed television producing umbrella organization called National

Educational Television (NET), grappled with racial discord, uprisings, the critiques of the Kerner

Report and the public wave of shock after the King assassination. As discussed earlier, these influences had affected both commercial television outlets and local education TV stations. In addition to the pressures faced by all broadcasters in this tumultuous year, public television had a particular obligation to the “public interest,” although it had no clearer standard for measuring the fulfillment of that interest than did commercial television. Simultaneously, in the late 1960s educational television was consolidating forces and funding to become what we now recognize as “public television.”228 The advent of a public broadcasting system, created from the

previously loosely connected ETV stations around the country, provided a new space for Black

228 For accounts of this history see: Ouellette, Viewers Like You, and Day, Vanishing Vision.

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programming, due in part to an effort to counter charges of “elitism” that were being used to by conservatives to argue against public television’s government funding.229

As previous chapters have shown, the project of envisioning Black public spheres in

locales from Boston to Bedford-Stuyvesant presented unique sets of challenges in each locale.

For the creators of Black Journal, envisioning a national Black television program presented

different challenges and possibilities. The potential was exciting. As a national program, Black

Journal documented innovative community programs in Los Angeles, and broadcast this story to

African Americans around the country. The program focused on issues that the mainstream press

would ignore, such as the plight of historically Black colleges, and Black entrepreneurship. Black

Journal cultivated a national conversation on race that added to what local programs were

accomplishing and filled in the gaps where no local program existed.

This chapter explores the aesthetics of Black Journal and examines critical responses

to the program. Black Journal followed in the footsteps of Johnson publications in seeking to

cultivate a national Black audience. Still, while constructing a national African American

audience, Black Journal also acknowledged the diversity such an audience necessarily

encompassed. This chapter demonstrates how PBS’s “syndication system” of mailing programs

around the country presented challenges to building a national audience. This “syndication

system” enabled some local stations to forgo Black Journal, effectively censoring the program. I

also consider the history and reception of another national Black public television program,

Soul!, which focused on arts, often fostering dialogue on the fertile relationships between Black

art and Black liberation in this period. Black Journal and Soul! cultivated a national conversation

229 See especially, Ouellette’s chapter, “Something for Everybody,” in Viewers Like You.

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about race, building on the achievements of the local Black public affairs programs, and filling in

gaps in locations that had no local Black public affairs program.

Television and the Black Press Tradition

While a national Black public affairs television program was entirely new, the Black press had been providing translocal news coverage to African Americans since 1827, forming a

strong backbone for a national Black public sphere. Black newspapers were translocal both in

their readership and their content. Papers such as the Chicago Defender (1905–present) became influential during the Black migration, a mass movement of African Americans out of the South in the first half of the twentieth century, by describing the opportunities available in Northern cities. At times, there were attempts to ban The Defender from southern cites in an effort to stem this immense loss of labor. However, Pullman train operators and others distributed the paper clandestinely. Underground distribution of Black publications continued well into the 1960s in some places.230 In addition to large circulations, many copies were passed from hand to hand.

Both clandestinely and openly distributed papers were an important source of information,

especially in the South, about the Civil Rights movement and national Black politics. As Anna

Everett explains, “the Black press was in effect the social, political, and cultural lifeline in a

hostile world.”231

Black newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender were

based in a specific location, but had national editions that were read by African Americans all

230 See Steven D. Classen, Watching Jim Crow: The Struggles Over Mississippi TV, 1955–1969 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004). 231 Anna Everett, Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909–1949 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), p. 6.

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over the United States. These newspapers covered local news in their home cities, they also

covered stories of African American life elsewhere, including incidents of racist violence in

communities large and small. These papers covered national and international news and were

cognizant of their national readership. Significantly, the Defender and Courier were Black- owned, a fact that contrasted with their heirs on television programs such as Black Journal.232

Penny Von Eschen writes that “the years of World War II and its immediate aftermath were a golden age in black American journalism.” Von Eschen demonstrates that the

Black press was a vehicle for public intellectuals, the middle class, working class, and blue collar workers to communicate in a thriving Black public sphere.233 An important new addition to the traditional Black newspapers developed with the 1942 founding of John Johnson’s publishing empire in Chicago, which debuted with Negro Digest, followed by Ebony in 1945 and Jet in

1951. These publications made middle-class Black cultures and lifestyles newly visible. Negro

Digest, similar to the Reader’s Digest, summarized stories from both the Black and white presses about African American life and politics.234 Ebony in particular represented an emergent Black

middle-class. Johnson publications aimed to show the totality of Black life, emphasizing the achievements of the middle class—sports events, cultural events, and family life. Ebony’s

opening editorial proclaimed:

Sure, you can get all hot and bothered about the race question (and don’t think we don’t) but not enough is said about all the swell things we Negroes can do and will accomplish. Ebony will try to mirror the happier side of Negro life—the positive

232 Armistead Scott Pride and Clint C. Wilson, A History of the Black Press, (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1997). 233 Penny M. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 8. 234 See Adam Green, Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940-1955 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

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everyday achievements from Harlem to Hallywodd [sic]. But when we talk about race as the No. 1 problem of America, we’ll talk turkey.235

Ebony, a “picture magazine,” modeled after Life, allowed more photographic

representation than newspapers could. In differentiating his publications from traditional Black

newspapers, John Johnson said:

We started out saying, in effect, that Black newspapers were doing a good job of reporting discrimination and segregation and that we needed, in addition to all that, a medium to refuel the people, and to recharge their batteries. … Last, but not least we needed a new medium, bright, sparkling, and readable –that would let Black Americans know that they were part of a great heritage.236

Johnson’s new publications joined Black newspapers to create a lively and historic

dialogue about the place of African Americans in American society. On September 15, 1955,

Johnson’s publication, Jet took the groundbreaking step of publishing photographs of the

mutilated body of Emmett Till, a young victim of lynching, and the mainstream press such as

Life and Newsweek followed suit. In a recent documentary on Till,237 community leaders describe

how viewing those photographs transformed their lives and motivated them to become activists.

Furthermore, Jet and Ebony, as national publications, (as opposed to translocal Black

newspapers,) had to seek out national advertisers, and address the varied interests of audiences in

multiple regions, to an even greater degree than Black newspapers.

235 John H. Johnson with Lerone Bennett, Jr, Succeeding Against the Odds (New York, NY: Warner Books, 1989). 236 Johnson, 1989. 237 Keith A. Beauchamp, producer and director, Yolande Geralds, co-producer, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till (New York: Thinkfilm, 2005).

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PBS: A New (Reluctant) Space for Black Perspectives

In 1968, the television industry was still notorious for excluding African American perspectives and discriminating against African Americans in employment.238 There were no

Black voices on national television news. For commercial television, which sold its sponsors a

predominantly white national audience (including many racist whites) the issue of finding

national advertisers for African American television programming presented a significant

challenge, even when those representations were known to have a mass audience that crossed

racial lines. Indeed, this was the challenge that led to the cancellation of The Nat “King” Cole

Show on television in 1957.239 “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark,” Cole later said. Public

television was a prominent example of what Black journalist and historian Lerone Bennett

designated “white oriented media,” and the context for public television’s emergence seemed to

offer little to African Americans.240

Before the advent of PBS, a group of loosely connected stations called ETV stations,

(educational television) existed in a marginalized UHF section of the broadcast spectrum.241

WNET in NY was educational television’s “flagship station” and had a VHF spectrum allocation,

a huge advantage over many other educational stations, which could only be viewed on UHF frequency. In the 1960s, it became clear that ETV, lacking the revenue from advertisers that

238 Bob Pondillo, “Racial Discourse and Censorship on NBC-TV, 1948–1960,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 33, no 2 (2005): pp. 102–14. 239 Chuck Ross, “Madison Avenue Is Afraid of the Dark,” Electronic Media 20, no. 46 (November 12, 2001) Mary Ann Watson, “The Nat ‘King’ Cole Show,” in Encyclopedia of Television, ed. Horace Newcombe (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997). 240 Lerone Bennett, “Media White.” The Challenge of Blackness” Johnson Publishing Company, 1972. 241 Ouellette, pp. 41–3.

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sustained commercial TV, would disappear without more federal help.242 President Lyndon

Johnson appointed the Carnegie Commission to study educational television, and the

commission recommended “a tax on the sale of TV sets … to subsidize a corporation for public

television, which in turn would loosely oversee all noncommercial outlets.” In 1969, Corporation

for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was created to oversee the interconnection process between ETV

stations. The CPB could not produce programs or operate stations; its function was to connect

stations, fund local and national programming, and provide publicity.

WBGH Boston, WNET New York, WTTW Chicago, and KCET Los Angeles

emerged as some of the most active production centers, with programming originating from these stations appearing on other public stations. All of these stations produced a Black public affairs program in this era. In her history and critique of public television as a product of the

Great Society, Viewers Like You: How Public Television Failed the People Laurie Ouellette documents the elitist “cultivation” that the architects of PBS had in mind for their ideal audience, which, she demonstrates, consisted of college-educated white men. Ouellette documents public television’s often-contradictory impulses around African American issues, arguing that PBS

programming, for the most part, emphasized a “rational” vision of citizenship that often excluded

passionate points of view. This “rationalist” style typically featured a narrow range of experts

asserting opinions within the frameworks of “liberal” and “conservative,” leaving radical and

even integrationist African American points of view completely marginalized. Black Journal,

242 The UHF spectrum only became legally required in television sets in the 1960s, so older sets did not have UHF capability. See Channel Set Law, Baughman p. 92. Because educational stations broadcast mostly on the UHF spectrum, as opposed to more common VHF. This technological divide continued to separate public from commercial television after the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. Many African Americans had older sets which made it hard for television’s largesse of “great society” programs such as the children’s educational program, Sesame Street, to reach audiences with older TV sets.

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and other Black public affairs television, as Ouellette points out, were islands of Black advocacy

on these stations, while other programs purportedly upheld standards of “objectivity.”

Envisioning National Black Programming on PBS

In designing Black Journal in 1968, NET borrowed its magazine-style format from

local Black programs that had already premiered. Jim Tilmon, who produced Our People on

Chicago educational station WTTW, claims that Black Journal adopted its format from Our

People.243 In addition to being inspired by local programs Black Journal was also a descendant

of NET Journal, a pubic affairs show that had occasionally addressed race issues. In contrast to

this supposedly objective, “rational” programming, Black Journal, like Say Brother, employed a

style of what America Rodriguez has called “advocacy journalism,”.244 Building on Ouellette’s

analysis, my research demonstrates that Soul! and Black Journal highlighted the contradiction between public television’s critique of network television and its own elitism. With their electric title sequences, the differing aesthetic of these programs also differentiated them from much of

PBS fare. Soul!’s frequent use of experimental video technique was particularly different from

other PBS programming. When Sesame Street, PBS’s blockbuster children’s program broadcast

first aired in 1969, it joined Soul! and Black Journal as divergent from the staid aesthetics of

most other PBS programming. Sesame Street was initially designed for “ghetto” children, so this

aesthetic connection demonstrates that PBS producers thought that Black audiences, both

children and adults might appreciate a more vibrant, lively production design, as distinct from

what public television historian Laurie Ouellette would characterize as PBS’s intended audience

243 Jim Tilmon, interview with author, September 2004. His claim is corroborated by the article cited at the head of this chapter, “Black on the Channels.”

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for the bulk of its programs, a highly educated, mostly white audience who did not “need”

aesthetic innovation to hold their interest in PBS’s edifying programs.

The coexistence of Black Journal and local Black public affairs programs in many markets demonstrates both advantages and disadvantages of a national program. Black Journal was inevitably a less accessible forum for viewers—a viewer was far less likely to literally get on the air than they were with a program such as Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant. In some markets, Black

Journal broadcast in addition to local Black public affairs programs. Problematically, the existence of a national program that did not need to be locally produced provided some local educational stations with a justification for abandoning the effort to produce local Black programs. There was even a “brain drain” from Say Brother to Soul! and Black Journal, with a number of staff members leaving Say Brother after the first two seasons, including Lathan,

Jewelle Gomez, and Hazel Bright, because of the greater visibility and resources that the national

program had. Bright and Gomez worked on Black Journal and Lathan worked on both Black

Journal and Soul!. Under Lathan’s directions, Soul! became known as one of the most aesthetically innovative and lively programs on television.

While public affairs programming made up only 2% of commercial television’s

prime-time fare, public TV’s public affairs programming made up 30% of its prime time

programming.245 Black Journal was an hour-long newsmagazine with arts coverage, hard news

reporting, and interpretive commentary by hosts and guests. Black Journal’s initial budget was

considerably larger than that of local programs like Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant’s as evidenced by

its color production and relatively high production values.

244 Rodriguez, p. 15.

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In addition to Black Journal, WNET (New York’s Channel 13) created Soul! (1968–

1972), a program in which artists both performed and spoke, often reflecting the Black Arts

Movement’s blend of art and politics. During its first season, Soul! broadcast only to

metropolitan New York. It was then broadcast nationally from 1969–1972. Soul! was unusual;

there were only a handful of exclusively arts focused Black programs. One short-lived local program on WCBS, Black Arts, was hosted by Dr. Roscoe Brown, who would later chair the

Department of Afro-American Studies at New York University.246 Although both Black Journal and Soul! were generically fluid, Soul!’s format was more theatrical and featured a studio

audience. In contrast, when Black Journal featured artists, they would most often show

performances of the artist’s work edited into the program. On Soul!, although the discussions

were central, they were almost always bracketed by performances in the studio. Soul! featured

poets, R&B artists, and dancers such as Anna Horsford, Wanda Robinson, Sonia Sanchez,

Shirley Cesar, James Baldwin, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, and Miriam Makeba. On Black Journal,

episodes focused on police brutality, the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers,

new Black economic initiatives, as well as Black achievements in the cultural realm. There were

overlaps between guests on the two programs, since artists also appeared on Black Journal, and

political/cultural figures such as Kathleen Cleaver, Miriam Makeba, and Muhammad Ali were

interviewed on Soul!. The central role of artists on Soul! and Black Journal demonstrates how

intertwined artistic and political innovation were during the Black Power/Black Arts era.

245 Ibid. 246 Jacob Wortham, “In with the Big Boys,” Black Enterprise (September 1974): 22-25.

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Painting the Screen Black: Themes, Openings, and Aesthetics at Black Journal and Soul!

It is our aim in the next hour and in the coming months to report and review the events, the dreams, the dilemmas of Black America and Black Americans Lou House, Black Journal #1.

Even before host Lou House appeared on the screen, the first episode of Black

Journal offered a bold image about the absence of a Black perspective on television. The episode

opened with comedian Godfrey Cambridge painting a piece of the television frame black, with a

roller full of black paint. It is as if he is painting the viewers’ screen black. Following this bold

and innovative introduction, House makes the introduction quoted above. 247 House, who wears a

sport coat, a blue turtleneck, and a necklace with a large wooden ornament, outlines the structure

of the episode which includes: a commencement speech at Harvard given by Coretta King in

place of her late husband, a feature on a Black jockey, a documentary on the Black Panthers, and

a documentary about a clothing line from Harlem. Although the style of the show would evolve,

the categories of content—stories on Black achievement, Black politics, etc., typified the

program for the next few years.

Honoring the program’s legacy from the Black press, the initial episodes of Black

Journal incorporate a segment drawn from Black print journalism. Each of the first few episodes

featured a “Black Press Roundup” created by Charles Hobson, which featured a host reading headlines that Hobson had selected from Black newspapers around the country.248 The first

247 By 1970 Black Journal was playing on 195 NET affiliated stations (see Landt Dennis, “FCC vs. Alabama over TV Tuneout: State Board’s Ban on Black Programs Draws Complaint,” Christian Science Monitor, September 5, 1970.) However, the exact number of stations that it premiered on in 1968 varies in different accounts. 248 Hobson, a central figure in the early years of Black public affairs television, also was the producer of Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant and Like It Is, in addition to Black Journal. Since that time his numerous credits include producing PBS series such as The Africans, and From Jumpstreet: The Story of Black Music as well as the 2004 documentary: Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 151 episode also featured Ebony journalist, Ponchita Pierce, covering Mrs.Coretta King’s talk at

Harvard’s graduation, showing that Black Journal, like Chicago’s For Blacks Only and Boston’s

Say Brother looked to the Black press as one source for reporters.

During her commencement address, Mrs King mentioned the findings of the Kerner

Report, and urged graduates to take a stand. When she spoke out against the Vietnam war, the students cheered. Afterwards, discussions with Black students at Harvard and Spelman College offered viewers a chance to see the high ambitions and aspirations of a new generation of African

American college graduates. Pierce narrates images of proud and happy graduates and their families:

Unlike any other Black graduating class in American history, these young men and women must make up their minds about participating in the Black and thus the new American revolution. Will they search for middle class detachment or insightful involvement? This is the mandate of the class of ‘68.

The documentaries in the first episode of Black Journal illustrate the fast-evolving political and cultural consciousness of African Americans in this era, by showing initiatives such as Harlem-based entrepreneurs, New Breed Clothes, the makers of men’s dashikis and “Freedom

Suits.” While for the New York audience, and some other urban audiences, dashikis might have been common sight; there were other audiences in 1968, for whom the dashiki was new. This segment shows the entrepreneurs of New Breed in production, in the store, and in business meetings.

One New Breed owner explains, “New Breed Dashiki is freedom,” and the

“Freedom Suit gives more space for Black men’s … larger backside. I never feel the restriction

… in a New Breed suit ….” The segment reinforces a positive image of Black entrepreneurship,

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while reporting on a fashion trend imbued with cultural nationalism. “New Breed” refers to a

new breed of Black men who are fashionable, masculine, and Black-identified.

Following the New Breed documentary, there was an interview with the United

States’ only top-ranking Black jockey. Next, the episode featured a segment on the Black

Panthers, who were introduced as “Ridding the Black ghetto of police brutality.” The episode

featured the Panthers reading their 10-point program, and showcased Huey Newton. Introducing

the Panthers, the announcer at Black Journal quotes Huey Newton saying, “Aggression in the

economical area is as real as physical aggression by the racist police that occupy our community,

as a foreign troop occupies territory.”249 Black Journal’s status as the first and only national

Black public affairs show (until later in the 1970s) was so established that some prominent

figures such as Angela Davis, recognizing the primacy of television, gave “exclusives” to Black

Journal.250

Finally, the episode features Godfrey Cambridge in a spoof of prime-time television’s limited

representations of African Americans in which Cambridge sits in a planning meeting for a TV

show with two white TV executives, who spin endless ideas for a TV show that displays extreme

stereotypes of African Americans, when they include them at all. Godfrey meekly plays the “yes

man” acquiescing to the whites’ every demand, no matter how demeaning or ridiculous.

This first episode of Black Journal moves between civic involvement, cultural

nationalism, and radical nationalism by focusing on the New Breed entrepreneurs, whose critique

249 This idea speaks to the internal colony thesis, which argued that African American’s situation in the United States was analogous to a colonial situation, articulated by Robert Allen in Black Awakening in Capitalist America. 250 Fontanez interview by author, October, 2004.

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of white capitalistic society represented one kind of alternative, to the Black Panthers, whose critique offered a more radical, utopian alternative.

While Black Journal’s crew traveled around the country, Soul! brought the country’s top artists to New York. Soul! featured a studio audience and a colorful stage. The host, Ellis

Haizlip, sat on a brightly colored chair in a living room set near the stage. Performers would perform on stage and then join Haizlip for a conversation. In one particularly intimate episode,

Haizlip interviewed Amiri Baraka in low “mood” lighting with a coffee table between them holding Baraka’s collected works. Haizlip’s interview with Baraka proceeds in apparent “real time” with little editing. Their conversation is interspersed with Baraka performing his poetry;

when he does this he simply gets up from the living room set, walks to the stage, performs, and

then returns to the set. The transition to high key stage lighting and a more public persona for the

readings present two parts of Baraka’s persona, the artist in performance and the man in

conversation.251

In addition to offering content that radically differed from the rest of PBS, Black

Journal and Soul! had an entirely different aesthetic. Both Black Journal and Soul! looked quite

different from the staid adult programming of most of the rest of PBS. The electric titles of Soul!

and relatively quick pacing of Black Journal’s opening resemble little else on PBS except for the

blockbuster children’s show Sesame Street that premiered in 1969. Black Journal and Soul! were

significant aesthetic and generic innovations in comparison with PBS mainstay programs like

The Advocates that featured static cameras and talking heads. Soul!’s aesthetic was more

reminiscent of a theater marquis, which befitted the staged performances that constituted the

251 See, for example, Woodard. A Nation Within a Nation.

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show. When Stan Lathan came to Soul! he brought technical and artistic innovations. Video

production was new, and video effects produced by a machine called a video “toaster” provided an alternative to straightforward cinematography. In an especially innovative episode, Lathan telecast Stevie Wonder playing on the set in such a way that his image doubled, repeated, and then reformed as a single image. This type of innovation, along with an exceptional line-up of guests, made Soul! one of the most acclaimed programs on PBS.

From Detroit to Los Angeles: Black Journal Makes itself At Home in the Black U.S.A.

Despite budget challenges, the geographical breadth of Black Journal coverage in

the early years of production offers an in-depth portrait of African American communities and

activism in Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, in addition to the

program’s coverage of Africa and the Caribbean. The program examined the church of the Black

Madonna in Detroit, and Iceberg Slim in Chicago. The low-budget economics of the program

dictated an intense shooting schedule in which the staff shot two shows in a short timeframe,

then edited the program, (often at the PBS studios in Ann Arbor because it was cheaper than in

New York).252 Ultimately, Black Journal presented viewers a new perspective on their own

locale by broadcasting stories from around the country.

