Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette College of Communication Faculty Research and Communication, College of Publications 1-1-2008 Community Renegades: Micro-radio and the Unlicensed Radio Movement Lawrence Soley Marquette University,
[email protected] Published version. "Community Renegades: Micro-radio and the Unlicensed Radio Movement," in Radio Cultures: The Sound Medium in American Life. Eds. Michael C. Keith. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Group, 2008: 261-286. Publisher Link. © 2008 Peter Lang Publishing Group. Used with permission. 15. Community Renegades: Micro-radio and the Unlicensed Radio Movement LAWRENCE C. SOLEY When police beat Dewayne Readus during a 1983 scuffle at the John Hay Homes housing project in Springfield, Illinois, they were no more aware that their actions would lead to a large-scale revolt than were the Los Angeles cops who beat Rodney King eight years later. Unlike the revolt in Los Angeles, the one that started in Springfield was nonviolent, invisible, and international. It triggered the micro-radio revolt of the 1990s-an explosion of unlicensed, low-power radio stations that originated in, and broadcast to, neighborhoods across the United States and across the globe. Dewayne Readus grew up in the John Hay Homes public housing project, a 600-unit complex of low-rise apartments for low-income families a short distance from President Abraham Lincoln's historic home. In the 1980s, the project was home to approximately 3,000 people, the vast majority of whom were African American. No commercial broadcasting stations were directed to Springfield's 15,000 African Americans, most of whom lived within a one-and-a-half-mile radius of the John Hay project.