Many of the episodes that were filmed in New York City touched on issues

significant to African American audiences elsewhere, such as a film in the fifth episode in which

a Black Journal Workshop student (see chapter 5) presented a parody about Blacks’ frustrations

with white liberals’ response to the “urban crisis.” The film showcased the contradictions of

white liberals and their concerns, possibly implying a parody of New York Mayor John Lindsey,

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 155 who was famous for dealing with tense racial situations in person. The short film depicts a white man with an “I Give A damn button,” who has observed a fire blazing in a tenement building during his commute. He attempts to use a pay phone to call the fire department, but it is in use when he arrives. The encounter turns into a confrontation, with the African American man using the pay phone asking the white commuter “you are concerned about the fire, but are they your kids?” When the commuter responds, “of course they are not my kids,” the Black man points out his hypocrisy, saying that the white man’s kids probably live far away in a fire proof house. The

Black man presses on, “what are you doing about the rats, and the junkies and the other problems around here? You’re the white knight and come uptown to save us Black people.” The white man counters, “you won’t help your own people.” Their conversation echoes the divide between well- intentioned but intentioned white liberals who want harmony but do not want to give up life in a racially exclusive neighborhood, and Black ghetto-dwellers tired of liberal rhetoric.

After the film, the program proposes another response to the challenges facing urban

African Americans in a documentary segment on a Los Angeles-based self-help initiative called

Operation Bootstrap. The documentary highlights Black Journal’s role as a purveyor of new information for a responsive and often activist audience. Producer William Greaves introduces the program, stating his own positive judgment of Bootstrap’s effectiveness, saying, “In many parts of the country, Black Americans are looking to self-help programs as a way toward self realization. Operation Bootstrap, in South Central Los Angeles is one of these programs. And

Bootstrap seems to be working.”

252 Fontanez interview.

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This documentary cuts to the heart of questions central to Black leaders and organizers from Newark to Detroit, and from Atlanta to Oakland: What should be the role of money in the African American community? Or to quote someone from Operation Bootstrap

“How can I be Black and a capitalist?” Many self-help initiatives of this era explicitly rejected capitalism. Operation Bootstrap was an independent, Black Power oriented organization, and its businesses were collectives. When a man in an encounter-group style discussion, asks heatedly

“How can I be Black and a capitalist?” He answers his own question, saying, “Blackness says, I love my brother; capitalism says screw your brother.”

After showcasing the leader of Operation Bootstrap speaking on these topics, the program transitions into a traditional documentary style, complete with voice-overs, interviews, and long takes of people working in the various industries that Operation Bootstrap developed.

The organization’s goal of “uniting Black men to function in society” had nine subsidiary “self help” economic enterprises, including a company that produced Black dolls (Shindana Toys) and a mechanic shop (the Body and Thunder Shop). These organizations provided training and wages to African Americans in South Central Los Angeles. The segment features images of men working in the machine shop and of men and women making the Black dolls. These images were strikingly different from prime time’s stereotypical representations of African Americans as maids, nurses or sidekicks, or new but fantastic representations such as Bill Cosby’s role on Eye

Spy as an international detectives.

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A discussion of Operation Bootstrap’s funding was particularly reminiscent of Black

Journal’s own precarious funding, which may explain the long discussion of the issue.253

Operation Bootstrap’s officer explained her aversion to foundation support because of the strings attached and resulting vulnerability to funding cuts:

We started in 1965. We don’t accept any government funds or large foundations funds—We wanted it to be a self-help group. We know by looking at what happens to other projects and organizations. When you get that large check you run into hang-ups. You got people telling where to do, how to do, and what to do. There have been times when the big money has come to a project, but there was always that psychological threat: you never knew when that money was going to go. Organization after organizations come into existence, go through that money and go out of existence in the time we have developed from nothing to about a dozen businesses.

This concern about being ideologically compromised by funding organizations was extremely controversial among African American organizations.254 The range of services created

by Bootstrap serves as a reminder of the multifaceted nature of the struggle for Black

empowerment. After the service shop, the documentary focuses on the doll factory, where

workers discuss the challenge of getting manufacturers not to “whiten” the features of the dolls.

A long take of a young Black girl choosing her doll in the store reminds viewers what the stakes

are in the production of new icons for children. The segment also features Operation Bootstrap’s

Thursday night encounter groups, in which (mostly white) “friends of bootstrap” say pointedly

that their job is to raise money “without having any say so in Bootstrap, in what we’ll do with

253 “Grant by Polaroid Will Help Black Journal Stay on TV,“ New York Times (November 20, 1968): 93. “Extension is Gained By Black Journal, “ New York Times (December 12, 1968): 34. Jack Gould, “TV: Black Journal, Facing Cutback, Seeks Funds,“ New York Times (June 24, 1969): 91. 254 See Robert Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America. For an examination of the role of foundations, especially the Ford Foundation, in the creation of African American Studies Departments at universities, see Noliwe Rooks, White Money/Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies and the Crisis of Race and Higher Education (Boston: Beacon, 2006).

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it.” One such white participant acknowledges that participating in Bootstrap has added meaning

to her life, saying, “There are other things in life besides what I am used to.” The framing of this

documentary by the Black Journal staff signals their advocacy for the points of view expressed in the segment.

Black Journal on Strike

Negro Staffers of Black Journal Walkout vs. NET on Show Control. National Educational Television’s Black Journal, black staffers walked out en mass last week and as of yesterday afternoon tense negotiations with NET executives had failed to satisfy the Negro demands. Variety, August 21, 1968.

Although Black Journal was conceived and promoted as a Black program, NET

initially hired a white executive producer, Al Permutter, and placed other white professionals in

key positions. Because all of the on-camera talent was Black, the program was frequently read

by critics and other viewers as being Black-produced. The Black staff members, who numbered

12 in a staff of twenty felt that this was tantamount to false advertising. The African Americans on staff were visible, but they felt frustrated that the program was not, as it purported to be, by and for African Americans. As a result, the Black staff members staged a highly visible walk out and strike, demanding that Lou Potter replace the white executive producer. Unquestionably, the national nature of Black Journal, and the fact that NET was highly visible as a new alternative to

commercial television, enhanced the media recognition and therefore the success of the strike.

The New York Times and Variety picked up the strike story. On August 21, 1968, a Variety headline appeared, “Negro workers strike!” 255 While issues of editorial control and the demand

255 Robert E. Dallos, “11 Negro Staff Members Quit N.E.T. ‘Black Journal’ Program,“ New York Times (August 21, 1968): 91.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 159 to hire Black technicians did become issues at some local Black public affairs programs, Black

Journal’s New York City location and national format guaranteed significant media exposure for the strike. Variety and the New York Times regularly featured stories about PBS, and a walkout by

African American staff members was a major story.

Eventually, the station capitulated to the staff’s demand for a Black executive producer, and the majority of the striking staff members returned to the program. NET hired the respected actor and filmmaker William Greaves to serve as the executive producer. The staff was willing to accept the station’s choice of Greaves, though they had lobbied, initially, for staff member Lou Potter. While they were now under Black management, they faced a new problem of finding Black camera and sound crews. As I document in the following chapter, the program would have to start its own training program to circumvent the entrenched racial discrimination in the television industry as a whole.

After the strike, many changes were evident. For the first time, the hosts wore dashikis and greeted viewers in Yoruba. In an episode shortly after the strike, Lou House began the show by hailing the viewers as brothers and sisters:

Jambo—Asalam Aaleikam, Aquaylo. That’s Yoruba brothers and sisters, This is Lou House with William Greaves This month Black Journal takes a look at a growing change of attitudes within the black community …. and the soulful Nina Simone sings and talks about these attitudes as an artist and a mama—brother Bill?

The new opening theme featured a red map of Africa throbbing in the center of a black background with red and green outlines, the colors of Pan-Africanism. Inside the map, a series of photographs flashed, representing issues that the program would document. The program’s coverage of Africa increased after the strike. It would grow much more the following season when the program, in another unprecedented move, opened a bureau in Ethiopia. The

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map was as much a symbol of Black Power as of Africa.256 While the strike brought about many

new assertive and innovative ideas, the funding for the program was never as certain as it had

been in the first season. Under Greaves in 1969, the program faced large budget cuts, and had to

show many repeat episodes.257

Reception of Black Journal and Soul!

When the program premiered, critics applauded its seriousness and dignity. One wrote that it put “regular TV” to shame with its insightful commentary and excellent production.

An enthusiastic white reviewer, operating under the mistaken assumption that the program was entirely under Black control, wrote that Black Journal was “different” because

It is not only about Negroes. It not only features Negroes. It is not only aimed at Negroes. It is actually created by Negroes, from the first ideas all the way throughout production.258

These reviews show that Black Journal gained credibility because it fit into the

emerging critical category of “quality” television.259 The title of a later article featuring Black

Journal and other shows, “Black Excellence in the Wasteland,” summarizes the responses of many critics to the program.

In light of the fame and popularity of many of its guests, it is not surprising that

Soul! was very popular. Soul!’s technical innovation, and experimental aesthetics excited both

256 “African Base Near for Black Journal,“ New York Times (July 30, 1970): 12. 257 “Black TV: Its Problems and Promises,” Ebony (September 1969): 88–90. 258 Frank Getlein, “Black Journal: Regular Television Fare Put to Shame by Negro Production,” Niagara Falls Gazette (June 25, 1968). 259 Kirsten Marthe Lentz, “Quality Versus Relevance: Feminism, Race, and the Politics of the Sign in 1970s Television.” Camera Obscura 15, no. 43 (2000): pp. 45–93.

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critics and other viewers. Given that their original budget was only $625,000, the polished look

of the program is even more impressive.260 For the most part, the critical reception linked Soul!

with exciting changes in Black cultural production and social and political empowerment. One

glowing review in 1971 in the NY Amsterdam News of an episode featuring Kathleen Cleaver, called Soul! a beacon of Black culture. Titled, “TV no longer a Wasteland,” the review claims that “Soul! remains best for Blacks on TV!,” maintaining that the show had:

given us a chance to bear witness to the fact of how real, how dynamic and how genuinely attractive television can be …. Soul! is a special feast in color- make sure this show is on your must list for viewing every week …. all along the channel selector you won’t do any better check it out!

The studio audience modeled engaged and responsive viewership to the home audience. The

New York Times wrote:

People in attendance at the show are soul handclappers all, moving with the beat of all the music, without shame or affection [sic] call and response whenever, wherever the spirit strikes ya!

The writer argues that the connection between the art on Soul! and the political and spiritual

rebirth of African Americans in the Black liberation struggle is palpable. He writes that Soul!

represented:

the phenomenon of what is happening to Blacks in this country in these frequently terrifying times … To see [Soul!] is to know how urgent a thing is a people’s sense of themselves as a reborn, spiritually awakened 20th century tribe discovering life amid the emotional deaths occurring in so much of the rest of this country.261

260 This $625,000 came from the Ford Foundation. Fred Feretti, “Harris Polls Weigh Effects of Ethnic Programming,” New York Times (July 4, 1969): p. 43. 261 Clayton Riley, “That New Black Magic,” New York Times (May 17, 1970): 108.

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Tellingly, this reviewer uses the quality of Soul! to criticize network fare. His only

criticism of Soul! guest Miss Black America shows this disdain for network fare. He finds her

comments irrelevant, and wrote, “if she had nothing to say she should have said it on a network

show.” Another critic felt the high artistic content of Soul! transcended ratings.

These brothers each bring a personal style to an hour of television that could never be measured by the ratings, cannot be understood by counting how many viewer they reach at exactly which hour. Just knowing they are doing it, are out there, makes the tube seem like the newest of new places.262

Indeed, given the program’s popularity, viewers may not have realized that the program was

vulnerable to cancellation due to the shifting priorities of PBS in the early 1970s.

Yet while the critical response to the program was largely positive, at least one critic was concerned that any arts-focused show perpetuated the stereotype about African Americans as only being capable of or interested in singing and dancing. In Freedomways, James Haskins wrote:

Initially on Soul! musical spots were evenly balanced with interviews and nonmusical offerings. As time went on however the number of nonmusical features diminished and the number of musical offerings increased. Many Black intellectuals are aware of and resent the notion that a black show cannot be successful unless music predominates, and many Blacks ceased to watch Soul! for this reason. When the grant that supported Soul! was not renewed the show was discontinued and its audience did not raise sufficient protest to cause reconsideration of its discontinuance.

Soul!’s host Ellis Haizlip was also concerned about playing into racial stereotypes, telling the New York Times:

262 Ibid.

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We are very interested in white viewers if their going to watch with an open mind. But we’re not interested if they tune in to watch a lot of darkies strumming and singing.263

Soul!’s own marketing may have consciously fed into the stereotype that Haskins refers to:

“Soul! a weekly all black variety talk show, born out of a belief that television may very well reach a minority audience better with performance than with documentaries.”

Haskins’ strong disdain for Soul! was exceptional, but he was correct that intellectuals and

middle class Blacks lobbied against Black Journal’s cancellation, but failed to do so for Soul!

when it was threatened with cancellation.

Syndication and Censorship

In spite of the greater visibility and resources Black Journal had (in comparison with

local Black programs) it was hampered in its efforts to be a truly national show by public

television’s clunky system of syndication by mail. This distribution system presented real

challenges to building an audience in multiple locales since the program did not play at the same

time everywhere. This in turn made it difficult to market the show, since an announcer could not

mention the next time the program would be broadcast in that market, on the show, (i.e. “We’ll

see you next Saturday”). This meant that audience members had to be fairly dedicated to seeking

out the program in each market.264

Groups of Black Journal viewers in Washington D.C., and a few other cities,

concerned about these challenges, formed an affinity group called “Friends of Black Journal”

263 Robert Berkvist, “Dig It or Forget It,” New York Times (September 15, 1968): D 27. 264 Although it would have been possible for local stations to run their own messages promoting the program and stating its air-time, in practice this did not always happen.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 164 that organized phone trees to remind people to tune in to the program. Members of this group wrote to a critic who had written a negative article about Black Journal for the New York Times, to let him know that he had “done a great program a grave disservice.”265 The formation of these groups demonstrates that viewers understood both the challenges facing Black Journal and the importance of supporting a national African American television program.

PBS syndication gave individual station managers considerable discretion about which programs to air, which meant that Black Journal and Soul! were not automatically picked up by all affiliates. Even the children’s television program Sesame Street, (1969-present), with its representation of an integrated street, was too controversial for some educational television station managers. In a historic case, similar to the WLBT case in Mississippi, Alabama ETV lost its broadcast license because of the station’s repeated refusal to air Black programs. In the case of Alabama ETV, Black Journal was one of the key points of contention. Achieving a truly national distribution for Black Journal was a critical goal, but Alabama ETV was reluctant to show Black Journal (or Soul! and Sesame Street.) While the station ostensibly objected to the language in specific episodes, they declined to show the series as a whole. Although the syndication arrangement with NET did not compel stations to broadcast every television program sent by the network, the exclusion appeared to the program staff and some activists as being an intentional racist exclusion.

A representative of Alabama ETV claimed to the FCC that Black Journal contained

“lewd vulgar obscene profane and repulsive materials” Furthermore, the representative contended that Alabama ETV had the right to show what they wanted:

265 Personal correspondence from “Friends of Black Journal” to Mr. John O’Connor, undated. Undated. (Black Journal files at the National Public Broadcasting Archive.)

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“Local blacks here in Alabama are not complaining at all—its just too bad we have to air our dirty linen”

the writer in the CS Monitor responded:

This response begs many questions, why would Black Alabama residents complain about not receiving a program that they had never heard of. Furthermore, was Alabama ETV making a good faith effort to serve their state. In 1973 the court decided it was not, and Alabama ETV, with eight stations under their aegis, lost their license to broadcast.266

Alabama ETV was far from the only station that objected to either the entire

program, or individual episodes of Black Journal. A 1971 episode about the Angela Davis case and the plight of Black prisoners was quite controversial and a Las Vegas program manager wrote to Black Journal’s then executive producer Tony Brown, saying that “had she had an

opportunity to preview the program it would not have been shown.”267 While activists targeted

Jackson Mississippi’s commercial TV station WLBT for airing racist content and comments and for excluding people of color from the news, no public station had been targeted for censure for these kinds of exclusions. When Alabama ETV lost their license, it sent a strong message to other affiliates. This did not stop stations from refusing to air certain episodes, but it did cause stations to think twice before passing on the series, at least until the mid 1970s when Black

Perspective on the News offered an alternative Black public affairs program that many station managers found more palatable.

266 Dennis. “FCC vs. Alabama over TV Tuneout.” 267 Carol Morton, “Public Service for Black Viewers, Some Other Choices Beyond Off/On,” Black Enterprise (August 1979). Morton worked on Black Journal and went to a successful broadcasting career in news reporting in Los Angeles.

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No Ratings North of 96th Street: Measuring Audiences for Black Programming

Television rating systems largely ignored the preferences of Black audiences, leaving

little evidence for the producers of Soul! or Black Journal as they struggled to keep their

programs from being cancelled. As Soul!’s host, Ellis Haizlip said, “There are no ratings taken

north of 96th street.”268 “North of 96th street stands for New York’s Harlem, which

metaphorically stood for all of Black America. Even today, African American preferences are

mostly unheeded when ratings organizations such as Nielsen measure television viewers, and

this is tacitly understood by broadcasters.269 Furthermore, audience ratings are advertiser-driven,

with programs that attract many viewers in sought-after demographics such as young, white men,

being the most attractive and therefore expensive to advertisers. Since public televisions had no

need to sell advertising and had little funding to investigate its audience, they did far less

audience research than commercial television. A challenge faced by Soul!’s producer, Ellis

Haizlip, was that despite the many letters received by the program, and other evidence that it was

popular, Soul!, like other Black television programs, fell into a national ratings vacuum. Black

audiences were measured at a far lower rate than their television viewing would have justified.

This disenfranchised Black viewers from having their preferences recorded by ratings systems such as Nielsen, which have played a powerful role in what gets on and stays on the air.270

However, even when African Americans’ preferences were measured, they were not

always heeded, particularly as the uprisings began to fade into memory. Even though the data

was limited, the audience data that does exist for Black Journal and Soul! shows that both

268 Berkvist, “Dig it or Forget It.” p. D 27. 269 For an excellent analysis of the problems with ratings, see Eileen Meehan, Why TV is Not Our Fault: Television Programming, Viewers and Who’s Really in Control (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005).

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programs brought African Americans to public television, which apparently was not enough to

keep PBS from canceling first Soul! and later Black Journal. Although Black Journal and Soul!

were popular with overlapping audiences, the mostly local data collected by PBS itself, as well

as from Harris polls, shows that the audiences were nonetheless distinct. One PBS survey in the

early 1970s pointed out some salient facts about Black Journal’s audience, which differentiate

them from PBS’s typical middle and upper class, white audience, but showed that Black

Journal’s audiences were quite diverse. 64% of Black Journal’s viewers were high school

graduates.271 74% of Black Journal’s audience was employed, and their average income as a

whole was higher than the average African American income in the United States at the same

time.272 In the case of Soul!, a Harris poll taken among “912 black families in Harlem, Bedford-

Stuyvesant, South Jamaica, and the South Bronx” demonstrated that African Americans were

watching Soul! in “significant numbers.” According to the New York Times, Mr. Harris said that when the program broadcast in the accessible timeslot of Thursday at 9 p.m. “it gathered an audience that compared favorably with prime-time commercial shows on the three major networks. Harris estimated that 170,000–250,000 “persons” out of 400,000 Black television viewers watched Soul!.273

A survey commissioned by Leroy Miller at PBS in 1972 showed that “ghetto

residents” in Jacksonville, Florida, were more than twice as likely to watch Black Journal and

270 Meehan, 2005. 271 James D. Williams, “Blacks and Public TV: As Squeeze Play Misfires,” Black Enterprise (January 1974): pp. 31-3. 272 Ibid. 273 Feretti, “Harris Polls.” p. 43.

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Soul! than non “ghetto residents.”274 In order to ascertain the role of these programs in attracting

Black audiences to PBS, researcher Miller commissioned a study of 2,400 African American

households in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St Louis, Washington DC,

and New York City. The reviewer points out that the Saint Louis public television station did not

carry Black Journal or Soul! While 70.6% of those surveyed watched Flip Wilson, and 21.8 %

watched Julia, 20. 8 %watched Soul!, and 13.2% watched Black Journal. Miller concluded that

Soul! and Black Journal drew Black viewers to public television who were not interested in other

public television programming.275 It is difficult to make a direct comparison of between Black

Journal’s audience or Soul!’s audience with general PBS viewing statistics, which measures

percentages of the entire U.S. population who viewed PBS, finding that 69% of the nation’s

college graduates were (or claimed to be) PBS viewers.

What is evident from the decision to cancel Soul!, and eventually Black Journal, on

public television is that attracting new, African American viewers was not a top priority. PBS officials commissioned limited ratings studies of their Black programs, but these studies all demonstrated that, in the localities surveyed, African Americans were watching these programs in significant numbers. The fact that they chose to cancel these programs, citing budget shortfalls, makes clear that it was the pressures of the urban uprisings and activism that kept the programs on the air. Popularity was not enough.

274 Memorandum, December 14, 1972. From J. Golden to Jack Lyle, Subject “Data Regarding Black Journal.” NPBA. 274 “Soul TV Cancellation Termed ‘An Insult,’” Jet (June 21, 1973): p. 5. 275 Memorandum, December 14, 1972. From J. Golden to Jack Lyle, Subject “Data Regarding Black Journal.” NPBA.

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Responding to his program’s cancellation, Ellis Haizlip pointed out the decision to cancel Soul! ignored the preferences of African American audiences.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting claimed that it was not refunding Soul! because they wanted to replace it with an interracial show called Interface- they said that they preferred a sociological production rather than a cultural one which is really no reason for canceling Soul! The tragedy is that Blacks didn’t have any voice about how the CPB distributed the 215 million it had available for public television.276

Furthermore, it is telling that the CPB cited “making room” for another Black or

“interracial” program was the reason for canceling the critically acclaimed Soul! Why was there no room for both programs?

After the cancellation, another writer points out that supporters of Soul! did not use the protest tactics that Black Journal viewers had employed when that program was threatened with cancellation, saying, “power responds to power.”277

Rather than blame Soul!’s 1974 cancellation on complacence, it is important to point out that at least a portion of Soul!’s audience was probably teens and “tweens” who may have been less likely to form a phone tree, or to feel empowered to protest in as consumers.

Furthermore, as Eileen Meehan aptly points out in Why TV is Not Our Fault!, blaming viewers for cancelled programs relies on the same class-based and often racist biases that the network’s reliance on Nielson ratings are based in. As Charles Hobson, of Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, Black

Journal, and Like It Is, aptly summarized the situation in 1971, “We have to deal with white rating systems that have nothing to do with us.”278 Perhaps more to the point, in the case of

276 “Soul TV Cancellation Termed ‘An Insult,’” p. 5. 277 Pamela Douglas, “Black Television: Avenues of Power.” Black Scholar 5 (September, 1973): 23–31. 278 Hobson Quoted in Morton.

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PBS’s ambivalence about building a Black audience, even when the ratings and critical acclaim

would seem to have called for keeping Soul! on the air, their decision was to kill the program.

Some of the tensions between PBS leadership’s desire to demonstrate their inclusive

mission and their ambivalent relationship to Black programming are evident in a letter from

PBS’s John W. Macy: a response to an irate, racist viewer of Black Journal. Macy assures the

viewer that the offending episode, which addressed Black lawyers and their attempts to

transform the U.S. legal system, was really just an effort to “assist in developing black self

esteem by investigating and discussing black problems and reflecting black experiences honestly with a series entirely by blacks.” Furthermore, Macy writes that the featured lawyers “are urging that change in the American way of life be brought about through peaceful and legal means—not by violence or the overthrow of the government.” Macy ends the letter by expressing his hope that there are “other public TV program [sic] that you will enjoy.” 279 This kind of characterization of the program as an attempt to revive Black self-esteem illustrates some of the patronizing attitudes felt by PBS leaders towards the program in 1972, attitudes that the staff of

Black Journal were well aware of as they worked each day to create their program.

Despite successful critical response, and a loyal audience, every season of Black

Journal had fewer resources than the one before. After the strike, African American staff members had control, but they had fewer dollars to control; Black Journal was eventually cut from one hour to a half hour. Finally in 1975, the program left public television and took its corporate sponsorship to commercial television. Soul!, even though it was more popular than

279 Viewer Letter, NPBA.

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Black Journal, was the first to disappear. PBS cited budget shortfalls in both cancellations, despite the fact that both Soul! and Black Journal had been able to secure corporate sponsorship.

Soul! was cancelled despite high ratings, which offers a striking example of public

television’s ambivalence about popular culture, particularly Black popular culture. While the

program may have aspired to a high art status, it was a very popular show, relative to many

programs on public television. Neither its “high art” status, nor its very real and documented

popularity could keep it on the air. Because of Black Journal’s audience’s activism, it survived

past Soul’s cancellation. But this status was not enough to keep it on the air. PBS elected not to

continue airing Black Journal in 1976, despite powerful supporters such as the FCC’s first

African American Commissioner, Benjamin Hooks,280 and $20,000 from the Pepsi

corporation.281 Black Journal migrated to commercial television in 1977.282

While Black Journal outlasted Soul!, by 1973 it was surpassed in distribution by

Black Perspective on the News—many more stations chose to air Black Perspective, in part

because Black Journal host Tony Brown had become a controversial figure in public television.283 A new cooperative plan allowed individual public stations even more discretion

over which programs they wanted to air, and in 1972, only a quarter of PBS’s 139 stations chose

to carry Black Journal. The vast majority did carry Black Perspective on the News, which

focused on the same national issues that mainstream news covered, but presented a commentary

from Black journalists.

280 “Hooks, FCC Commissioner: Keep Black Journal on the Air,” New York Amsterdam News (January 20, 1973). 281 New York Times (December 5, 1975): 78. 282 Gerald Fraser, “Black Journal is Syndicated,” New York Times (November 10, 1977).

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Conclusion

In the mid 1970s many Black public affairs programs were cancelled. Some of their

replacements (when they were replaced) were more “interracial” in their address. For example,

Soul! was replaced on PBS with a program that addressed African American concerns from a

perspective of interracial dialogue. The Black perspective of Soul! and Black Journal began to

seem too radical to PBS decision makers by the mid 1970s. For PBS, making visible a separate

Black public sphere became either threatening or uninteresting. Soul! was replaced by a program

called Interface and Black Journal was eclipsed by Black Perspective on The News (WHYY –

Philadelphia). The differences between these “interracial dialogue” programs and Black

programs were significant. Black Journal focused both on nationally known issues and issues mostly discussed internally in the Black community. For example, the future of historically

Black colleges was not on the six o’clock news, but it was addressed on Black Journal. On the other hand, Black Perspective on the News, primarily featured Black commentators speaking on issues that were headlining in the mainstream press such as the Vietnam war, or speaking with invited guests such as Bella Abzug, Dorothy Height, and Shirley Chisholm.

This change away from a focus on Black liberation and dialogue within Black communities towards inter-racial dialogue and the political mainstream affected local Black public affairs programs as well. During the late 1970s, WGBH changed Say Brother’s format as

well, to a program that addressed African American, Asian American, and Latino issues. In the

eighties, WGBH cancelled that program and put the resources that were dedicated to it towards a

Black program again. That show, still broadcasting as of this writing, is called Basic Black.

283 Memorandum to John W Macy from Bill Duke. Duke writes that Leroy Miller felt that “many members of the black communications community feel that Tony is being in arbitrary is excluding all view points but his own from

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Although Tony Brown was successful in keeping Black Journal on the air by finding a

commercial network, it eventually moved back to public television as Tony Brown’s Journal. By

this time, the program was substantially different. No longer a newsmagazine; it became more of

a talk show, with a far smaller budget. Altogether, the shift towards interracial dialogue programs

and away from programs like Black Journal and Soul! has much to tell us about both changes in

the U.S. racial climate, as well as changes at PBS. The history of these programs demonstrates

that PBS knowingly cancelled programs that, by their own measures, were very popular with

Black audiences. This disregard for Black interests reveals that as time moved on PBS and others

had less and less motivation to keep Black perspectives on television.

The history of the first national Black public affairs television programs, Black

Journal and Soul!, shows that Civil Rights demands by African Americans, such as demands for political representation, better housing, and better schools, were often accompanied by demands to access the airwaves. As the history of the changes and expansion of Black print media in the

1950s demonstrates, changes in African American status as a group fed a hunger for new types of media representation.284 In the case of Black Journal and Soul!, on the heels of significant moves forward, African Americans made representational demands, linking media representation with changes in societal status. In the struggle for emancipation, African Americans developed the publication Freedom’s Journal, taking advantage of extant technology. Black Journal followed in this tradition, and in the process challenged broadcasters to rethink both their employment and programming practices. Meanwhile, Soul! made the connections between Black arts and Black

Black Journal as are white directors and producers on black shows.” Personal Memo-NPBA. 284 Barbara Dianne Savage has brilliantly demonstrated this in the case of radio in the World War II period and its aftermath in Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938–1948.

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Airing these programs nationally presented new opportunities for local audiences to learn about exciting initiatives in other locales, to hear news of Africa and of African America absent from other sources, and to witness the celebration of Black achievement in a national and highly visible forum.

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Chapter 5

Getting Soul Behind the Camera: Producing Black Media Workers

Together with the movement towards Black public-affairs television, the initiation of

training programs and other new avenues to media careers constitutes a powerful and lasting

result of the struggle for Black media representation. One of the most prominent training

programs among the many that Black media activists demanded and created in this era was the

Black Journal Workshop (later called the National Educational Television Training School). The

workshop produced an exceptional number of long standing and prolific media makers. The

history of the Black Journal Workshop demonstrates that it created of a network of Black media professionals who were able to hire, train, and collaborate with one another. The history of pervasive anti-Black discrimination in the television unions made training programs vital as alternative credentialing sites.

A 1972 article in Ebony magazine celebrated the Black Journal Workshop for bringing African Americans into the television industry, or “getting soul behind the camera.” The workshop’s goal was “to fill the industry with beautiful, talented, creative, and knowledgeable brothers and sisters” ensuring that its tireless founder, Peggy Pinn would no longer hear from television stations, “we would hire some but we can’t find any who are qualified.” [emphasis added]. By “some” and “any” Pinn referred to African American media workers—who were caught between a sudden upswing of interest in hiring African Americans in this era, and a history of entrenched discrimination in the broadcast industry. As production coordinator for

Black Journal, Peggy Pinn found herself called by other stations looking for Black media

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workers, and having to tell them she knew of no Black media workers who were available.285

Finally, she quit her post as production coordinator to manage the training program, initially called the Black Journal Workshop, which ran from 1968–1973. The impact of the program, despite its small size, was considerable as its graduates continue to work in the industry. As filmmaker and Black Journal producer St. Clair Bourne observed, “the workshop trained hundreds of third-world technicians, many of whom still work in the film and television industries.”286

The images that illustrate the Ebony article depict African American students in

cinematography, scriptwriting, and editing workshops. For Ebony readers, familiar with the

broadcasting industry’s history of excluding African Americans, these images of the “burgeoning

Black vanguard” of media makers represented an exciting new opportunity.287 The emergence of

numerous tuition-free, minority-oriented broadcast training programs in this era presented

interested students with the opportunity to join a burgeoning field that had previously been

almost completely inaccessible to them. The training programs gave hundreds of Black media

workers (and a significant number of Latinos as well) the skills they would need to enter media professions. In New York City alone, in addition to the Black Journal Workshop, there were numerous other training programs from the film-oriented Third World Film Institute and

285 A lifelong commitment to training Black media workers propelled Pinn into a career at Howard University’s School of Communication. Janet Cooke. “Howard University's Dynamic Peggy Pinn: Grooming the Black Journalists of the '80s.” Washington Post. (March 6, 1980) 2.

286 St. Clair Bourne, “Breaking Through at Black Journal,” Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire 4 (Summer–Fall 2002), 84–90. 287 “Mrs. Mastermind of TV Black Technical School,” Ebony (May 1972): 12–7.

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Community Film Workshop, to the journalism-oriented Michele Clark Institute,288 and several

other programs that offered workshops and classes in broadcast or print media to African

Americans. There were also training programs in Boston,289 Chicago, Los Angeles, and other

cities.290 Some universities and television stations offered tuition-free television training

programs specifically for “minority” media makers. Many of these focused on preparing students

for technical jobs in the industry. Support for these programs came from governmental agencies

and private foundations, with the Ford Foundation offering major funding for several of these

programs.

Among these schools, the Black Journal Workshop (later called the National

Educational Television Training School) is notable for graduating a number of directors and

producers in addition to many successful cinematographers and other production and technical

workers. The Black Journal Workshop was unique because it was affiliated with a Black

television program, Black Journal. Black Journal had a strong interest in creating a pool of

trained graduates to hire at the program, and they employed many graduates of the school.

Additionally, being in the midst of a radical Black program contributed to students’ political

consciousness and offered an embodiment of the possibility for transforming television from the

inside out. Graduates describe an aura of possibility permeating the workshop. Despite the Black

288 Named for a young graduate of the program who died tragically, the Michele Clark program trained Black journalists at Columbia University, and offered guaranteed placement to graduates. Al Deleon, “Showdown in Morningside Heights,” Black Enterprise (1974). 289 Kay Bourne, “A New Film School to Begin April 1 at Tubman House,” Bay State Banner (March 9, 1978). Earlier in the decade, probably around 1970, a consortium of stations in Boston put together a 33-week training program for 13 Black technicians. Undated memo in Corporation for Public Broadcasting Archives, College Park, Maryland. 290Merritt, “Black Efforts for Soul in Television,” See also: “Black Filmmakers Work Under O. Davis,” Chicago Daily Defender (March 13, 1970). This article describes an innovative mentorship program that sent three young

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Journal Workshop’s small size (relative to some of the other programs) and minimal funding, it

fostered the careers of many individuals who have made their mark in television and film careers.291

Whether trained on the job at or in a training program such as Black Journal

Workshop, Third World Film Institute, or Community Film Workshop, Black media workers who

began their careers between 1968 and 1978 contributed to an unprecedented period of

opportunity for “minority” media workers. Their shared experiences at Black television shows

and in training programs fostered a sense of critical community that continues to nurture their

careers. The veteran media makers interviewed for this volume continue to make an impact

through their own productivity and by their mentorship of other media makers. The interviews

survey the conditions that shaped, encouraged, and discouraged the careers of the interviewees,

offering context crucial to understanding both the history and the present for African American

media makers.

The history of the Black Journal Workshop, shows that the workshop and the work

environment at Black Journal and other Black public affairs programs served as a more than a

technical training ground for Black producers, directors, cinematographers, technicians, and

journalists, but also a political and intellectual foundation to life as a Black media maker in a

frequently hostile environment. This historical account of the Black Journal Workshop integrates

the history of the struggle against employment discrimination and for Black access to media

media makers to Africa. One of them, Topper Carew, later became the Executive Producer of Say Brother in the early 1970s. 291 Notably, the program was much smaller in scale than the Community Film Workshop, which at its height had seven sites nationally and is still in existence. Some of the funding for Black Journal workshop came from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the New York Foundation. (see Fritz Jacobi, “NET Press Release,” Wednesday February 18, 1970.)

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careers throughout the film and television industries. In this era, in the U.S. labor market

witnessed an evolving climate of affirmative action that informed both the hiring of African

Americans at television stations and the introduction of training programs. The efficacy of the

Civil Rights Movement was great enough that even President Richard Nixon, despite a complex

and contradictory relationship with Black leaders, did, in fact, support some measures for training Black workers as part of his interest in “Black Capitalism.”292 The fact that film and

television training programs received funding from the Department of Labor signals that federal

employment antidiscrimination measures had an effect on the world of media employment. This

context of affirmative action created new opportunities both for creating training programs and for employment of the graduates of those programs.

Black Journal Workshop—Boot Camp for Media Makers

The students at the Black Journal Workshop were participants in a much larger set of changes in training and hiring practices in the broadcast industry. In the decade following 1968, minority employment in broadcast professions grew at an unprecedented rate—a rate of growth that the industry has not seen since that era. For example, the percentage of African Americans working in local television almost doubled between 1971 and 1981, moving from 5.9% of total staff members to 10.2%.293 However, the following decade saw this percentage rise only from

10.2% to 10.4%. In 1997, the percentage had grown only to 10.9%.294 Thus, the 1970s were the period of the most rapid growth in “minority” employment in the field of American broadcasting.

292 Nancy MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). 293 Ibid. 294 Ibid.

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Tuition-free, specialized training programs for Black and Latino media workers, such as the

Black Journal Workshop, facilitated this growth.

This community of alumni continues to foster collaborations among its members,

who have created feature films, documentaries and television programs such as: Let the Church

Say Amen, 1974, Watermelon Man 1969, Hill Street Blues (1981–1987), Eyes on the Prize, 1987,

Good Morning America (1975–present), Making Do the Right Thing 1989, Martin 1992, Dave

Chappelle: Killin’ Them Softly 2000, and Let the Spirits Dance Mambo, 2003.295 Many graduates

worked for NET’s Black programs, Black Journal and Soul!, and several graduates went to work

other Black pubic-affairs programs such as ABC’s Like It Is and NBC’s Positively Black.296

The impact of this cohort extends beyond their long list of production credits, as many of them have trained and mentored other media makers. They have taught on the job in film studios and television programs, as well as by starting independent production companies that employed and trained other media makers. Additionally, several graduates of the Black

Journal Workshop teach at university film programs including New York University’s Cinema

Studies Department, as well as community-based programs.297 Schools such as the Black Journal

Workshop were part of a larger push from within and outside the broadcasting industry for

affirmative action policies that tried to change television content by diversifying television

workers. The continuing impact of this highly productive cohort begs an investigation of their origins.

295 Jacobi mentions recent Black Journal Workshop graduate Jim Morris, who worked on Melvin Van Peebles’ Watermelon Man. 296 This graduate was Vernon West. See Jacobi, p. 2. 297 For example, Ronald Gray is currently on the faculty at New York University’s film school.

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The pedagogy of the Black Journal Workshop nourished a sense of community

among its students that sustained some of its members through encounters with the racism in the

broadcast industry. Many of the workshop alumni who confronted racial barriers and hostility in

the industry responded by starting their own production companies or creating alternative career

networks. These new workers challenged broadcast and film industries to expand and change,

and simultaneously were politicized by their experiences.298 According to numerous graduates,

the curriculum of empowerment and resistance at the school was as important as the technical curriculum. The workshop fostered the leadership potential and talent that it sought in its

applicants. These newly minted Black media workers challenged television hierarchies from the

inside: transforming genres, challenging industry racism, and fighting or circumventing union

hegemony.

Historical Exclusions and New Regulations

While union membership would later provide some African Americans with good

pay and benefits in the broadcast industry, in the 1960s the broadcast industry unions were

perhaps the single greatest barrier to Black participation in media careers. Media-industry unions such as the cinematographer’s union were known for a history of racism and insularity, effectively preventing African Americans from entering these “father–son” organizations.299 In

298 The changes that the school brought about as well as the larger climate of Black media activism and affirmative action made in the lives of its students became apparent to me after conducting oral history interviews with eight graduates of the NET school, including Ronald Gray, Danny Dawson, Bahati Best, Bobby Shepard, and Angela Fontanez. 299 For an exploration of the ways that unions excluded African Americans and women, see MacLean. MacLean’s account of exclusionary tactics by unions in industries such as construction has strong parallels to the kinds of barriers union members constructed to exclude women of all ethnicities and African American men from membership. For a personal account of this treatment, see Jessie Maple, How to Become a Union Camera Woman (New York: LJ Film Productions, 1977).

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addition to excluding African Americans, the “father–son” entry methods excluded daughters of

any race, as Madeline Anderson, who fought her way into the editor’s local union earlier in the

1960s, points out. 300 To understand the power of the unions as gatekeepers to the broadcast professions, it is important to recall that before the proliferation of video and the growth of university-sponsored film departments, the only way to access and learn how to use large and expensive film cameras and other equipment was to enter the unions’ training programs—a door long closed to African Americans. Furthermore, few stations could or would hire nonunion workers.

These hidden habits of the broadcast industry were exposed and then broken when an African American woman, Jessie Maple, successfully sued the New York cinematographer’s union to gain entry in 1973. She wrote,

For minorities, the union has been more harmful than helpful in terms of this group’s getting behind the camera jobs. This is true because of the union’s method of excluding women and other minorities by maintaining a “closed” union situation.301

Peggy Pinn agreed with Maple’s assessment. Even after running the Black Journal

Workshop for five years, Pinn still felt “convinced that the unions and the networks still work

together in blocking out minority technicians.”302 In addition to enabling aspiring media workers to circumvent union discrimination, training programs also answered a significant increase in demand303 for African American workers in the industry following the Kerner Commission

300 Interview with author, 2004. Madeline Anderson’s career is also documented in Yvonne Welbon’s documentary film Sisters in Cinema, as well as in Frances Gateward’s chapter “Documenting the Struggle, African American Women as Media Artists, Media Activists. In Still Lifting, Still Climbing. 301 Maple, p. 1. 302 “ Mrs. Mastermind” Ebony. May, 1972 pp. 12–17, pp. 102–104. 303 “Mrs. Mastermind” 1972.

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Report’s criticism of the absence of minority points of view in mass media. As described in

Chapter 1, a number of pressures contributed to this dramatic upward swing in demand for Black

television workers at the end of the 1960s. The broadcast industry was affected by a national

climate of affirmative action, as well as being subject to its own, specific pressures to hire

African Americans following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The urban uprisings

of the 1960s had already caused stations to scramble to find Black newscasters, often because

white journalists were unwilling or unable to enter African American communities during

uprisings.304 Stations were also motivated to change their racist hiring policies by activist

boycotts and other protest tactics, negative publicity, and new regulatory pressures.305 As

discussed in Chapter 1, regulatory investigation increased somewhat in this period, both against

racist hiring practices and against racist exclusions in program content. The well-publicized

censure of several stations for racist practices added to the stations’ concern about regulation,

although the FCC’s actual affirmative-action requirements remained weak, and their enforcement

even weaker.306 The release of the Kerner Report caused some stations to hire African

Americans, yet this hiring was often tokenistic, or even exploitive (i.e., sending unprepared

workers with minimal training to do riot coverage). While the seeds of change were sown by

these events, it is the training programs (also catalyzed by the assassination of King and urban uprisings) that built a community of Black media workers that has had a lasting impact.

304 Kerner Commission. 305 See Merrit, “Black Efforts for Soul in Television” 306 See Classen, Watching Jim Crow.

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The changes in legal climate in the late 1960s and early 1970s encouraged activists to continue their struggle against certain egregious displays of racist exclusion.307 Since the 1950s, activists criticized Jackson, Mississippi station WLBT for its racist programming. The possibility

(not realized until the 1970s) that WLBT could actually lose their license to operate as punishment for their overt censorship and other infractions empowered local and national media activist groups to successfully demand policy changes from other stations.308 While these demands were wide ranging, they nearly always included a hiring component, and because this was a quantifiable demand, stations targeted by activists often quickly moved to hire and train

African Americans. In light of increasing awareness of the regulatory enforcement, some stations made preemptive hires in an effort to avoid being targeted by activists wielding the law on their side.309

Given the mutual distrust between Black communities and mainstream media, pointedly documented by the Kerner Commission, sending white union film crews into African

American communities to shoot Black documentaries for a program claiming a uniquely Black point of view strained that program’s credibility. How was Black Journal to differentiate itself from other programs? Certainly, having a white executive producer added to these concerns. On the other hand, white critics perceived Black Journal’s first episodes as Black television, not acknowledging the extent of white editorial control. As discussed previously, one of the many positive reviews of the series began,

307 “New York Program Will Aid Blacks in TV,” New York Amsterdam News (March 3, 1970). 308 As discussed previously, advocacy groups such as Black Efforts for Soul In Television (BEST) worked with local groups to teach them the most effective pressure tactics to use to address black issues with their local television stations—Of all of the demands made by local groups, demands for increasing black hiring were by far the most successful, possibly it was the easiest to measure. For more information see Merrit. 309 Mark Lloyd, Media Policy expert, telephone interview by author, September 16, 2004.

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“Black Journal” (sic) is different. It is not only about Negroes. It not only features Negroes. It is not only aimed at Negroes. It is actually created by Negroes from the first ideas all the way through production.310

Yet the program was not “created by Negroes [sic] from the first ideas all the way

through production.” James Day, whose memoir of his career in educational television is

frequently cited in the history of American Public Broadcasting, acknowledges that the show

was, initially, not exactly “what it was advertised to be—a Black show by and for Blacks”

because Blacks were not in charge—white executive producers exerted significant control, and

there were no African Americans on the production side.311

In addition to feeling that their on-air presence allowed Black Journal only to masquerade as a Black show, there were other challenges to African Americans at NET. The environment at NET was far from being an island of racial tolerance. A party thrown for the

Black Journal staff after the release of the first episode featured watermelon and fried chicken, foods the white assistant who planned the reception thought were universally loved by African

Americans. This provoked significant outrage among the African American staff members.

Incidents like this demonstrate that despite NET’s intentions to foster an alternative Black perspective, the station’s staff and culture was thoroughly “clueless about Black people, about

how we feel about stereotypes like that.”312

310 Getlein. 311 Day. 312 Madeline Anderson, interview by author, October, 2004.

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Black Journal Workers Strike to Demand Black Leadership and Black Technicians

As I discussed in chapter 4, African American staff members at Black Journal

wanted to make Black Journal into the Black program it purported to be. St. Clair Bourne, now a

well-known documentary filmmaker, had been expelled from his tenure as a graduate film

student at Columbia University for his role in strikes there. He joined the staff of Black Journal

at the program’s 1968 inception and took a leadership role in the Black Journal strike. Bourne

recalls some of the contradictions that the Black staff members faced initially, in dealing with

white editorial control, and the problems with having white film crews shooting in Black

communities for the program.313 On August 18, 1968, several months after the program

premiered, eleven of Black Journal’s twelve African American staff members walked out and

remained on strike until NET hired a Black executive Producer, William Greaves. But the

problem of finding Black camera and sound crews was still at hand. As mentioned previously,

African Americans had been systematically excluded from media unions. Madeline Anderson

was one of only two Black women in the female-dominated editors union in New York at that

time. Because of this history of racist exclusion, there were no African American union

cinematographers or sound recordists for the program to hire. Since stations were supposed to

hire only union employees, the lack of Black membership provided an excuse for the networks to

hire all-white crews. In response to criticism and demands for Black hiring, station managers

often said, “We would hire Black workers, but we can’t find anyone qualified.”314 This reasoning

was always circular, as on-the-job training was the accepted practice in the film industry. At

313 See St. Clair Bourne. Was the use of largely white film crews a contradiction to the stated goals of Black Journal?” asks St. Clair Bourne in his reflections on working at Black Journal. It was a contradiction, a contradiction that couldn’t immediately be resolved given the paucity of available Black technicians. 314 “Mrs. Mastermind of TV’s Black Tech School,” p. 103–4. St. Clair Bourne.

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about the same time, other stations and schools founded minority media training programs to

train workers both in editorial and content-work and in technical areas.315 Of these programs,

Black Journal Workshop was notable because of its small size, extremely competitive

admissions, and its connection to a national, Black television program.

Black Journal Workshop Produces a Black Vanguard of Media Makers

The solution to this problem was a brainchild of several staff members: Black

Journal would start its own training program called the Black Journal Workshop which would train Black workers not just for Black Journal, but for the industry as a whole. The program would be free, comprehensive, and very pragmatic. The workshop hired a number of well-known media makers, a few Black but mostly white, to train the students. The eight-week, intensive, pragmatically-oriented curriculum presented a lot of information in a short time. Motivated students worked hard to keep up with the brisk pace and those who could not, left the program.

Some talented students found jobs before finishing the program.

The students at the Black Journal Workshop were a diverse group that included both

Black and Latino students of different ages and experience. Recent Vietnam veterans, clerical workers, high school and college students, and graduates took advantage of free film and television training in order to enter broadcast professions. Because of the growth in Black programming and the changes in hiring practices due to regulatory and activist pressures described earlier, the graduates of the training program entered a labor market that was eager to hire them, despite their lack of union cards. In the early years, some Black Journal staffers who

315 For example, CBS, NBC and ABC’s New York Stations all had some type of training program for Black workers by 1971, Charles Anderson, “Blacks in the New York News Community,” Harvard Journal of Afro-American

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lacked production experience took advantage of the program. For example, Angela Fontanez,

who was already working at Black Journal in non-production capacities, trained at the school

and subsequently expanded her role at the Black Journal to associate producer. Fontanez began

at Black Journal shortly after the strike, possibly as part of an effort to bring in more women.

The staff saw her Puerto Rican identity as adding desirable diversity. Fontanez jumped at the

opportunity to leave her coordinator job in advertising, but credits that job with preparing her for

the demands of being a production assistant. She was able to work by day at Black Journal and

train in film and television at night. New York cinema in the late 1960s was her film school as

she trained alongside a cohort of other eager aspiring filmmakers, who spent their free time at

film festivals and at the Bijou Theater watching films by directors such as Akira Kurosawa. This training, along with her ambition and talent, was central first to her promotion to associate producer of Black Journal and ultimately to a career that would earn Fontanez several Emmy

Awards.316

Fontanez’s experience demonstrates how working at the first national Black public-

affairs program and participating in that program’s self-invention, was politicizing. Fotanez was

from a left-leaning Puerto Rican family and became more politicized through work at Black

Journal. She cited meeting activists such as Angela Davis as one of the most influential and

exciting experiences of her life. Experiences like these led Fontanez to consider herself “Black”

rather than “Spanish” (the label her mother insisted on.) She felt it was important to identify

explicitly with the Black movement. Although it distressed her mother, Fontanez wore an afro in

those years.

Affairs (1971). See also, “Black Youths to Explore Journalism at Columbia U.”

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I started identifying w/ my Black roots … it was powerful … it was coming hand in hand at a time when I really saw television as a tool to politicize and educate people.

Furthermore, Fontanez points out, as a woman she was breaking two boundaries with her television career:

Women were not in television in any droves: white, Black or otherwise … a handful of women of color on or off screen.

Like several other people I interviewed, Fontanez attributes her initial opportunity to work in television to the critiques of the Kerner Commission Report, reflecting: “The Kerner report … that’s why I was hired …” While most of the students at the Black Journal Workshop were African American, some were Latino. Although, as Angela Fontanez pointed out, these ethnic categories are not exclusive.317 The school’s logo and its affiliation with Black Journal implied that the school was for African Americans and oriented towards Black empowerment, but it did not explicitly bar entry to non-Blacks. The logo for the school, designed by Fontanez, featured a silhouetted figure with an Afro, holding a film camera. This image implied that the school was for African Americans and oriented towards Black empowerment.

Black Journal Workshop students mostly learned of the school by word of mouth.

Some also saw film crews from the school in action and inquired. In 1968, a film crew involved large cameras and lights; for the most part, the school predated the proliferation of video. Since so few African Americans held cinema jobs, an all-Black crew shooting film could have been a very unusual and striking site, an exciting vision to encounter for an aspiring Black media maker.

In addition to street encounters and word of mouth, some students learned of the school through

316 See Fontanez, interview. 317 There even may have been a few white students enrolled at the Workshop, according to some accounts.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 190 newspaper advertisements. In order to be considered for admissions, students had to write an essay about their career goals.

Like a good number of Black Journal Workshop/NET School alumni, Bahati Best was a recent veteran. Thus, the physical and psychological rigors of the workshop were not difficult to adapt to.318 Now a successful cinematographer at ABC, Best, had heard that television jobs were hard to get, that television was a “closed shop” to African Americans.319 Despite his interest in the field, he did not seek out work in the industry after getting out of the air force in

1970. However, when a friend told him about the Black Journal Workshop he applied and was accepted.

I knew John Wise—who was in the Black Journal program—he was really a gung- ho kind of independent-minded filmmaker—and he invited me to watch a class project in action. It spurred my interest. Around that time, after I got out of the air force, I was looking through a magazine on careers. The article said that television was a very closed shop [to minorities].

This kind of thing discouraged me from trying to get into the workshop—at the time there were 750 applicants—for 50 spaces with 5 alternates—(auditors). The program was free for everyone—it became kind of a government program—they would pay carfare—I knew I wanted to be working in the media but I didn’t know in what capacity … I applied and was accepted.320

The workshop expanded over time, but initially survived on few resources, shutting down a several times in 1968 and 1969 and reopening.321 Using borrowed equipment and laboratory facilities, teachers initially volunteered (but were soon paid) to teach an innovative,

318 Bahati Best, telephone interview by author, September 24, 2004. 319 Ibid.. 320 Ibid. 321 “Black Woman in Television Is a Real Go Go Go Girl,” New York Amsterdam News (March 7, 1970). Jacobi Describes the school closing in September 1969 for “lack of money” and resuming in February of 1970.

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pragmatic curriculum to eager students. Interest in the workshop was very high, and the first-year

the program was overwhelmed with applications. Despite excellent press in the New York Times,

Ebony, and other publications, those working on the program felt that NET could have done more to publicize the workshop’s offerings and the accomplishments of its students.

Furthermore, the inconsistent funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting kept school director Peggy Pinn and her successor Geri Feagans under constant stress and kept the school under constant threat of closure.

In 1969, a $5,000 grant from the New York Foundation gave the program a somewhat more consistent ability to stay open, and to pay teachers. While the school was swamped with applicants, the paltry funding meant that the school could accept only a few. Later in 1969, the Corporation for Public broadcasting contributed $20,000 and the school expanded from a short “crash course” to a longer, several-nights-per-week program that taught cinematography, editing, scriptwriting, directing, film aesthetics, sound recording, and mixing over a twelve-week semester. At some points in the program’s history, the program expanded to the point that students could return for an advanced semester after their initial semester. It also changed its name from the “Black Journal Workshop” to the “National Educational Television

Training School” or NET school. In 1970, the New York State Labor Department granted the school $104,000 enabling them to begin to hold classes year round. In order to obtain this funding, Joan Mack of NET’s development department had to convince policy makers at the

Department of Labor that “there is a category of jobs for television writers, cameramen, directors, and editors.”322 However, before receiving this more substantial support, the expenses

322 “Meeting on Black Journal Training School with Peggy Pinn and Jan Mack, NET” June 5, 1970.

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of running the school led to several complete shut-downs at moments when funds ran thin. By

1972, the school had expanded from an eight-week course to a three-semester course lasting

forty-two weeks, consisting of coursework in sound, cinematography, and editing. At the height

of funding and size, the NET school paid a small stipend plus carfare for its full-time students.

The Workshop’s technical and aesthetic curriculum was beneficial for students;

equally important, if not more so, was the formation of a critical community and consciousness building about being a Black media worker in a white-dominated field. One instructor, Roland

Mitchell, would sabotage student productions intentionally if students were not paying attention.

He did this explicitly to prepare them for the racism they would find in the field. One student remembers,

Roland Mitchell was, like—the man …. He would tell you in the beginning—”If you don’t love it get out now.” “If it’s an 8 o’clock call—be there 10 minutes early or we’ll leave without you.” And he was serious.

He knew the problems Black folks faced being in the industry—If the assistant camera wasn’t by his camera, Roland would sabotage the shoot to mirror sabotage in the field—that you might expect because you were Black or whatever.

Nobody really talked about being of color and doing this—it was about becoming a professional—you already know you’re Black … Roland was beautiful—”if you don’t know what you doing, you are going to get to know!”—”when you turn your back—they’re gonna kick your tripod!” …. Whatever Roland said was law. He shot for Black Journal and he was doing shoots for other programs.323

Both white and Black teachers at the school recognized the racism that their students

would experience in the field. In a sense the workshop was a “boot camp” environment, seeking to foreshadow the challenges that lay ahead. For the students who were recent veterans, this type

323 Best, interview.

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of training was quite familiar. While the school was competitive and intense, it also fostered

collaborative relationships. Bahati Best recalls,

Based upon how you performed in the class—it was up to your peers. That has proven out—some of the people did become producers—people asked to recommend people for a shoot. Your future employment depended—on how well, how interested you were, and how much you absorbed.

The school equipped African American students with skills necessary to enter and

survive in the industry, but it also provided a revolutionary pedagogy—encouraging young

media workers of color to anticipate and surpass racist expectations in the burgeoning and

competitive field of television. Students knew that their voices, and the voices of their families

and communities had never been heard and that television and film offered powerful

representational opportunities, as well as class mobility. All of the alumni interviewed reiterated

this sense of community that the school offered. As Best mentioned, many graduates of the

school continued to associate with one another and collaborate long after the program was

finished. Bahati Best, Ronald Gray, and Bobby Shepard, for example are all still friends and very

active in the industry. Danny Dawson, now a scholar and curator is also still in touch with

colleagues. Angela Fontanez and Bobby Shepard have worked together on recent documentary

projects. Not surprisingly, some people who met working on the shows or in the Black Journal

Workshop became life partners or lifelong friends. These personal and professional colleagues

extended critical personal support as well as professional networking.324

324 The evidence and research methodology upon which I make these claims consists of extensive interviews with eight graduates of the NET school, the former national director of the Community Film Workshop, and two graduates of the Chicago branch of the workshop. In using oral history to understand relatively recent history, it is important to remember that the people I spoke with have very current investments in this subject.

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Graduating Cohorts of the “Black Vanguard”

Graduates of the program embarked on a number of routes after completion. By

1972, a number of graduates of the school returned to teach there. One of these students,

cinematographer Samuel Holmes, reflected on his experiences as a student, saying he had learned, “a lot of practical application of the theory that I had already learned.”325 Many students studied in film school prior to or concurrently with the NET school, but film-school curricula did not emphasize the pragmatic skills needed to get work in the industry. Holmes also praises the

networking value of the school saying,

The school helped me get my first gig and also gave me a chance to meet some of the top men in Black filmmaking. If it weren’t for Mrs. Pinn and the school, I doubt very seriously that I would be in films right now.

A number of each year’s graduates stayed on at NET and worked at Black Journal,

while others went on to work at public or commercial television stations. For example, Vernon

West went on to be an associate producer at ABC’s Black public-affairs program Like It Is. Some

graduates went to Hollywood. Jim Morris, a graduate of one of the earliest cohorts, became a

film editor with Columbia Pictures and worked on Melvin Van Peebles’ The Watermelon Man.326

Finally, some graduates became programmers or administrators in public television. According to NET school graduate Ronald Gray, now an NYU film professor, graduates Vantile Woodfield and Jennifer Lawson found careers within PBS and as foundation administrators. Gray felt that this was extremely important, having “some of us on the inside,” giving Black producers a

325 Ford Foundation Grant Application, Ford Foundation Archives. 326 Jacobi.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 195 fighting chance at having their work picked up by PBS, which Gray and others maintain continues to be quite difficult.327

Despite the fact that the Black Journal Workshop started in part to circumvent union exclusions of African Americans, an NET press release touted the ability of some Workshop graduates to enter the union:

The NET workshop has been instrumental in opening new avenues for the placement of minority group people.

The press release cites Willis Perry as the first graduate to join the cameraman’s local 644 of the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees . For many graduates, the training provided was crucial to enabling them to bypass the unions, the route originally expected by Black Journal Workshop’s founders: this was the strategy cited by Pinn in Ebony.

Pinn also mentions appealing to the commitments to racial justice of stars such as “Ossie Davis and other Black stars and producers who have the clout to struggle with the unions.” This strategy was sometimes successful in an entertainment industry in which some African American performers were well known and influential enough to demand hiring a nonunion crew for their films, but there were few African American directors, producers, and technicians. Ultimately,

African Americans’ relationships to the unions varied: some workers joined the unions, others bypassed them, and still others joined but continued to make work, particularly Black films and documentaries, outside of the union.328

Union discrimination and the resulting need for alternative career paths were not unique to aspiring television workers. Nancy MacLean’s history of the struggle for affirmative

327 Ronald Gray, telephone interview, February 2004. 328 See Bobby Shepard, interview, October 2004.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 196 action in fields such as the building trades sheds light on the situation in film. MacLean outlines a history of exclusion in the construction trades in cities such as New York; these father–son unions in which positions were handed down “like heirlooms,” analogous to the situation in television technical jobs described by Anderson, Shepard, Maple, and others.329 MacLean also describes the uniqueness of jobs in the building trades in order to understand why these jobs were so jealously guarded:

Even when the father–son pattern gave way as sons went to college, an unusual work culture still thrived. Male coworkers bonded with one another in daily displays of their technical competence, physical prowess, and virility. These performances insinuated whiteness and maleness into definitions of skill, insider status and labor militancy.

Technical jobs in the film and television industries held many of the same privileges, including good salaries, and were just as jealously guarded as positions in the building industry.

Thus, as cinematographer Jessie Maple points out, women interested in becoming part of the film industry were pushed to become editors, the only woman-dominated technical job.

Cinematography was seen as too dangerous, too technical, and too physically demanding for a woman. Maple cites the salary, excitement, and travel as part of what attracted her to cinematography. In the days of total union hegemony, union-sponsored training was the only way to gain access to film equipment. Thus, free training programs for minority media makers and the rise of university film programs presented a significant challenge to the hegemony of the unions by allowing workers to circumvent the unions and find work in nonunion crews, while unexpectedly, these same training programs offered some Black workers a path to union membership.

329 MacLean, Freedom is not enough. p. 141. Maple. Madeline Anderson, artist’s interview, Hatch-Billops

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The dynamics of getting into the cinematographers union, as described by veteran

cinematographer Bobby Shepard, are also analogous to the masculinist rituals MacLean

documents, used to exclude applicants and haze new members in the building trades.330 After graduating from the Black Journal Workshop, Shepard attempted to join the cinematographers’ local. At his test, the reviewers instructed him to reassemble a camera that had been completely dismantled with almost no time allowed. He was then voted on with a secret ballot. His military training in the marines was good preparation for this test:

In order to pass the exam they could make it impossible … the written part was very difficult … [but] I didn’t find it difficult at all … the real problem was the practical … If you failed, that was it … the test was over you couldn’t take it again for 6 months or a year. It was so subjective … you were at the mercy of the examiners … They tested you on equipment, specialized stuff, as if you were on, like a Hollywood crew. The day of the exam, the chief examiner pulled me aside and he says if you have any problems let me know immediately … he didn’t talk to anyone else so I knew what that meant … In the test, the guy says put on a 10 to 1 … zoom lens … part of it is distracting … can you do 17 things at once? … focus on that thing right there and line up the shot … you couldn’t focus it because it kept slipping focus, I said “You can’t focus this lens” … why not? … I said, “when I turned my back I believe that the lens was taken out of the mount.” … he looked around and said “OK.” And he was trying to fail me [once he realized Shepard was aware of the sabotage]he got nervous … They wanted to keep the numbers small … the only people they wanted in were their sons … I got in just when it started to slightly change.331

In Jessie Maple’s account of becoming the first Black women union camerawoman,

she describes similar rites of passage, again including union members tampering with equipment

prior to her union test. This is exactly the type of sabotage that instructors like Roland Mitchell

Collection, and interview with author. Shepard, interview with author. 330 MacLean. 331 Shepard, interview.

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had prepared students for; this pedagogy was grounded in realistic concerns about racism in the

field of broadcasting.332

The Black Journal Workshop, though a pragmatic program, was more arts-focused

and independent production-focused than most similar programs. Furthermore, emphasis on film aesthetics made the curriculum more like film school in a university setting than most of the other, more strictly jobs-oriented training programs such as the larger Community Film

Workshop. Most successful applicants to the Black Journal Workshop had held professional jobs

before they matriculated. These jobs, such as production assistant in advertising, book producer,

or working for the New York City Commission on Human Rights contrast with accounts of the

Community Film Workshop.

Community Film Workshop (CFW) was the nation’s largest and best-funded

minority media training program, funded by the Federal Office of Employment and the Ford

Foundation. At the peak of the program’s funding, the CFW trained “minority” broadcast

workers in six continental U.S. locations as well as San Juan, Puerto Rico. As an employment-

oriented media training program, the Community Film Workshop paid a wage and hired some

blue collar workers and unemployed individuals. For example, a nineteen-year-old janitor

became a newscaster, which was highlighted as a feature story, illustrating the difference in

approach between the NET school and the larger and better-funded Community Film Workshop.

At the height of the Black Journal Workshop’s funding, in the mid-1970s, the NET

program paid carfare, but NET school students, for the most part, had day jobs. CFW, on the

other hand, offered a mix of financial support and job training. CFW paid a salary of $75 a week

332 Maple.

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and students attended classes all day, five days a week. This underscores the differing self-

images about the program—the CFW was a “jobs” program, providing a solution to

unemployment as well as a new career path. In order to be part of the Black Journal workshop,

students had to already have some source of support. In practice however students got into

whichever program they could and followed often varied career paths within the media

industries.

While the shared challenges of dealing with racism were a unifying aspect of the

critical community formed at Black Journal or the Black Journal Workshop, there were also

divisions, notably over age and gender. These differences often partially determined the

trajectory of individuals within this emerging group of Black media workers. Gender especially

had a significant affect on career trajectories in this era. Evidence makes clear that women faced

additional career obstacles. Despite these hierarchies, most interviews and public sources include

overwhelmingly positive recollections of this era as a time of unprecedented opportunity and

described feelings of friendship and professional allegiance among colleagues at Black Journal and classmates at the Black Journal Workshop. Perhaps this explains why, while women recounted stories that reflected sexism and discrimination, they were less likely to propose

gender as a career issue unless asked about it specifically.

Several of the male interviewees, including some who are highly successful and

well-known media makers, when asked about gender acknowledged that women simply did not

move up the ranks in the new genre of Black programming as easily or as quickly as men did.

While fewer women than men enrolled in the training courses, many African American women

did become successful media workers. However, it is the often subtle differences in the way they

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 200 went about “proving themselves” or the time it took women to achieve certain leadership positions that reveals the differences between men’s and women’s career trajectories. Women consistently reported having had to prove themselves over more time and with more thoroughness then men.

While both men and women experienced racism and had to “prove themselves” in white productions, women also reported having to do “double duty” in Black productions.

Madeline Anderson and Angela Fontanez both described situations in which they moved up the production ranks, without leaving behind their old tasks. In other words, Angela Fontanez moved up from production coordinator to assistant producer to associate producer, but was still the only person in the office who know where the film canisters were. Anderson described a similar experience with her promotion from editor to associate producer. She was still doing all of the work of an assistant editor and editor while associate producing the episodes. None of the nine men interviewed recounted this kind of experience. In fact, St. Clair Bourne recalled that he was hired as assistant producer at Black Journal and was so disorganized as to be incompetent at it, but others recognized that he was clearly very talented and he was promoted almost immediately to producer. It is likely that a woman who was similarly incompetent at an assistant job would not have been promoted. This is not to diminish Bourne’s considerable talent, but to say that women did not have the luxury of considering any job beneath them if they wanted to get a foothold in the business.

While taking longer to move up the ladder, women could sometimes expand their creative control, if not their paycheck and credits, by simply doing more than their position required. Madeline Anderson took this quite far, as she described sometimes virtually directing

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productions as an editor by telling the producers and cinematographers what to shoot.333 For someone outside of the industry this may not seem strange, but in fact this is an extraordinary subversion of the usual hierarchy, and as such was not always welcome. Age may have also been a marginalizing factor, as both Greaves and Anderson were older than the rest of the staff. While they may have only been about a decade older, their ages positioned them differently with regard to the political and aesthetic currents of the time. Recollecting Say Brother’s youthful staff, it becomes apparent that in the rapidly evolving climate of Black public-affairs television, especially in the first few years, youth represented a kind of “currency” over experience.

Conclusion: A Cohort and its Legacies

Ultimately, the Black Journal Workshop was more than just a portal into a previously exclusive industry for African Americans; it equipped students to manage racist obstacles in the burgeoning and competitive field of television. The very labor conditions and exclusions that made Black Journal Workshop necessary tightened the bond between many of the school’s alumni. The Black Journal Workshop alumni believed that this training, though tough, did indeed prepare them for the realities of severe discrimination that they would face in the workplace.

Furthermore, the relationships formed in the training program and work at Black Journal sustained members through encounters with career setbacks and obstacles from racist unions as well as working in the industry beyond Black programs. While the overall culture of the television industry remained white-dominated, by the mid 1970s African American workers were able to challenge industry racism from the inside. Their ability to get training and obtain jobs

333 Madeline Anderson, interview.

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without unions circumvented union hegemony, while those who fought their way into unions

transformed those unions slowly from within their ranks.

The continuing professional activity of the Black Journal Workshop alumni speaks to

their commitment to challenging old hierarchies and representations. The impact of these

professionals extended further as they hired, trained, and collaborated with media workers

throughout their careers. While not alumni of the Workshop itself, other individuals that are

“alumni” of the Black public-affairs era learned on the job or through internships.334 There are

many continuities in individual careers that began in this period. For example, Clifford Frazier,

former director of the Community Film Workshop, has spent his entire career of more than forty

years focusing on different projects that empower African Americans in relation to

communications technology. After an Emmy-award winning career in children’s media, Angela

Fontanez continues teaching young people today in a New York City charter school. St. Clair

Bourne continues to produce important documentaries. Ultimately, the legacy of the individuals

involved continues to reverberate in the film and television industry, and beyond. Examining the

history of the Black Journal Workshop is particularly relevant at this time, as affirmative action’s

efficacy and ethics are under considerable debate, while growth in minority employment in the

media industry has slowed considerably and may even be regressing.335

While gender hierarchies affected career trajectories behind the scenes at programs

such as Black Journal, the women who worked on Black Journal, and/or who went through the

334 Stan Lathan, for example held several public television internships while attending college in Pennsylvania. See Lathan, interview. 335 It is difficult to know, as the FCC changed their employment-practices reporting procedures. Stations are no longer required to submit this kind of data about their employees as part of their license renewal applications, which removes a significant incentive toward affirmative-action in hiring. Statistically, the numbers of minority employees seemed to be at a plateau in the last years of required accounting, Brooks, Daniels and Hollifield, pp. 123–46.

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Black Journal Workshop have left their mark as both producers and mentors. The next chapter explores how the influence of the women on the staff expanded the coverage of gender issues on

Black Journal, Say Brother, and Soul! As I will argue, in addition to external factors such as the growth of Black feminist activism, the negotiations I have discussed in this chapter between women and men in the workplace, and the emerging consciousness about gender roles among staff members, informed the gender ideologies presented on screen in the episodes that I address in chapter 6.

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Chapter 6

Urban Planned and Moynihanned: Televising Black Women’s Liberation

Why can’t women have their own space to make their own work? Why must they always give up the one thing they’ve got? Ntozake Shange on Black Journal 1978.

I am less concerned about the fight between prostitutes and lesbians—we need a coalition among niggerized groups—the right wing have it together—we do not have it together. Flo Kennedy on Say Brother 1976.

The African woman is the only woman in the whole world who can sit in the back of the bus and still drive the car. Miriam Makeba on Soul! 1970.

Unfortunately there seems to be some confusion in the Movement today as to who has been oppressing whom. Since the advent of black power, the Black male has exerted a more prominent leadership role in our struggle for justice in this country. He sees the system for what really it is for the most part but where he rejects its values and mores on many issues, when it comes to women, he seems to take his guidelines from the pages of the Ladies’ Home Journal. Certain Black men are maintaining that they have been castrated by society but that Black women somehow escaped this persecution and even contributed to his emasculation. Francis Beale “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female” 1970.

In a two-part special episode of Soul! writers Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin held a two-hour, unscripted conversation meditating on Black politics, art, and gender. Baldwin and Giovanni were omnipresent on programs like Soul!, and Baldwin was frequently featured on mainstream television programs as well. Both writers engaged with television wholeheartedly, performing for the camera and engaging viewers. In this conversation, the two writers reflected on gender issues, Black art, and the state of Black America. They postulated and interwove ideas about power and authority within Black families, discussing, for example, the internal power relations in a Black family in relation to external oppression. Their discussion also touched on

(male) homosexuality and offered openness to the possibility that women bringing up children

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 205 without a man might not always be a problem. This dialogue drew on a vocabulary and set of experiences that went beyond the binary thinking about Black families that both the Nixon administration and many Black nationalists asserted in public discussions. The wide-ranging conversation between the two writers was filmed in November of 1971 and aired in December in two, hour-long episodes.

It is striking that two prominent intellectuals who opted out of traditional heteronormative rules in their adult lives participated in the discussion about heteronormative

Black family. This suggests how deeply “the Black family” had become the terrain in which

Black humanity was questioned. Indeed, Giovanni and Baldwin sought to investigate the deeper, less blame-oriented roots for Black family formation, as part of a defense of African Americans as a people. While Giovanni (and everyone else) surely knew that Baldwin was gay, and

Giovanni spoke openly and often about choosing to bring up her son independently, the two took up metaphoric roles as husband and wife at key points in the discussion, performing these roles to address fundamental issues about Black male–female relationships. In response to Giovanni’s criticism of some Black men’s irresponsibility and abusive behavior, Baldwin offered this explanation:

Your manhood is being slowly destroyed hour by hour, day by day. Your woman’s watching it; you’re watching her watch it. The love that you have for each other is being destroyed hour by hour and day by day. It’s not her fault, it’s not our fault, but there it goes. Because the pressures under which you live are inhuman. My father finally went mad and when I became a man I understood how that could happen. It wasn’t that he didn’t love us; he loved his wife and his children, but he couldn’t take, day after day, hour after hour, being treated like a nigger on that job and in the streets on the subways—everywhere he went.336

336 Transcript of Soul! p. 42.

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Giovanni challenges Baldwin, proclaiming that she cannot understand “how you could by mistreated and come home and mistreat someone in the same way.” She goes on to state that she could never act less intelligent or bold in order to bolster a man’s self-esteem, however damaged it might be. She responds to a Nation of Islam position that women should walk ten paces behind a man, with frustration:

I can walk ten paces behind a dog. It means nothing to me, but if that’s what the Black man needs, I’ll never get far enough behind him for him to be a man. I’ll never walk that slowly.

In another pointed moment in the dialogue, Baldwin traces the challenges of expressing sexuality for African Americans back to slavery:

In the same way that my child produced from your body did not belong to me but to the master and could be sold at any moment. This erodes a man’s sexuality. You destroy his ability to love anyone, despite the fact that sex and love are not the same thing. When a man’s sexuality is gone, his possibility, his hope of loving is also gone.337

These performances in which the “you” and the “me” stand in for archetypes allowed the two intellectuals to spin out innovative possibilities for thinking through Black relationships in this period of social transformation. Baldwin’s lament about the loss of sexuality leading to the loss of a hope for loving also speaks to his own situation as a gay man.

At another point, their exchange escalates into an argument:

Baldwin: Yeah but be careful as a woman what you demand of a man.

Giovanni: I demand that he be a man.

Baldwin: But you can’t demand it, you have to suggest it.

337 Transcript of Soul! p. 40.

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Giovanni: Well that’s your ego that demands that. No, I demand it now. You deal with that.

Baldwin: All right, OK.338

After this exchange, appearing concerned about how critical she sounds, Giovanni

attempts to soften her statements somewhat by mentioning how much she loves her father, and

praises her parents’ 35-year marriage. On the other hand, while she claims her love for her father,

she quips, “I just don’t want to marry him.” Indeed, throughout their conversation as Baldwin

and Giovanni express their compassion for the struggles of Black families, they also reiterate the

fact that they as individuals are looking for alternatives to traditional family structures.

These public intellectuals discuss literature, religion, and the state of Black America,

yet the conversation repeatedly circles back to gender issues. At times they perform their

arguments by taking on archetypal gender roles as personas. Giovanni and Baldwin, as two

writers and intellectuals, manifest their enjoyment of one another’s company and conversation,

yet they are not afraid to challenge one another. The camera lingers on their drinks and zooms in

on their hands as their conversation continues. While there may have been some editing, their

conversation appears almost entirely unedited and was completely unscripted. This kind of conversation was, and remains unusual television fare, particularly for two Black intellectuals.

When Giovanni asks Baldwin directly about homosexuality, he smiles and says, “Love is Love

baby, if you duck it, you die!” This exchange, as well as the frank intellectualism and political

unorthodoxy of the entire conversation, places Soul! as a television outlier, conveying ideas that

were nowhere to be found elsewhere on the dial.

338 Transcript of Soul! p. 68.

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While this conversation was unusual, many guests on Black public-affairs programs

offered a defense of Black families. This perpetual discussion is a marker for the anxiety,

concern, and outrage that many African Americans felt over the negative images of Black

families circulating in the Moynihan Report and other reports. To paraphrase historian Robin

Kelley, there was a feeling that “someone was talking about your mama.”339 While the Moynihan

report was polarizing for African Americans in one sense, the affront from the outside made a

need for internal dialogue painfully clear. Black public-affairs television programs transmitted

discussions about the Black family that defended it against the hostility of the Nixon era. Black

public-affairs television programs defended Black parenting, particularly as I will show, Black

mothers, while pointing to the achievements of Black children and teenagers. Programs such as

Soul! and Black Journal played powerful pedagogical roles, thus engaging in their own forms of

“parenting,” bearing witness to individuals “giving birth to a Black lifestyle.”340

Black Journal differed from Soul! in its representation of women and gender issues;

a difference due in part to their hosts and executive producers. In “Black Excellence in the

Wasteland,” Peter Bailey compared some of these differences in production culture between the

two national shows, Black Journal and Soul!.341 Bailey presents Tony Brown as the organized,

driven executive producer and host of Black Journal, in contrast with Ellis Haizlip, the laid back,

relaxed host and producer of Soul!. Black Journal was always taped; some Soul! episodes were

broadcast live. Black Journal was a tightly run ship—and when guests came onto the program,

their discourse with the host was often more controlled or pretaped and edited. Nikki Giovanni

339 Kelley, p. 16. 340 This is from one of the poems performed on Soul! described later in this chapter.

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frequently hosted Soul!—she interviewed Muhammad Ali, James Baldwin, and Miriam Makeba.

Anna Horsford and Alice Halle worked on the program and Ellis Haizlip often thanked them on

the air, making them part of the program text despite their backstage roles. Although Haizlip’s

gay identity was known in arts and television circles, it was not made explicit on Soul!, an

unsurprising choice given the overwhelming homophobia of the era. Despite acceptance in some

circles, Haizlip did have to deal with the homophobia of an industry where people called him

“Ellis Haizlipstick” behind his back. 342 Nonetheless, it is likely that Haizlip’s lack of investment in a heterosexual public image made it possible for him to have women artists on the show without needing to, for example, demonstrate any physical attraction to them, as did hosts of

other programs such as the flirtatious Jim Lowry of Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Televising Black Women

Representations of African American women on television were very limited. Prime-

time fiction television offered some work to Black actresses, but those actresses often chafed at

the narrow confines of the parts they could get. Diahann Carroll played a widowed mother in

Chicago on Julia (1968–1971). Carroll herself acknowledged that the role of Julia was the

“whitest Negro” network television could dream up.343 Later, All In the Family (1971–1976)

showcased anxiety about both Black and women’s liberation, in the form of the vocally sexist

and racist Archie Bunker.344 In the realm of news, newscaster Melba Tolliver got her start on

341 Peter Bailey, “Black Excellence in the Wasteland,” Ebony (March 1972): 44–6.

342 Nelson. Reproductive Rights. 22. 343 Acham. 344 For a fascinating interpretation of Archie Bunker and All In the Family as a compass for American Culture in the 1970s, see Josh Ozersky, Archie Bunker’s America: TV in an Era of Change (Carbondale: Southern Illinois

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ABC in 1967, although she did not appear on-air regularly until the 1970s. Famously, she almost

lost her job for wearing an Afro on television in the early 1970s.

While Black Liberation and women’s Liberation were covered on the news, they

were generally sensationalized: feminists as bra-burners, and man-haters, and Black Power

activists as violent radicals. The two movements were portrayed separately, despite Black

women’s involvement in second-wave feminism, and an extensive dialogue about gender within

Black organizations and communities.345 When news programs highlighted the women’s liberation movement, they highlighted the actions of a few white women ignoring Black feminist

organizing. Recognizing the Civil Rights Movement’s powerful media image, some white

women’s liberation activists attempted to legitimize the Women’s Movement by comparing it to

the Civil Rights Movement. Susan Douglas has pointedly argued that the 1970 boom in media

coverage of the Women’s Movement cut the movement into “legitimate feminism and

illegitimate feminism,” situating critiques of patriarchy as invalid and claims for equal wages as

at least worthy of consideration.346 However, coverage of issues that Black feminists struggled

with, such as welfare reform and the right to bear children, fell outside of the media’s binaristic

University Press, 2003). See also Janet Staiger’s chapter on All In the Family in Janet Staiger, Blockbuster TV: Must-See Sitcoms in the Network Era (New York: New York University Press, 2000). 345 Some Women’s liberation activists attempted to legitimize the Women’s Movement by comparing it to the Civil Rights Movement, Bonnie Dow, “Fixing Feminism: Women’s Liberation and the Rhetoric of Television Documentary,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90, no. 1 (February 2004): 52–80. However, in Quality Versus Relevance”, Lentz makes the argument that prime-time programs in the 1970s were coded as “quality” or “relevant” and that “relevant” shows such as All in the Family were “about race” while “quality shows” such as Mary Tyler Moore, were “about gender.” While I agree with Lentz’s premise that prime-time shows reserved overt feminism to the domain of white women, I disagree with the idea that All In the Family was any less about gender anxiety, about the challenge to the status quo posed by women’s liberation as it was about post-Civil Rights white anxieties. The Mary Tyler Moore show, was as much about whiteness as it was about gender. 346 Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Times Books, 1994).

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“legitimate or illegitimate” categories and were ignored, even as news programs vilified and

sensationalized Black leftist groups such as the Black Panthers.

Despite this bleak televisual landscape for Black women in 1970, viewers could tune

into WNET and come upon an unusual sight, an episode of Soul! featuring Black women artists

performing poetry for a studio audience. The audience, also all women, watched avidly. Both the

women on stage and the women in the audience wore cutting-edge fashions including African-

inspired robes and hats, dungarees, and large, chunky jewelry. The outfits of both the performers

and audience members were a mix of African-inspiration and downtown bohemian. This creation

of an alternative space is striking in a year when Laugh In and Gunsmoke were the most popular programs on television. Did someone forget to tell these women that there was no Black women’s space on television?

In the Black Power era, Black public-affairs programs offered in-depth coverage of a multitude of Black perspectives on gender issues, including Black feminism, and nationalist perspectives that were ignored or sensationalized in other media coverage. Some Black public affairs television programs even offered televisual space to white second wavers such as Bella

Abzug. Local television programs such as Say Brother, and Like It Is, as well as national programs such as Black Journal, and Soul! regularly featured debates and discussions of gender roles and explored issues such as the depictions of men and women in art; discussions of marriage, child raising, and the status of women; sexuality and reproductive rights; and discussions of the ERA, women’s health care, women in prison, and women’s welfare activism.

Guests and hosts of the programs regularly expressed a range of attitudes about gender issues, even when gender was not explicitly the topic of discussion. These television programs offered a

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possibility of an internal dialogue about gender in Black communities that would also reach

audiences beyond the African American community.

Retorts to Moynihan

Black public-affairs television provided Black women with a forum to defend

themselves from the accusations embedded in Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “Report on the Negro

Family,” embodied in the punitive welfare policies that branded them as bad mothers, and worse.

Published at the “height of the national debate over civil, political, and social rights for African

Americans” the Moynihan report cast Black families as a “tangle of pathology” and laid the

blame for Black economic oppression on “independent women” and “matriarchal families.”347

The stakes of these negative and pathologizing representations of Black women were high; policy makers used them to justify increasingly punitive welfare and housing policies and even sterilization abuse.

Black public-affairs programs offered African Americans a literal mode of self- defense against the psychic and material attack on Black families presented not just by the

Moynihan report but by the policies of the Nixon administration. This attack on Black families took many forms, including Target 100,000, which singled out Black men for the draft, and the sterilization abuse of Black women.348 While some Civil Rights Movement leaders such as Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. agreed with some of the findings of the Moynihan report, such as that unemployment had a devastating effect on Black families, he and other Black leaders pointed to

347 Bensonsmith, “Jezebels, Matriarchs” p. 247. 348 Nelson. Reproductive Rights.

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the pressures of slavery and U.S. apartheid as a testament to Black families’ resiliency.349 In the

Nixon era, Black women came under attack on many fronts, and they used the forum created by

Black public-affairs television as a vehicle to defend themselves and to define their struggles.

Programs such as Soul! and Say Brother provided a powerful television counterpoint to the deployment of stereotypical and damaging images of women embodied in the Moynihan Report and the publicity surrounding it.350 For many activists, the Moynihan report came to stand for a

an array of oppressions faced by Black women and Black families.

The welfare rights movement came alive on Black public-affairs programs, and

indeed, its major television coverage was on these programs. Moreover, these shows provided an

important antidote to the privileging of “experts” on poverty over the voices of poor people that

predominated on mainstream television. On a 1970 episode of PBS’s national public-affairs

program The Advocates, wealthy white men debated welfare policies, while welfare recipients

and other poor people were present but marginalized. In response to this, a welfare recipient

stormed “out of the [television] courtroom” to protest the ways she was being discussed.351 Black public affairs programs offered new perspectives: they put the voices of recipients and welfare activists at the center. Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant and Colored People’s Time in Detroit featured welfare recipients speaking for themselves, presenting their critiques of the system and its

349 Bensonsmith. P. 244-247. 350 The Moynihan report’s full name was: The Negro Family, the case for National Action, 1965. It was written by Johnson’s assistant secretary of labor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The report recognized that racism had an important role to play in African American poverty, but nonetheless offered hope for a solution not by ending racism, but by changing Black family structures. As Dionne Bensonsmith writes “ During this period, discourse on U.S. poverty became increasingly racialized and feminized, while welfare policy discourse feminized race and racialized gender. The two concepts—race and gender—intersected and were personified in African American women’s image and representation. The Moynihan report and the debate that followed its publication marked a key moment in this transformation.” Bensonsmith. 351 Ouellette, Viewer’s Like You p. 128–9.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 214 injustices.352 Welfare organizing was a Black feminist concern often ignored by white-dominated women’s liberation organizations. The attention this issue received on Black public-affairs programs was unparalleled on other television programs.353

Black Women and Women’s Liberation

As is evident from Black feminist organizing in this era, many Black women were critical of sexism, yet the predominantly white face of the women’s liberation movement was unappealing to many Black women. Many agreed with Toni Morrison’s assessment, “What does the Black woman feel about women’s liberation? Distrust.”354 In light of this, some Black women struggled for liberation in their own organizations or within organizations such as the

Black Panther Party, as opposed to working with predominantly white organizations such as

NOW. Some Black women, such as Flo Kennedy, did join forces with white feminists. In this era, Black women formed feminist organizations such as the National Black Feminist

Organization and the Third World Women’s Alliance.355 Many contributed to Black women’s

352 Premilla Nadasen, Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States. New York: Routledge, 2005. Also see Ouellette on the ways that public television present issues “rationally,” eschewing “screaming matches.” 353 Nadasen xvi. 354 Toni Morrison, “What Does the Black Woman Feel about Women’s Liberation? Distrust,” New York Times (August 22, 1971). 355 Kimberly Springer, Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations 1968–1980 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press 2005), pp. 26–8. Tracye Matthews “Gender in the Black Panther Party,” in Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights—Black Power Movement, ed. Bettye Collier-Thomas and V. P. Franklin (New York: New York University Press, 2001). Benita Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America’s Second Wave (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). See also Benita Roth, “Vanguard Center,” in Still Lifting, Still Climbing, African American Women’s Contemporary Activism (New York: New York University Press, 1999). Rhonda Williams, “Black Women, Urban Politics, and Engendering Black Power,” in The Black Power Movement, Rethinking Civil Rights and Black Power, ed. Peniel Joseph (New York: Routledge, 2006). Johnetta B Cole and Beverly Guy-Sheftall. Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women’s Equality in African American Communities, 1st ed. (New York: One World/Ballantine Books, 2003).

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 215 liberation without formal organizational affiliation, particularly in the realm of cultural production.356 Despite the elision of Black feminist activism from mainstream media, television audiences could view coverage of Black feminist activism and political organizing on programs like Soul! and (ironically, given the title) Say Brother.357

Television offered a medium through which members of this doubly marginalized public of African American women could engage with one another, and with a wider public.

Print media and television offered Black women opportunities to employ a counterpublic strategy. In other cases, when resources were fewer or oppression greater, Black women’s organizing employed an enclave strategy, regrouping in their own organizations and planning from within them.358 Programs like Soul! facilitated a counterpublic strategy by offering a

“stump” to African American women activists and artists such as Shirley Chisholm, Angela

Davis, Miriam Makeba, Nikki Giovanni, and Flo Kennedy. Black public-affairs programs gave women a platform to challenge sexism from both within and beyond the African American community in a forum where many Black men and women could participate. Programs such as

Soul!, Black Journal, and Say Brother reached a wider and less self-selecting audience than journals such as the Third World Women’s Alliance’s journal, Triple Jeopardy, which reached a more insider audience.359

356 Springer 4. Smethurst. 357 This activism is explored by some excellent new scholarship. Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism and Springer. See also, Joy James, Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), and Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000). See also recent scholarship on women and welfare and housing activism including Annelise Orleck Storming Caesar’s Palace (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005), Nadasen, Rhonda Y Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles against Urban Inequality, Transgressing Boundaries, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004., as well as Jill Quadagno’s important work. 358 Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere,” p. 446–68. 359 Nelson, p. 61–2.

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In addition to offering Black women a mode of self-defense against attacks from white men, Black public-affairs television offered Black women a space to defend themselves from the patriarchal expressions of some Black nationalists. Black women challenged the increasing masculinism of the Black liberation movements in the late 1960s and into the 1970s.

Francis Beale’s “Double Jeopardy” which I quote from at the beginning of this chapter offers one such critique. Beale pointed out that Black men seem “confused about who is oppressing whom,” and compares some Black nationalists’ attitude toward women to the patriarchal assumptions of

Ladies Home Journal. As Jennifer Nelson and Steve Estes have argued, one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Black Power era was the “assertion of Black masculinity and aggression” that ostensibly separated the new activism from Civil Rights activism. Nelson contends that after fighting Jim Crow and being beaten alongside male comrades, Black women had no intention of standing behind men in the next phase of Black liberation.360 Women critiqued the sexist politics of some Nationalist men on Black public-affairs programs, while acknowledging the appeal of other aspects of Black Nationalism.

Black public-affairs programs offered a platform for Black nationalist ideas and a platform from which Black women could respond to these ideas. While some strands of nationalist ideology included affirming patriarchy in the service of nationhood, others had a more complex view of the possibilities for gender roles. 361 E. Frances White describes the Black nationalism/(s) of the 1970s as embodying an “ideology of complementarity and collective femininity” with clearly defined roles for men and women. In her opinion, this ideology

“continues to work against the liberation of Black women.” White traces Black nationalism’s

360 Nelson. Reproductive Rights. p. 58-59.

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conservative position on gender to a history of nationalist movements that built on a patriarchal

family model. Nationalism was designed to “counter such racist images” as the “hypersexual

woman” by building on the “ideology of respectability.” She describes a paradox in which

“Afrocentric or nationalist ideology can be radical and progressive in relation to white racism

and conservative and repressive in relation to the internal organization of the Black

community.”362

Not all Black women were critical of the patriarchal aspects of the teachings of

cultural nationalists such as Maulana Karenga, or of revolutionary/cultural nationalists such as

Malcolm X. 363 Indeed, some women articulated their own theories of gender complementarity

and others embraced Black nationalist ideologies wholeheartedly. Cheryl Clarke, a poet and

veteran of the Black Arts Movement as well as a scholar of this era explains that Black women

were attracted to some aspects of nationalism, especially, its “rhetoric of protection.”364

Nonetheless, for many women the appeal of Black nationalist ideologies was marred

considerably by the insistence of a separate and unequal role for women.

The Nation of Islam, a relatively powerful and popular nationalist organization, had

a significant cultural influence in the 1960s.365 As a group, their position on gender was largely patriarchal, leading to a recruiting gap in which for every five male recruits to the organization,

361 For further reading on the many strands of Black Nationalism from this era, see Pinkney. 362 Frances White, “Africa on my Mind: Gender, Counter Discourse and African American Nationalism,” Journal of Women’s History 2, no. 1 (Spring 1990): p. 75-77. 363 For a history of Ron Karenga’s afrocentric US organization, see Scot Brown, Fighting for Us (New York: New York University Press, 2003). 364 Clarke. After Mecca. 365 Joseph, Waiting ’til the Midnight Hour.

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only one woman joined.366 As Steve Estes explains, Malcolm X “eloquently advocated the NOI’s

masculinist liberation theology and its doctrines of separatism, self-defense, and Black

nationalism that gained wide currency among civil rights activists in the second half of the

1960s.”367 Soul! featured Nation of Islam leader Farrakhan, as well as prominent member

Muhammed Ali. Ali, for example responded to a question from Nikki Giovanni about his

children with a frank admission that he did not know them “too well.” Ali felt strongly that it was

his wife’s obligation to “train them” until they reached a certain age.368 These men, as well as

other male nationalists from other organizations and ideologies, offered a conservative viewpoint

on Black family life. Arguing that this conservatism was defensive although problematic, E.

Frances White explains, “Black family life has consistently served as a model of abnormality for

the construction of ideal family life.”369 Reinforcing traditional family roles was one response to

this pervasive form of racism. Some African American leaders advocated surprisingly similar

“solutions” to the problems facing Black families as Patrick Moynihan, a similarity that Nikki

Giovanni points out in her fictionalized autobiography, Gemini. 370 Black public-affairs programs offered a space for African Americans to debate these issues internally, while still responding to a wider audience.

366 Estes 88. 367 Estes, 88-89. 368 Soul! episode 369 White, p. 76. 370 Nikki Giovanni, Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill Company, 1971 [currently distributed by Penguin]). “All Black Men in the World today are out of power. Power only means the ability to take control over your life. If you don’t have control, you cannot take responsibility. That’s what makes the latter-generation Irishmen’s report on the Negro family so ridiculous. How can anyone be responsible without power? Power implies choice. It is not a choice when the options are life and death,” p. 31.

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One response some Black women had to being scape-goated in society was to call

for a revaluation of African American womanhood, following Abbey Lincoln’s 1966 call, “Who will revere the Black woman?”371 This call for “reverence” reflected the exclusion of Black

women from the iconic femininity bestowed on white women in white supremacist society. The

ideology of reverence demanded access for Black women to the status and protections which

white women had theoretically enjoyed, and a reverse of centuries of stigmatization. The call for

reverence did not critique patriarchy, but demanded access for Black women to representations

of beauty and to what Farrah Griffin labeled the “rhetoric of protection.”372

Some nationalists, particularly Malcolm X, offered a vision of reverence that was

deeply compelling to many Black women. After centuries of vulnerability to physical, sexual,

and psychic violence, Malcolm X’s “rhetoric of protection” held great appeal. According to

Griffin, Malcolm X offered Black women the promise of protection, an acknowledgement of the

white racist assaults on Black beauty and an affirmation of Black features, particularly hair and

skin color.373 In Ain’t I a Beauty Queen, Maxine Leeds Craig argues that Black beauty contests

provided “public proof of the beauty of Black women,” even as (mostly white) feminists

protested the limitations of this kind of objectification.374 Building on Black women’s desires for

reverence was part of the “package” of some nationalists, yet the call for it came from both

within and outside of a specifically nationalist perspective. Yet some Black women, especially

371 Abby Lincoln, “To Whom Will She Cry Rape?” in The Black Woman: An Anthology, ed. Toni Cade Bambara, 95–101 (New York: New American Library, 1970). Originally printed in Negro Digest, 1966. 372 Griffin. 373 Bettye Collier-Thomas and V.P. Franklin, Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights- Black Power Movement (New York: New York University Press 2001), p. 218. 374 Craig, Ain’t I a Beauty Queen. pp. 46–7.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 220 feminists felt that the ideology of reverence had significant limitations for Black women.375 On the other side of reverence lies objectification, and a still-limited set of possibilities that fall short of full emancipation.

Soul! Salutes the Sisters: Staging the Black Woman’s Public Sphere

The number of special television episodes on Black women in the early 1970s, as well as the number of poems published in these years with the all-encompassing title “the Black

Woman” are telling signs of the increasing visibility of Black women in society, as well as the contested nature of their roles. Soul!’s episode on women artists, dubbed, a “salute to the sisters” is notable for creating a “women only” space on television, and for the wide range of perspectives on gender that the women on the program espouse. Host Ellis Haizlip’s decision to have a show focused on women that does not feature men speaking about, singing about, or otherwise performing their opinions on women was unusual. On Black Journal and Say Brother, male artist’s depictions of women, or male leader’s opinions on gender roles were often central to these specials, especially before 1973. On Soul! women spoke for themselves more than was typical in the other “woman-focused” episodes. The announcement that opened the episode was

“Tonight on Soul! We get a little closer to the sisters as Soul! salutes the Black woman.”376

Women were prominent artists in the Black Arts Movement, so it is not surprising that this episode of Soul! was so populous, with more than ten guests. Furthermore, this episode of Soul! created a Black women’s space—the audience appears to be all women, the performers are all

375 Griffin, for example, acknowledges this critique, with respect to Malcolm X’s position on gender. 376 The exact date of airing is unknown, but it is apparently during 1970. There is some possibility that the episode aired in 1971.

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women. Ellis Haizlip chose not to appear in this episode, in an effort to reinforce the women-

only space.

Despite featuring an extraordinary number of Black women artists, this episode still

illustrated the power of patriarchal notions of family even as it moved to embrace female

empowerment. This notion of family frames the appearance of each woman. The announcer

mentions each woman’s status as a mother as the first part of her introduction. After each

woman’s name is announced, the voice over stated the names of her children before her

professional identity is stated.

For example:

Appearing tonight: Marylin Berry‚ mother of Jamal, last seen in public TV in ….

Nikki Giovanni mother of Thomas Watson ….

Sonia Sanchez, mother of three ….

Carmen Lavallade, mother of ….

Other guests, presumably those that did not have children, were introduced with their

professional information only (e.g., Composer Margerate Harris).

Despite allowing women to speak for themselves during the episode, the voice-over introduction immediately positioned the accomplished guests according to their status as mothers

(or not), a tenet of a patriarchal, nationalist agenda that many of these artists criticized. The emphasis on motherhood comes at the intersection of Black nationalist insistence on Black women’s role as primarily one of birthing and rearing of young warriors, the reverent notion of placing mothers on a pedestal, and the feminist struggle waged by Black women in this era for

the right to bear children.

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The poetry performance in this episode of Soul! illustrates Black Arts poet Cheryl

Clarke’s contention that “poetry was a principal instrument of political education about the new

Blackness” during the Black Arts Movement.377 In the episode, the guests sit on a graduated

stage, with warm light shining upwards at them from footlights. This luminous performance

offers deep insights into the passions and politics that drove Black women’s liberation struggles

in this era. The episode is also an incredible piece of archived footage of the Black Arts

Movement in action, featuring some of the great poets and actors of this era. Some guests read, and others perform the poems from memory. Each poem appears to respond and comment on the other poems, moving easily from one artist to the next. The poems address many issues, but almost all of them speak from a strongly gendered and raced consciousness. The all-female audience respond with rapt attention, laughter, and applause, transporting the at-home audience to a female-only space. This episode allowed the audience to participate with the artists as they

demonstrated the possibility of a vital Black women’s public sphere. The studio audience,

dressed up and ready to appear on television, played an important part in performing this public

sphere and in modeling reception for the home viewer. The women in the audience clearly

signaled their approval. This episode is both performative and self-consciously pedagogical in its

representation of the possibilities for complex self-definition and political agency for Black

women.

By performing poems that address sexuality, relationships, motherhood, and other

“private sphere” concerns that have historically been associated with women, these performers

broke down boundaries between public and private, creating an intermediate, communal space in

377 Clarke, After Mecca. p. 10.

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which private issues were discussed. This performance held these “private sphere” issues up to the bright lights of television and a national audience. Describing the excitement of the Black

Arts Movement and the early years of Black Power, poet Jackie Early spoke the following lines:

I came to the earth giving birth to a Black lifestyle, taking my time, talking loud running my mouth, being cute, walking proud, to be a woman in the world as it is, so come get your positive Blackness, and let it soak in your positive mind.

Her reading is sassy, rebellious, and flirtatious and the audience laughs warmly with recognition. Next, Marylin Berry performs a poem about a Black woman’s negotiation between sensuality and respectability, saying “I’m too old to run around in seersucker shorts.” Many poems addressed male–female relationships. For example, one artist performed a poem critiquing Black men for using their newly felt empowerment to form relationships with white women, saying “Put that white girl where you got her!” This elicited a knowing laugh from the women in the audience. As Black Arts Movement veteran poet Harryette Mullen writes of the

era, “despite declarations of Black unity and feminist sisterhood, Black women and white

women remained potential rivals for the affection of Black men.” 378 The following poem cited

the poet’s use of the acronym “BP” typically used for “Black power” but in this case, cleverly

and with sexual innuendo, standing for “Black persuasion.” The poem emphasizes Black

women’s femininity and sexual appeal.

I got the power to make you the eighth wonder, womanly powerful BP, soft Black persuasion. If this sounds like a commercial it may be true but if I’ve got to advertise. That’s what I’ll do. Soft, soft.”

378 Haryette Mullen, “Artistic Expression Was Flowing Everywhere: Alison Mills and Ntozake Shange, Black Bohemian Feminists in the 1970s.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 4, no. 2 (2004): 225.

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Also criticizing Black men for not choosing to be with Black women, Anna Horsford declaimed:

you reached in to pull my mind out of the mire out of four centuries to tell me I am beautiful … now you want to protect and write poems about me, so now, what I don’t understand about my new beauty is why is not reflected in your eyes?

By addressing male artists who want to “write poems about me,” this is in dialogue with another Soul! guest, the innovative musical group The Last Poets, who had performed a poem on Soul! about Black women’s beauty in the previous season. Another poem emphasizing the challenges of communicating with men, in which the narrator leaves her partner began, “I had another one of those talks with my man last night.” The narrator explained to her partner,

“You have been losing me for a very long time.” She describes a relationship in which her man is unable to give her the emotional connection she seeks.

Nikki Giovanni then performed a simple poem of her own on the same theme:

I always liked to houseclean,

Unfortunately this habit has carried over to you and

I find that I must remove you from my life.

The tough sensibility of this poem is marked by a woman taking control of the private sphere, metaphorically “housecleaning” a man out her life. Yet she reads the poem in the public space of television, bridging the gap between the home/private sphere and the televisual/public sphere. This poem represents the accountability that second-wave feminists demanded from men. Many of the poems performed on the episode circle back to relationships with men, frequently emphasizing what Black women have to offer. Often, this was described in

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terms of gentleness and femininity. Sonia Sanchez’s poem, “Summer Words of a Sistuh Addict”

explicates this theme:

Am I not your woman even if you went on junk again

and I a beginner in your love say no

Black lovers cannot live in white powder,

Black women deal in

Baaaaabies

and nights that multiply by twos.

Sanchez’s insistence that Black women do not deal in drugs but in “babies” may

sound essentializing, but makes apparent that Black men were not the only ones invested in

Black women’s fertility and role as mothers. This plea for male partners to not use drugs and

shirk family responsibilities was passionate and intense. If Sanchez felt, as many nationalist men did that Black women should “deal in babies,” then the introductions at the beginning of the episode naming each artist’s children as her primary accomplishment were in keeping with her position. But in fact, her perspective on motherhood here seems more complex, as she demands full partnership with (her) man.

The emphasis on the issue of motherhood—as a precursor to the artistic identity of guests in the introduction, to Sanchez’s emphasis on Black women’s responsibilities as mothers, to the multiple poems about giving birth, to the scathing “my womb is packed with mothballs,” all point to the saliency of the issue for Black women at this time. Assailed as pathological matriarchs by the Moynihan report, and seen as baby-makers by some nationalists, Soul! offered a platform for these women artists to offer their own thoughts on the loaded subject of

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motherhood. Furthermore, Black women also responded (and often participated) in feminists’

abortion-rights struggles, but the white women involved with abortion rights sometimes ignored

sterilization abuse and other forms of racist incursions on Black women’s rights to be mothers.379

Black women writers in the 1970s, Morrison, Walker, Bambara, Jones, and Shange, clearly were aware of feminist theory and in their writing they implicitly or explicitly responded to the provocative proposals of Firestone and other radical white feminists, ultimately affirming the significance of black women’s fertility and their ability to bear children.

Jennifer Nelson notes that politically active black women of the early 1970s carved out a reproductive-rights discourse that involved relative autonomy over reproductive-rights discourse that involved relative autonomy over reproductive decisions not only in relation to

Black men but in relation to white feminists and white society as well. Yet Mullen adds, noting the complexities of the role of motherhood in the lives of individual Black women artists:

Combining feminism, black cultural consciousness, and artistic production with domesticity and motherhood was particularly challenging for Black women artists of the 1970s.380

In addition to love, relationships with men, and relationships with society, the poems

performed on Soul! suggested varied perspectives on motherhood—some reverent, others critical

of the constraints of motherhood or of the expectation/demand that they have children. Novella

Larson performed a poem that described giving birth:

How the day went, flooded then jumped and I thought it was my heart, now her teeth are done, I bore you one morning just before spring, flowing through cells toward you.

379 Mullen 223–4. 380 Ibid., p. 224.

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While some poems celebrate motherhood, a poem by Kay Lindsey (who did not

appear on the program), criticized nationalists’ emphasis on motherhood—although the poem still conflates motherhood with womanhood. By situating women’s oppression as analogous to

Jim Crow segregation, Lindsey legitimates women’s liberation.381

My womb is packed with mothballs

I gave birth, my body deserves a medal for that

they thought I was just answering the call of nature,

now that the revolution needs numbers

motherhood got a new position, 5 steps behind manhood,

and I thought sitting at the back of the bus went out

with Martin Luther King.

While motherhood is clearly at issue in much of this work, giving birth offered a

powerful metaphor to expanding Black consciousness, as is evident in Jackie Early’s poem in

which she speaks of “giving birth to a Black lifestyle.” While many of the poems evoke

characteristics that may seem essentialist, such as the oft-repeated “gentleness” it is evident that

the “gentleness” articulated in these poems is sexually assertive, not passive. These poems are

sexually and intellectually assertive, so that “gentleness” is positioned as a choice. Poet Cheryl

Clark recounted that this frankness about sexuality represented a form of liberation to many

Black women artists in this era.

381 This poem also appears in Bambara, p. 13.

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Proud that the public should know they were sexually liberated and active; the women poets make the Black Arts Movement the stage for a foray into a liberated Black woman’s sexuality.382

One of the final poems performed on the show, “I am the Black Woman” took a very

different viewpoint, emphasizing women’s duties at home “to teach and train the young for the

future.” While the performance of the poem was not ironic, some of the women made their

discomfort clear from their facial expressions. 383 Strikingly, this is the only poem that

emphasized a nationalist vision of gender roles, in which the father is out working for liberation

and the mother is home “teaching the young,” echoing Muhammad Ali’s appraisal of how things

should be done.

While most of the poems on the episode were domestic and intimate in focus, one

poem took on society with a searing and wickedly humorous critique of racism and class oppression. The narrator says she wants to “Eat high on the hog,” proclaiming that she has been

“VD-ed enough, TB-ed enough … been deprived, have survived enough. … leached enough,

Dixie preached enough, colored bleached enough” and been “urban planned and Moynihanned enough.” The audience loved this poem, responding with vigorous laughter and applause.

It is striking that the sentiments of the women poets as well as the introductions at the beginning of the episode emphasized traditional gender roles, especially motherhood. While the poets seemed to be pushing at the limits of these roles, their emphasis on softness, gentleness, and femininity shows that they were making an effort to counter representations as strong,

overbearing “matriarchs” but without completely escaping the idea of gender roles within a

382 Clarke, p. 71. 383 The fact that multiple poems and visual artworks came out with this title by different artists in this era shows how much currency the notion of defining/redefining Black womanhood had.

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patriarchal society. The introduction of the women by their status as mothers shows both the

influence of nationalism and how deeply Black women felt about defending themselves as

mothers in the face of being “Moynihanned” and maligned as pathological influences on their children.

Ultimately, Soul! took a radical step by showcasing women artists, and by creating a women’s space, removing the male host for the evening. Inviting an all-women audience created a separate and celebrated space for Black women, a television first. This performance on Soul! celebrated women’s artistic accomplishments and offered this work to an audience far wider than either uptown or downtown venues would have had in New York. Furthermore, viewers across the country could see this historic performance, which was unlike anything else on television.

Black Warriors on Black Journal

While Black women’s liberation was frequently celebrated, performed, and documented on Soul!, Black gender relations were somewhat more anxiously theorized and discussed on Black Journal. The first episode of Black Journal in the 1970 season reveals the intensity of internal conflict over gender roles among African Americans. Nationalist ideas, with their call for complementarity in gender roles, are omnipresent, as is a call for reverence for

Black women. The audience may catch glimpses of women in a segment on the Congress for

African Peoples, but significantly, these women do not speak directly to the camera.

This episode featured fake “commercials,” highlighting the attractiveness of Black

women and the ideal of Black men and women together. Creating false commercials as a form of commentary on commercial TV was an innovative way for public television programs to position themselves as both savvy about and critical of commercial culture. Making these “commercials”

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was a way to poke fun at as well as distinguish Black Journal from commercial television, while

demonstrating that the program’s creators understood the codes of commercial television. For

Black Journal, these commercials were a way to demonstrate Black interest in inclusion in the

world of consumption represented by commercial television.384

Black Journal’s fake commercials did not advertise a product; instead, they used

high concept imagery and direct address in an attempt to reconstruct and rewrite circulating

negative, emasculating images of Black women. The first commercial offered Black women for

admiration. The second commercial promotes Black heterosexual pairing. In addition to

demonstrating a strong point of view, the commercials used the production crew’s familiarity

with the genre of network commercials, along with an artful use of a public park or beach, a low-

budget setting for a colorful scene. The first commercial opened with close-ups on faces of

young Black women with sultry flute music playing in the background. The first shot was of the

top of the woman’s head, followed by a static shot as the woman slowly brought her face up

toward the camera. The women stood on a beach and were on display, holding themselves like

trees in the landscape. Their wrap-around print dresses resembled the African-inspired clothing

that was becoming fashionable in some African American communities. While the commercial

resembled a fashion shoot, the message was clear: as the camera panned up to a woman posing

on the beach, a voice over declares:

The next time someone says the Black woman is domineering, remind them how gentle her strength.

384 Kathy M Newman, “The Forgotten Fifteen Million: Black Radio, Radicalism, and the Construction of the “Negro Market,” in Communities of the Air: Radio Century, Radio Culture, ed. Susan Merrill Squier (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003).

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The voice over simultaneously refuted the emasculization accusation in the

Moynihan report and asserted a patriarchal point of view about the “gentleness” of Black

women, demonstrating a nationalist vision of “complementarity.” This commercial was

simultaneously reverent in its celebration of Black women’s beauty and nationalist in its pointed emphasis on the “gentleness” of Black women. The next ideological commercial featured a series of talking heads outlining how Black women and men should relate.

“A Black woman’s role is to relate to her man and family, but first she must learn to relate with her community,” begins the next commercial. After an actress stated this opinion, the next image featured a man and woman walking down an empty sidewalk wearing African- inspired fashions, the man in a dashiki top and slacks and the woman in a printed wrap. The following shot featured the same couple sitting together holding hands. At the end of the commercial the voice over praised the couple, presumably for being together—”Right on

Brother, Right on Sister!” the voice over said approvingly. These commercials offered a defense of Black women responding to the “charges” that women are emasculating men, that the problems of African Americans are women’s fault. Yet the defense insists on the innate

“gentleness” and femininity of women, and insists on heterosexual coupling. The second commercial also responded to tensions about interracial dating, as it clearly celebrated the two

African Americans together as the ideal couple.

In both commercials, the clothing worn by the actors demonstrated an interest in the

new Black look, described by Maxine Leeds Craig, in Ain’t I a Beauty Queen. In the second commercial, the clothes on the man and woman resembled a more everyday version of the elaborate “African-inspired clothes” of the first commercial. The woman wore large hoop

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earrings; and a tunic dress with puffy sleeves made of matching-pattern printed material. She

wore a blue, orange, and white head dress of cloth wrapped around her head. The man wore a

tunic top over plaid pants, creating a striking combination with his printed top. These clothes resembled the “new breed” line of clothing, a Harlem-based clothing designer profiled in an earlier episode of Black Journal.

These commercials positioned the program with a definitive point of view on gender, demonstrating the salience of both reverence and nationalism. Furthermore, the creation of these commercials recognized the dominance of commercial television as an important site for gendered, racialized discourse. They demonstrated the Black Journal crew’s proficiency in creating a commercial ambiance, especially with a low budget. It is significant that the rich color

scheme of the commercials attempted to recreate the saturated look of television commercials in

this era. These commercials offered a vision of an alternative media venue in which even the advertisements would reflect a marketplace that catered to Black tastes, and would counteract negative representations. In their celebration of Black women’s gentleness, however, they produced their own hegemony of traditional gender roles and compulsory heterosexuality.

In the next segment of this 1970 episode, a documentary on a Harlem karate school made the claim that through this martial art, young people in Harlem learned new possibilities for Black identity. The documentary portrayed physical self-defense and the accompanying discipline it invokes as a resolution for the anxieties of both Black men and Black women, claiming that Black women deserve protection and that Black men are capable of providing it. 385

385 The other segments of this episode include an essay on Black filmmaking and Black exclusion from the film industry; reportage from the Black Journal’s correspondent in Addis Abbaba, Ethiopia; reportage on the Council of African peoples, a segment featuring astrological predictions before the next monthly installment of Black Journal, and a segment on police shootings at Jackson State College.

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The documentary showed young men as fierce warriors, a model of “militant masculinity” that

had been espoused by Malcolm X and was his “primary legacy.”386

The director of the karate school linked learning self-defense with political self- determination in the opening moments of the documentary, saying “anybody that will take a stand against oppression can be considered a warrior.” Many political groups made this connection in this era, notably the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Situating self-defense in a history of Black resistance, he cited Nat Turner and Shaka Zulu. After this introduction to the segment, the title “The Black Warrior,” appeared over an image of the karate instructors who had red, black and green flags on the shoulder of their gi, or white karate robe.387 The instructor identified himself as a disabled veteran and a survivor of nearly fatal war injuries to underscore his warrior credentials. Clarifying his political identity still further, he declared, “My commitment to this country and my people are total.” The teacher not only espoused strong

patriotism to the United States, he maintained his opposition to what he perceived as a goal of

some nationalists—”I am not going back to Africa!” he proclaimed.

Following Malcolm X, and other nationalists, the Karate teacher, or Sensei invoked

the “rhetoric of protection.”388 He made an explicit appeal to Black men to “win back the esteem of your Black woman” by embracing a history of Black warriors, saying, “a man in the true sense of the word MAN defends himself.” In making these statements, the instructor could have been paraphrasing Malcolm X. The camera work underscored the militancy and intensity of the instructor’s words with a shot of the instructor punching toward the camera, putting the viewer

386 Estes, p. 88. 387 Red, black and green were colors initially adopted by the UNIA and became known as the pan African flag. 388 Griffin.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 234 on the defensive. In addition to the instructor’s voice, Tony Brown provided off-camera narration over the images of young children sparring. The voice over suggests that reclaiming the father/child relationship will be important for Black liberation. The implicit assumption here is that the karate instructor’s role as a fierce patriarch offers a model for fatherhood—one that according to both the Moynihan report and many nationalists, was conspicuously and problematically absent from most African American families.

While this ideology of self-defense appeared almost totally masculine, after viewing the segment closely it is possible to discern that there were some girls in the class, demonstrating that self-defense had something to offer girls as well. In fact, a close up of a female student,

Sarah Blue, was followed by an exposition of the sensai’s views on female students. Blue’s is the only name the viewer learns when a subtitle identifies her. Over images of Blue sparring with a male classmate, Tony Brown’s voice-over explained the extra body protective gear that she wore.

“Sensei’s feelings about Black womanhood are very strong. He insists they wear a shield to protect their vital organs and thus their womanhood.” During the segment on Sarah Blue, the

Sensei addressed Black women’s self-defense, mentioning the dangers of potential sexual assault: “a Black woman is walking home at night … some idiot happens to grab her” After this comment, the program featured a close up of a young Black female student’s face and then an image of the young woman performing several sparring moves and her opponent falling to the ground. Sensai’s comment “you see how she reduces him to jelly” a comment that genders and even sexualizes the sparring match.

In addition to his “fatherly role” of teaching boys to protect girls and girls to protect themselves, it becomes apparent that the Sensei was committed to attacking social ills,

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 235 particularly the evils of drugs and crime. The fierce instructor’s model of patriarchal fatherhood eschewed the sensitivities extolled in today’s “good father” imagery, but the documentary left no doubt about the director’s commitment to his students, whom he called the most “sophisticated children on earth” because they have “learned to survive in a savage, almost unbelievable world.” He pointed out that his dojo (karate school) is unique; only in a dojo in the Black community would it be so vital to offer this kind of empowerment mixed with discipline. His closing meditation to his class, which ends the documentary segment, is an impassioned one.

If I don’t train you properly, I might be the person who contributed to getting you killed. This is a jungle outside this door: rapists, junkies, dope pushers, bullies. If you are not tougher and stronger than the person out there, you wind up done. If I come up on you and find a needle in your arm, or find you selling dope, or that you’re a coward, I going to be very disappointed. I am not your friend or anyone else’s friend in here. I am a miserable old man. You can go out: you must survive. You’re the only hope we have left in this country.

At the close of this documentary, the program cut away from this imposing father figure to Nina Simone, the “high priestess of soul.” From the stern imposing father, the editing moved the viewer immediately to an alternative model of nurturing and raising up young Black people in difficult times. The scene featured Nina Simone singing a signature song of uplift and nurturing, “Young, Gifted and Black,” to an audience of enraptured college students who cheered her on in a gymnasium at Howard University.389 Inserting the scene of Simone right after the

“Warrior” segment created a perfect set of nonpathological parents for the viewer, a stern but strong and loving father, and a dynamic, empowered, beautiful, and nurturing mother. Of course,

389 It seems (but is not explicitly stated) that she is performing at Howard as part of the National Congress of African People, covered later in the episode

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Nina Simone did not fit into any “feminine” box.390 Her overt politicism and the rage of many of

her songs (as well as the sexual explicitness of some of them) place Simone outside of the notion

of “complementarity of roles” that the commercial about the “gentleness” of Black women

lauded at the beginning of the episode. Yet the episode does manage to frame Simone as a

matriarch, and a powerful one at that.

While the next segment does not focus as explicitly on gender roles as the first

segments had, Brown’s coverage of the Congress for African People revealed a strongly

gendered perspective on the proceedings. At the conference, where Baraka famously pronounced

it “Nation Time,” the cinematographers documented a group of young women in African-

inspired fashions talking together, but unlike the male speakers, their words were not audible.

This silent image depicted the range of fashions and aesthetics shown by women attending the

conference, but revealed none of the intellectual and political engagement that brought them

there. Nonetheless, the images of the women attending the congress implied Black women’s

political and civic participation and thus it contrasted a slightly alternative representation to the

opening commercials’ emphasis on women’s beauty and gentleness. Ultimately, though, other

than Simone, this episode all but silenced women, from the models in the commercials, to Sarah

Blue, to the women at the Congress.

Black public-affairs programs such as Black Journal under Tony Brown offered a

platform for a Black nationalist perspective on gender with frequent affirmations of patriarchy

390 Nina Simone’s star text, according to historian Ruth Feldman, hardly fit in with notions of “respectable Black womanhood.” Ruth Feldstein, “I Don’t Trust You Anymore: Nina Simone, Culture and Black Activism in the 1960s,” Journal of American History 91 no. 4 (March 2005): 1349. “Simone undermined a historically potent gendered politics of respectability that existed in African American activism of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In her critique of both whites and Blacks, she challenged the notion that certain kinds of gender roles were the route toward improved race relations. (12)

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 237 and an idealization of the nuclear family with distinct gender roles. Ideas of gender

“complementarity” circulated on the programs, often alongside Black feminist and other positions. Episodes of Black Journal celebrating Black men as karate-trained warriors, and affirmed the gentle nature of Black women, stressing patriarchy as an ideal order of things.

Those who believed in nationalism felt that these roles were in the best interests of the struggle for Black liberation. Yet, Black television programs offered Black women and some Black men an opportunity to critique the patriarchal parts of nationalist ideologies, and to envision alternatives. In this era, Black women called attention to the ways that nationalist ideology dovetailed with racist and sexist stigmatization of Black women, epitomized by the Moynihan report.

Both the commercials and karate-school segment showed that Tony Brown and the

Black Journal staff felt a need to defend Black women and men. Despite the efforts to make an explicit argument for male warriors and female gentleness, the images of women avidly participating in the Congress of African People added some complexity to Black Journal’s message about the possibilities of gender relations and roles in this moment. Yet looking at the footage now invokes a longing to know what these women had to say.

Say Sister: A Focus on Women at Say Brother

Over the course of the 1970s, Black feminist ideas began to circulate more widely and the issues important to Black feminists became more of a focus on programs such as Say

Brother. Initially, Say Brother addressed women’s issues in part by featuring depictions of women by male artists. Over the course of the 1970s, the coverage of “women’s issues” on Say

Brother expanded into discussions in which women provided their own expertise. The move

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 238 from cultural representations about Black women, to cultural and political ideas by Black women closely parallels discussions in the Black community that emphasized self-determination and self-representation. This increasing responsiveness to Black feminist agendas led programs such as Say Brother and Like It Is to present episodes addressing the struggles of incarcerated women and women’s healthcare. These kinds of issues were underrepresented in mainstream media’s coverage of the women’s liberation and Black liberation movements. Despite the masculine title,

Say Brother in the 1970s created a rich set of documents of Black women’s activism. There was much to represent, as Boston was a center for feminist activism in the 1970s. Groups and organizations included the Black Lesbian Combahee Collective, the Our Bodies Ourselves

Women’s Health Collective, and a strong reproductive-rights community. These women activists had an observable impact on Say Brother.

Yet despite the number of women activists and artists in Boston, a significant portion of Say Brother’s 1973 episode on “The Black Woman” examined photographer Chester Higgins’ pictures of women. Say Brother’s first special on women gives images of women and perspectives by women, equal weight: Higgins’ images of women were accorded the same importance as women speaking for themselves. The conversation with Higgins makes clear that his new book of photographs, Black Woman, offered a refreshing perspective on Black women’s beauty, and that Higgins took seriously the idea of reverence. Nonetheless, the inclusion of a lengthy profile of a male artist on a special episode devoted to women reflects some of contradictions of the era. In addition to Higgins, the program offered a discussion with Associate

Producer Vicky Jones speaking with several men and women about the possibilities and problems of monogamy versus polygamous marriage (a few nationalists suggested polygamous

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marriage as a viable alternative, although it was not part of a universal nationalist agenda).

Additional segments in this packed episode featured performances by a female vocalist, a

modern dancer, and a poetry reading by Sarah Fabio, a brief segment on Elma Lewis, Director of

the National Center of Afro-American Artists and head of an Afrocentric school, short segments

on Doris Bunte, Massachusetts State Representative, and Josephine Holley, founder of La

Parisienne Beauty Salon, two short film segments: one of Malcolm X talking about women, and

interviews with Rebecca Lewis and Imogene Roundtree. These last guests were both elderly

African American women from Boston who talked about education and employment when they

were in their twenties.

Three years later, in April of 1976, the conventions for representing women had

changed, doubtless influenced by the growth of feminist calls for self-determination.391 Say

Brother’s “woman-focused” episode of that year did not feature any male artists. This episode focused on the Equal Rights Amendment. Nearly all the guests were women except for Ted

Landsmark, the Executive Director of the Contractor’s Association of Boston. By 1976, Say

Brother had become a talk show; the program still had a vibrant and large staff, but the on-air talent was more conservative in their presentation style. As I mentioned in chapter 3, the entire original staff was gone, some to Black Journal and Soul! and others to new stages in their careers. Moreover, beyond the changes in staffing and presentation style, which also reflect changes in mood from 1968 to the mid- to late-1970s, the transition to an interior-only program with long static shots of people sitting on stage and minimal editing created a stagnating effect that is endemic to the format. As I will explore, the program did show documentaries shot in the

391 This move also parallels the rise of feminist film theory, notably Laura Mulvey’s pivotal 1975 essay on the problematic male and female gaze, “Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema.”

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field in this era, but they were often created by outside production companies such as Third

World Newsreel. Of course, veterans of this mid 1970s period also went on to make a major

impact in media, notably Dighton Spooner and June Cross. Yet despite the talented and

accomplished staff, it is clear that the program had fewer resources and less freedom, at least

aesthetically, than the first staff members had when creating the program anew. This pattern of

decline in budget and aesthetic innovation was typical for Black public-affairs programs. Stations

had prioritized Black public-affairs programs in an era of open and militant protest and demands,

but they felt less of a need to do so as these demands became less vocal and uprisings declined.

Thus, by 1976, when Say Brother focused an episode on the Massachusetts Equal

Rights Amendment (ERA) and the national ERA, the program was far more subdued aesthetically, and much of the production seemed less accomplished. For example, the editing included long shots of the potted plants on the set several times during this episode

demonstrating that WGBH was no longer assigning their most accomplished technicians to the

program. Furthermore, video stock, which replaced film stock in this era, offered far less

saturated color and resolution. It is also possible that they have been more damaged by age than

the filmed-originated episodes.

Despite these aesthetic and generic shortcomings, the content of the episode is

riveting and spoke to both contemporary and historic concerns of the women’s movement.

Despite the obvious significance that the staff ascribed to this issue by offering an entire hour-

long episode to it, the editing undercuts the political nature of the episode, because interspersed between discussions with studio guests were short performances by a variety of actresses, and

two longer performances of poetry. The poetry presented a surprising, and somewhat distracting

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counterpoint to the discussion. The first poem was a particularly racy account of a sexual

encounter between a man and a woman in their bathroom at home, spoken from a woman’s

viewpoint by an actress. This claiming of sexuality with womens’ agency emphasized was an

important counterpoint to the desexualized images of Black women that circulated, as well as to

more objectifying images. Nonetheless, the poems insertion here somewhat undermines the

discussion. Again, while this may have been intentionally avant-garde, it reads like

unintentionally poorly considered editing.

The highlight of Say Brother’s 1976 ERA episode is a dynamic interview with

feminist activist Flo Kennedy, always an irreverent voice. Kennedy was a well-known feminist

speaker who by this time was popular on the lecture circuit. She was reputedly such a sharp wit

and inspiring speaker that Gloria Steinem would not speak after her on the same bill. Flo

Kennedy responded to an opening question about the value of both the State of Massachusetts

ERA and the national ERA by pointing out that the victory, if achieved in Massachusetts, would be largely symbolic.

Well I think it will be a victory over right-wing racist sexism. You see the right wing, church-documented pigocracy, coverage of the equal rights amendment, people falling on balls: it will be triumph over a pathological society. It’s a symbolic victory, like winning a hill in Vietnam. It is a victory as it is their territory and we took it away.

By admitting that the ERA at the state level would be a largely symbolic victory,

Kennedy refuses to get caught in that single issue, preferring the broad based critique for which she was known. Sparing no one in her response to her interviewer’s questions about the ERA,

Kennedy alluded to some divisions within the women’s movement; Kennedy referred to the

factions as “Madonnas, whores, housewives, and lesbians.” Yet Kennedy argued that these

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groups shared a common oppression, and therefore a common cause. Kennedy used the strong

language that she was well-known for, calling oppressed groups “niggerized groups,” and the

government the “pigogracy.”

Kennedy was particularly savvy about media. She had been engaged in media

activism since 1966, and would go on to have her own television show on New York’s thriving

cable access network MNN in later years (The Flo Kennedy show). She also addressed the

challenge of getting media coverage for feminists: The problem of the interpretation of the

Fairness Act led any representation of feminism to be bookended by the views of virulent

antifeminists, Phyllis Schlafley in particular.392 While Kennedy agreed with other presenters on

the program that there is racism in the women’s movement, she argued that they should not let

themselves forget the bigger enemy. “Its [racism] in a lower level [in the feminist community]

than in the antiabortion community.” She went on to say, with evident disdain, that the

“antiabortion groups” have Black women in their membership, which she criticized because

[pregnancy] is the largest reason for dropouts among high school Black youngsters—I am less concerned about fight between prostitutes and lesbians—we need a coalition among niggerized groups—the right wing have it together—we do not have it together.

After Kennedy’s speech, other Black women organizers described their feelings

about the racism of white women, including white feminists. Kay Gibbs, a Boston-based activist

maintained that white women will continue to pursue their own interests. Gibbs felt that

affirmative action policies brought about by the ERA might pit Black men and women against

392 The Fairness Act was a FCC doctrine that was all but unenforced, and was eliminated completely in 1987. It called for any broadcast outlet that offered a point of view on television to allow equal time for an opposing viewpoint. As I explored in the case of Say Brother, this rule was sometimes used to overpower critical points of view with status-quo points of view.

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one another for jobs, and position white women against all African Americans. A major concern of some of activists, such as Kay Gibbs, was that “third world people” and white women would be placed in competition. They were also concerned that employers could consider Black women a “double minority,” allowing businesses to “check two boxes” by hiring Black women, which would exacerbate tensions between Black women and Black men.

After a lively exchange with the activists, another edited in program insert featured a shot of an actress heard saying “the women’s libbers want to ‘get out’ [of] their kitchens—you

know, I want to ‘get out’ [of] their kitchens too!” This class critique pointedly exposes why some

Black women, angry at years of abuse in the role of domestic servitude, felt “distrust” of the women’s movement’s declarations of sisterhood.

By 1976, episodes focused on gender and women were more common on Say

Brother than they had been in the early 1970s. In the next four years, Say Brother would offer a

“tribute to third-world women” which featured Michele Wallace, an episode about Black women’s healthcare needs and activism, an episode about women in prison, and an episode about violence against women. One of the final episodes of the 1970s offered an hour with Marcia

Gillespie, editor of Essence, who was also a regular guest on other Black public-affairs programs. In many ways, this prevalence represented a mainstreaming of Black feminism and an elevation of Black women to the status of experts on themselves and their own issues. While there is still a sense that Black women are under siege, an optimism also comes through about possibilities for new roles and cultural change.

As increasingly sophisticated analysis of the intersection of race, class, and gender oppression is evidenced in episodes of Say Brother from the late 1970s, such as an episode on

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 244

incarcerated women featuring a documentary film called Inside Women Inside, created by the

radical film collective, Third World Newsreel. The remainder of the episode featured

commentary by three women with relevant expertise on women in prison. One guest was a

former inmate of a Massachusetts prison, the second ran the Charlotte House for recently

released prisoners to help facilitate reentry into society, and the third was a parole supervisor.

The documentary provided a searing look at appalling conditions in three women’s prisons,

along with extensive discussions with women prisoners. The program explored issues of physical and mental health for incarcerated women, such as a miscarriage due to inadequate medical care.

It also addressed the destructive effect on families that comes from incarcerating women, particularly when they are the sole support for their children. After watching the film, a former

prisoner in Framingham said that the prisons in the film (which were not in Massachusetts)

resonated with her experience of minimal mental-health support, unsanitary living conditions,

terrible and non-nutritious food, and a sense of futility. Like It Is in New York also addressed the

specific oppression women experienced in prison, and both Say Brother and Like It Is devoted

episodes to women’s health care. Angela Davis was interviewed in prison and the interview was

aired on a Black public affairs program in Oakland. The issues faced by women prisoners is a

clear example of an issue all but ignored by mainstream media that was explored thoughtfully

and intensively by Black public affairs television programs.

“Not for My Taste, or My Sex”: The Backlash on Black Journal

In response to Black feminism as well as the multiracial movement for Women’s

liberation, a backlash to feminism became evident on some Black public-affairs programs

especially Black Journal. This backlash appeared as a harsh judgment of Black women for their

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 245

critiques of sexism and misogyny or for their artistic depictions of Black men. The discourse of

backlash is an anxious one. Prominently espoused by men on these shows (although there were

some women who were part of the backlash to Black women’s liberation), the most public

scapegoats for the backlash against Black feminism were women cultural producers such as

Ntozake Shange and Alice Walker. Tony Brown’s Journal developed out of Black Journal and changed (and continues to change) with Brown as he has become known as a conservative thinker.

By 1977, Black Journal had become more conservative than it was in the early

years. In February, an episode called “Colored Girls or Black Women” aired. Tony Brown

introduced the program saying that at that time, “the community” was experiencing a “more

threatened male and more hostile female than under the pressures of slavery.” Tony Brown

postulated that “white America has used Black women to keep Black men in their place.” As did

many Black Journal episodes in the late 1970s, this episode featured a survey question. This one asked: “Are Black women domineering?” After interviewing Ntozake Shange and discussing her

Broadway show, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is not

Enuf, Brown interviewed Marcia Gillespie, editor of Essence. Brown readily disclosed that he had not seen Shange’s play. “I haven’t seen the show because it’s not for my taste or my sex,” but he cites both negative reviews and a group of women protestors who say Shange’s play maligns

Black men.393 During the interview, Brown repeatedly interrupts Shange, but she resists being

derailed by interruptions. She responds to Brown’s charges that her work maligns Black men by

saying,

393 Lest I seem to criticize Brown for not seeing Shange’s work specifically, I should also note that before interviewing Melvin Van Peebles, Brown acknowledged not having seen his film either.

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This play is by a woman and its for women. If men want to pay to come and see it, they can do that. Men pay to see a lot of things! Furthermore, this is about my own experience with very different men, ranging from a very sort of upperclass educated person, to a brutish character and including a very wonderful boy, so unless those actual men are in the audience, I don’t understand where you would get some kind of general insult to Black men. Why can’t women have their own space to make their own work? Why must they always give up the one thing they’ve got? I write about problems in relationships because until recently that’s all I knew about.

Even though Brown’s critique of Ntozake Shange reflects a lack of engagement with

her work that he also exhibited with some male artists, notably Melvin Van Peebles, the

vehemence of his response shows that Black public-affairs television was not simply a free space

promoting Black discourse of all kinds. On the program, Brown attempted to position Essence

editor Marcia Gillespie as a more feminine, appropriate antidote to Shange, by saying that

“Marcia Gillespie encourages a more realistic approach to relationships.” In the interview,

Gillespie attempted to avoid getting drawn into a comparison with Shange. Tony Brown closed

the episode by patronizing both women and ignoring everything they have said. His final comment was trivializing, which his language appears to acknowledge:

I really don’t know how it feels to be a woman. As trivial as it may sound, it would be hard for me to wait for someone of the opposite sex to ask me to dance. We know our women are something special, literally the colors of the rainbow, and Black at the same time.

While he says this, an array of images of young, Black women are shown in a

montage sequence. Brown may have intended to discredit Shange in this episode, but in fact the program gave her considerable exposure as she appears composed and intelligent. Black public- affairs television provided a representational space for Shange, although clearly not an ideal one.

Despite the backlash at Black Journal, most Black public affairs television programs grew more attentive to women’s issues over the course of the 1970s as activists pushed these

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issues to the forefront, and as more women joined the ranks of the programs in powerful

positions. However, in the case of Black Journal, the picture was mixed. While the program featured many female guests and employed many women, Tony Brown’s perspective on gender was conservative and seemed to become more so over the course of the 1970s. Brown’s response to writers such as Ntozake Shange was hardly unique—some men and women criticized her for her construction of violent Black male characters. As Madhu Dubey wrote, Shange, along with other women writers touched a nerve by “portraying gender divisions at a time when Black nationalism required literary affirmation of a cohesive racial community.”394

By the late 1970s, women had assumed significant power at those programs that

were still on the air and the representation of issues from a Black women’s perspective

predominated over images of the backlash against Black feminism. However, the impact of

women’s increasing power in the genre was somewhat undercut by the waning of Black public-

affairs programs in this period. As the climate of urban uprisings and the focus on broadcaster’s

responsibilities waned; individual programs were less and less likely to survive to a new season.

In 1980, a new, less politically oriented program marketed towards Black women arrived on the

scene. The national program, For You Black Woman was similar in tone and content to Essence

magazine. It was a lifestyle program, as much a precursor to Oprah as a descendant of Say

Brother’s more “sisterly” moments.

394 Madhu Dubey, Black Women Novelists and the Nationalist Aesthetic. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press) 23.

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Taking Gender Seriously

Backlash from Tony Brown notwithstanding, the seriousness with which Black

programs addressed gender issues contrasted with the ways that mainstream television

marginalized the Women’s Liberation Movement and gender issues.395 Communication scholar

Bonnie Dow described how participants in the women’s movement struggled to “fix” their negative or dismissive media image. Dow argued that television isolated the women’s movement

into specific sensationalized events. Furthermore, male reporters who were hostile to the

movement often framed the movement with sarcasm and deprecating humor. 396 Recall that in

1964, a Virginia Representative added the word “sex” to the categories protected in title VII, not

in an effort to end gender discrimination, but in order to sink the bill, as the pervasive attitude was that employment and economic equality for women was a joke.397 This history highlights the importance of Black public-affairs programs as a separate space where women’s issues were taken seriously. While there were a few women’s public affairs television programs in this era, the movement for such programs was smaller in scale than the nationwide Black public-affairs movement. Thus, Black public-affairs television provided an unusual perspective when the programs focused on gender and women’s liberation.

There are important historical reasons that these Black programs took gender so

seriously. Gender had long been “at stake” in Black liberation ideologies. From the abolition

movement, to lynching, miscegenation laws, and Jim Crow, U.S. racism had always had a

395 Dow, p. 52–80. 396 A few women journalists, sympathetic to the movement, notably Marylin Sanders, attempted to help feminists repair and stabilize their image on television, but did so in an almost apologetic way that seemed to cater to a skeptical male audience. See Dow. 397 MacLean, p. 70.

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gendered component, and the struggle against it was also gendered.398 Thus, while gender equality was not often a stated goal of male-led Black liberation groups except for the leftist

Black Panther Party, the issue of gender roles and expectations was explicitly part of the struggle for African American liberation. Although hosts and executive producers of Black public-affairs programs were typically men, some programs including the masculine titled Say Brother, began to employ female hosts in the 1970s. As I documented in the previous chapter, gender dynamics on the staffs of all of these programs were complex. Yet women did work at all of the programs, and as more and more women worked on the programs and as the influence of Black feminism grew in different locales, Black women’s issues were covered more explicitly on the programs.399 Programs such as Black Journal, and Say Brother, Like It Is, Our People, and Inside

Bedford-Stuyvesant were far from an enlightened utopia of egalitarian gender relations, 400 yet

the very existence of these programs provided a Black publics and opportunity to engage both an

enclave strategy for an insider discussion of gender issues in Black communities, and a

counterpublic strategy, engaging with issues such as the ERA and other issues from a Black

perspective.

Conclusion

The history of Black feminism on Black public affairs television reinforces that

Black public affairs television created a space for a Black counterpublic response to

398 A few scholarly texts on the intersection of gender and U.S. slavery, and racism and Black liberation struggles include Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of white Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1996), and Estes. 399 One interesting television convention of the era, followed both by mainstream and some Black programs was to have women journalists interview women guests.

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marginalization. Using Catherine Squires’ reconsideration of the term counterpublic, I have

shown that Black women in this era formed their own marginalized public within the Black

public, and for them print media, particularly anthologies such as The Black Woman, as well as

television programs offered some opportunities to employ a counterpublic strategy. In other

cases, when resources were fewer or oppression greater, Black women’s organizing used a more

enclave strategy, to regroup within their own organizations and plan resistance from within them.

401 Television offered viewers an encounter with ideologies critically opposed to mainstream

media’s focus on wealthy white male “experts” on the problems of poverty and racial hierarchy.

Black public-affairs programs often covered women’s issues sympathetically, when other

programs ignored them. Women such as national welfare rights activist Beulah Sanders, depicted on Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, aimed to educate recipients about their rights, and to defend recipients’ needs such as clothing allowances. In the cultural realm, feminist artists such as

Ntzoke Shange used their television appearances to address pervasive criticism that her work maligned Black men.

In the period from 1969–1975, programs such as Soul!, Like it Is, and Say Brother gave prominent attention to reproductive and sexual rights, including, crucially for women of color, the right to bear and raise children. They also focused on to the right to sexual agency, with many examples of women asserting sexual autonomy, and on debates over the hotly contested issue of the character of the Black family. Later in the 1970s, as Black feminism broke into the mainstream, and as women attained more editorial power on Black public-affairs

400 As Madeline Anderson’s and Jessie Maple’s stories, recounted in chapter 3, “Getting Soul Behind the Camera” demonstrates. 401 Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere: An Alternative Vocabulary for Multiple Public Spheres,” p. 446– 68.

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programs, issues of pay equity and the ERA, women’s healthcare more globally (beyond

reproductive choice and freedom from forced sterilization) and the incarceration of women were

added to this list of issues.

My examination of modes of representing gender on Black public-affairs programs makes plain that the issue of gender relations in Black communities was under intense discussion, and was perceived as part of the Black liberation movement more broadly.

Throughout the years from 1970–1980 African American women used the medium of television

for rhetorical self-defense against a political climate that marginalized and demonized them. It

offered Black women a chance to explore self-definition and to consider alternate models of

motherhood, sexuality, and political agency.

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Conclusion

Writing in Black Scholar in 1973, Pamela Douglas argued:

Lately articles on minority access to TV have begun appearing in some white periodicals. The impression given is that black efforts in television center on pestering powerful white institutions until they give up a little piece of the crust of the pie. […] That is not what the struggle is about now, and it has never been what the struggle is about.402

As Douglas aptly points out, to see the 1968-1980 movement for Black television

access as a struggle over the “crust” profoundly misunderstands the transformation both of

African Americans’ television representation and the television industry. Ultimately, the movement for Black public affairs television galvanized Black audiences in numerous U.S. cities and regions. On the local level, programs such as Say Brother and Inside Bedford Stuyvesant featured community-based activists, artists, as well nationally known activists, politicians, and artists. In this era of multiple and contested ideas about Black liberation, the shows portrayed

Black communities as discursive environments where Black nationalist ideas had permeated and were debated, and a place where housewives, parents on welfare, and high school students held and articulated strong political beliefs. While Inside Bedford- Stuyvesant documented and showcased the many achievements of the community and its residents, claiming specific locales in the community. Say Brother’s youthful and ambitious staff called attention to the cracks in

Boston’s racially liberal façade. Say Brother openly questioned Boston’s self-image as a racially liberal “cradle of liberty.” The program represented new cultural practices and provided a forum where African Americans could find an arbiter more open to their concerns than courts or police.

By inviting audiences to live “according to new principles of Blackness,” Say Brother aimed to

402 Douglas, Pamela. “Black Television: Avenues of Power,” Black Scholar, 5, September, 1973. 23.

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incite audiences to greater activism and responsiveness. Say Brother’s producers attempted to

legitimize and promote civic engagement and activism by documenting struggles against school

segregation, university discrimination, substandard housing, and public official’s lack of

accountability to Black constituents. Both programs countered the invisibility of Black artists by showcasing little known local performers alongside national acts.

The history of these programs shows that local television offered an important set of

possibilities for Black viewers. Television studies scholarship has not sufficiently examined local

television—yet examining local television, especially urban television, is crucial to

understanding the possibilities for African American television. The majority of African

Americans in the United States live in metropolitan areas, where most Black public affairs

programs were created. Programs such as Say Brother and Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant both

document this urbanization are produced by it. These programs employed both enclave and

counterpublic strategies, literally speaking in different codes. My analysis of letters from white

viewers demonstrates how educational these programs could be for non-African Americans, yet

these viewers in some cases saw a different show than Black viewers, who experienced the

shows as mirrors of their communities.

National programs like Black Journal and Soul! represented the potential for a national Black public to engage with itself. Adam Green locates the roots of this national Black self-image in Black print media.403 Building on the nationalizing influence of publications like

Ebony, Black television programs and Black media activism offered new possibilities for living

portraits of Black communities that could be viewed by other African Americans in other locales.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 254

Television was crucial to expanding opportunities for Black publics as it had become the main source of news for most Americans. Despite the loyal audiences for these national programs, they were vulnerable to cancellation as PBS’s priorities shifted in the 1970s. The de-escalation of urban uprisings (despite the spiraling pressures in many cities) allowed for this shift in priorities.

Once station officials were less scared of riots, they were less likely to heed the demands of activists. The programs’ engagement with Black feminism in the 1970s is an example of their powerful role in offering an opportunity for African Americans to respond to racist and sexist discourses, and to formulate a radical alternative, even as the forums themselves were losing resources.

While a handful of Black public affairs programs remain on the air, by 1974 the proliferation of new programs had abated to a great degree. By 1980 the majority of remaining began to be cancelled, or transformed beyond recognition. New programming in this period included For You Black Woman, which eschewed Black feminist critique, and addressed Black women about the same constellation of issues as the African American women’s magazine,

Essence: beauty, human interest stories, and love and relationships. Occasionally, the show featured episodes on self-defense, and the rights of women in the workplace. Another nationally syndicated program, America’s Black Forum, which began in 1977, became increasingly conservative in the 1980s and 1990s.404 Despite the waning of many of these programs, and the move to the right of Tony Brown’s Journal and American’s Black Forum, some Black liberation

403 Adam Green. Selling the Race.

404 See “America’s Black Right-Wing Forum” Black Commentator. Issue 20. December 12, 2002.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 255 programs persist to this day, notably Like It Is, in New York City. Gil Noble, that program’s host is still as outspoken on issues ranging from drug use to Palestine, as he was in 1968.405

Both local and national Black public affairs programs have left a rich archive that has much to say about local and national African American histories. They also opened the door to contemporary genres ranging from Black Internet sites such as Black Commentator to the current public affairs programming such as the Tavis Smiley Show. Furthermore, the legacy of this media movement includes many prominent Black producers and media makers, most of whom are still working today as well as mentoring others. Alumni of the Black public affairs genre have continued to leave their mark in television and film, from Stan Lathan’s pioneering entertainment series Hill Street Blues to Henry Hampton’s groundbreaking Eyes on the Prize. This movement was very successful in intervening against Black exclusion from media access and building empowered spaces on television. Finally, this movement offers a powerful example of the efficacy of media activism.

This dissertation intervenes in the history of media policy by demonstrating how intertwined these programs were with the regulatory process. While Pamela Douglas considered many of the Black programs to be a “public affairs out,” providing a too easy and too inexpensive way for stations to meet required minimums for public affairs programming allotments, those allotments did sustain these important programs.406 This study demonstrates that the changes in regulatory climate in the 1970s came about because of the same activism that produced Black public affairs television programs. Critically, this shows the somewhat

405 Philip Nobile, “The Invisible Man: Gil Noble.” Village Voice. October, 8 1991. 34-42.

406 Douglas, Pamela. “Black Television: Avenues of Power,” Black Scholar, 5, September, 1973. 28.

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counterintuitive finding that this regulation did not, for the most part, bring these programs

about, but it did sustain them. Deregulation, on the other hand, allowed the programs to wane

and, in many cases, to disappear. The legacy of the 1960s and early 1970s regulatory climate,

created a new way of thinking about broadcast outlets’ accountability to citizens. Even the

regulatory vocabulary of this era, especially words such as “ascertainment,” remapped relationships between citizens, broadcasting and the state. This climate change, along with the

uprisings, gave media activists real power, which they wielded to great effect in this era.

In recognizing that African Americans fought for both better television representation and access to jobs in the television industry during the Black Power era, this dissertation reconsiders the importance and even efficacy of the urban uprisings of the mid and late 1960s. Often, the uprisings are considered to have been only destructive—while they did often devastate the very infrastructure of the people who felt most grievously wronged by American apartheid, they also pushed local and national government officials made government officials far more acquiescent to activist demands for the airwaves than they would have otherwise been. Ultimately, there is still much work do be done on the impact of the uprisings and the Kerner Commission Report.

This dissertation makes clear that while the Kerner Report may not have been law, its findings did reverberate through the broadcast community, and left many with clear answers to the questions “What can we do?”

By recognizing the importance of both the uprisings and Black media activist campaigns,

this study adds to current reconsiderations of the Black Power era that see this era not as a

decade of declension in which a mythical Black consensus gave way to factionalism and despair,

but as an era in which some of the most exciting ideas in Black liberation came to fruition in the

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 257 form of new cultural and political outlets. This dissertation intervenes in a history of Black representations on television that has focused on the stereotypical nature of prime-time representations, and offers an important counter-narrative in which African Americans collaborated on an entirely different way of representing Black concerns and critiqued prime- time from within the television sphere. Furthermore, this dissertation extends the critique of public television offered in recent scholarship, yet simultaneously offers a glimpse of the promise and possibility that PBS once held for participatory, democratic communication. By offering missing chapters from both television and Black liberation history this dissertation sheds light on the possibilities for Black representation in the 1968-1980 era as well as in the current moment.

Heitner Black Power TV Dissertation 258

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———. “TV: Black Journal, Facing Cutback, Seeks Funds.” New York Times (June 24, 1969): 91.

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Newman, Kathy M. “The Forgotten Fifteen Million: Black radio, Radicalism, and the Construction of the “Negro Market.” In Communities of the Air: Radio Century, Radio Culture, ed. Susan Merrill Squier. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003.

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Appendix 1 Interviews by the Author

Madeline Anderson, October, 2004.

Bahati Best, September 2004.

Kay Bourne, May 2005.

St. Clair Bourne, March 2005.

Jim Boyd (telephone) February, 2005.

Hazel Bright, Boston, Tufts University, May 2, 2005.

Ellie Cabot (telephone), July, 2005.

Danny Dawson July 2004.

Angela Fontanez, October 2004.

Ben Gelascoe (telephone), December 2005.

Jewelle Gomez (telephone), April 2005.

Ronald Gray, telephone interview, February 2004.

Charles Hobson, August 2005.

Vernon Jarrett (telephone), January 2003.

Stan Lathan (telephone), April 2005.

Mark Lloyd (telephone), September 2004.

Jim Lowry, Chicago, December 2005.

Bobby Shepard, October 2004.

Dighton Spooner, June 2004.

Jim Tilmon, September 2004.

Marion Etoile Watson, February, 2006.

Eric Werner, September 2004.

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Appendix 2

A Partial List of Black Public Affairs Programs airing between 1968 and 1980 by Region

Northeast New York Metropolitan Area Local Programs Like It Is, W-ABC Black News(NY), WNEW Positively Black W-NBC Inside Bedford Stuyvesant WNYW Black Pride WPIX

Syracuse Black on Black

Boston Talking Black (later renamed Mzizi Roots) WBZ-TV Black News on WHDH-TV Third World WVCB Say Brother-WGBH

Philadelphia Another Voice – WHYY New Mood, New breed-WCAU

Pittsburgh Black Horizons

Connecticut Lookin Better-CPTV

Washington DC Harambee WTOP Black News WTTG

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Midwest Detroit Go Tell It--Ben Hooks Reports. WDIV- TV Colored People’s Time Haney’s People –WXYZ

Chicago Common Ground, WBBM Channel 2 Our People WTTW A Black’s View of the News WCIU Face to face, Originally-For Blacks Only- WLS

Cleveland Black on Black Black Peoplehood

Cincinnati, OH Right On WCET

Milwaukee Black Noveau

Kansas City, Kansas Dimensions in Black KMBC

Omaha Black on Black

St. Louis MO Heads Up KMOX

Minneapolis Black Voices

West Los Angeles Innervisions KCET

San Francisco Bay Area Black Dignity Vibrations for A New People KPIX

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South

South Carolina For The People SCETV

New Orleans Perspectives in Black WWL-TV

Atlanta Ebony Journal Kaleidoscope WAGA TV

Louisville I Am Somebody WLKY Bridge WHAS

Jacksonville Kutana WJXT

National PBS programs Syndicated Black Journal/Tony Brown’s Journal 1968-present (transitioned from PBS- to commercial network-back to PBS) Black Perspectives on the News produced by WHYY Soul! 1970-1973 produced by NET Say Brother (WGBH) was also syndicated nationally for a time

National Programs on Commercial Television

For You Black Woman

America’s Black Forum

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Appendix 3

List of Archives Consulted

Kay Bourne (Private Archive) (Boston, MA)

Ford Foundation Archives (New York, NY)

Hatch Billops Collection (New York, NY)

Library of American Broadcasting (College Park, MD)

Library of Congress, Moving Image Collection (Washington DC)

Ernestine Middleton (Private Archive)

Moorland Spingarn Library, Howard University

Museum of Broadcast Communication (Chicago, IL)

Museum of Television and Radio, (New York, NY)

National Public Broadcasting Archives; African American Collection(College Park, MD)

Gil Noble Collection at the New Jersey City University Library (Jersey City, NJ)

Northwestern University Library, Special Collections, (Evanston, IL)

Peabody Awards Collection, The African-American History and Culture Television Collection, University of Georgia Libraries Media Archives (Athens, GA)

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division (New York, NY)

UCLA Film and Television Archives (Los Angeles, CA)

WGBH Media Archives and Preservation Center, Say Brother Collection (Boston, MA)