Sixteen Sepia Spielers

I've never found the original article, but it's referenced in a few books and one very notable Billboard article by Nelson George in November of 1985. Over half a century later I have no way to vet their stats but it's all too believable. The key claim is as follows "In 1947, there were three thousand disc jockeys in the country, but only sixteen were black."

It appeared on page 44-47 in their December 1947 issue. Four years later Mr. George wrote a book The Death of Rhythm and Blues and the book appears again in the works cited. But it also was cited in Doowop: The Chicago Scene by Robert Pruter, Nothing but Love in God's Water by Robert Darden, African Americans and the Media by Catherine Squires. (For the record DJs had been called Spielers since at least 1939.) Their definition of a Spieler is unclear but we can infer much from the list itself (below) we can exclude one-shot performers. These are DJs with a music program, not news programs.

DJ	CALLS	CITY
Ed Baker	WJLB	Detroit, MI
Al Benson	WJJD	Chicago, IL
Bill Branch	WEAW	Evanston, IL
Ramon Bruce	WHAT	Philadelphia, PA
Jessie Burks	KXLW	St. Louis, MO
Jack L. Cooper	WSBC	Chicago, IL
Van Douglas	WJBK	Detroit, MI
Jack Gibson	WCFL	Chicago, IL
Bess Harris	KING	Seattle, WA
Eddie Honesty	WJOB	Hammond, IL
Harold Jackson	WOOK	Washington D.C.
Sam Jackson	WHIN	Providence, RI
Emerson Parker	WQQW	Washington D.C.
Sam Price	WPEN	Philadelphia, PA
Norfley Whitted	WDNC	Durham, NC
Woody Woodard	WLIB	Brooklyn, NY

I've written about most of these DJs at one time or another. So perhaps that is why Major Robinson for was not included for his NBC radio column was back in 1948... but he was also one year too late for the article. Mary Dee Dudley, the first black woman to be a radio DJ misses the list by one year. Holmes "Daddy-O'Daylie of WMAQ misses the mark. Even the great Bill Hawkins at WHK misses by just a few months. This was only a list of black DJs active in 1947. The year was very early in the struggle for civil rights so it's certain that the list is short.  But some of the omissions are notable: Bill Cook at WAAT, Dan Burley at WWRL, and Lavada Durst at KVET to name a few... but only a few.

But I should comment on math and veracity:  The number 16 is very specific and allows me to suggest possible omissions. The number 3,000 is clearly an estimate. According to a November 1947 report by the FCC there were only 142 commercial radio stations operating in the U.S. in 1942.  Radio researcher Jeff Miller was able to add 6 non-commercial stations [LINK] to that tally for a grand total of 148.  So that 3,000 number is assuming 20.27 DJs per radio station, and considering the number of part time radio stations in that era, is actually plausible. But it also means that 0.533% of all DJs in 1947 were black or that 99.46666% of all DJs were white. So adding a few names to this list changes exactly nothing.

The Rise and Fall of WOOK

1340 WOOK-AM ceased to exist in 1975 following 7 to 0 vote by the FCC commission to shut down the station. It was one of the largest soul radio stations in America at the time and it owned the Washington D.C. market. The station was badass, and it went off air 35 years ago. Things were always tumultuous at the station, but that's what the making of history is always like. The station was essentially done in for blasphemy, Rev. Richard Eaton went down the same way that Lenny Bruce did.

Eaton had troubles form the very beginning. Take for example his antics in 1947. After a few employees were found to be unionizing he fired one and cut the pay of the other, the now famous Hal Jackson. AFRA called it "outrageous anti-union conduct"  and more or less blamed  Richard Eaton, the president of the United Broadcasting Company, owner of WOOK. So they called a strike. Eaton presented an entirely different version where Hal Jackson cut his own hours and the union was striking preemptively to pressure him to unionize his shop. Hal described it differently in his autobiography, The House That Jack Built:

"I tried to pressure Eaton to improve salaries and working conditions for others at the station, he couldn't understand why I bothered, since I was doing OK. My protest work with the NAACP made me more aware of labor unions and the good they could do in bettering conditions for workers. So I joined the AFRA, and got AFRA to start organizing the people at WOOK. When Eaton refused the unions demands, we called a strike... WOOK lost a lot of revenue during the strikeand Eaton eventualy had to give in and allow the union."

Hal had broken the color line as a black broadcaster on 1600 WINX-AM in 1937. He was one of the first black American DJs ever. But that is the story of the rise. This is the story of the fall. The unionization of WOOK cost Hal his job there. He and Eaton were unable to work together after Hal won out.

Things never really let up for WOOK. In 1966 they were fined$7,500 for "code violations." Then in 1969 WOOK first had their license challenged. The charge was that their gospel programming wasn't exactly by the book. Jet Magazine described it thus in 1975:

"The station had been litigating for more than six years since it was accused of permitting preachers to use numerical designations for chapters and verses in the bible as tips for listeners who played the D.C. numbers racket."

Now let's be clear, gambling is not illegal. By modern standards those antics border on comic, not criminal. That the gambling wasn't above board seems trivial. The "numerous" civic organizations were other religious groups competing for the license. They essentially accused WOOK of blasphemy, not obscenity or indecency. [Not that any of that was codified yet] But 1969 was a comic year. That year a college student, Bruce Willis of Howard University pulled the stunt of a lifetime at WOOK. He got naked and climbed their 339-foot tall radio tower. he'd had an altercation with Fred "Soul Finger" Correy and been ejected from the facility. In protest he dropped trou and sat at the top cross-legged. He was forcibly removed by an army helicopter after an hour.

In 1973, Judge McClenning found that United Broadcasting was unqualified for it's license and that WOOK aided and encouraged illegal gambling activity through its religious programing. He recommended the FCC grant of WCSC (now WYCB) the mutually exclusive application for 1340. Docket number 18562 was all bad news for Eaton.  Eaton fought the order all the way to the February 28th appeals deadline in 1976. He lost it all. Just a decade earlier  United Broadcasting had erected a new $150,000 WOOK radio station building. That same year the Advertising Club of Metropolitan Washington awarded Eaton an "Award of Achievement." It had been a long way down. In the end the Supreme Court gave the WOOK license to a religious group called "Community Broadcasting" that founded WYCB-AM in April 1977. Eaton died defeated at the age of 81 four years later.

Hal Jackson makes WINX blink

Although by the fifties there had been several influential black DJs, it hadn't been easy for their forebears to gain employment. Civil rights was still an optimistic largely academic discussion. The media owners of the day were as bigoted as the street sweeper. Today we have a black man running for president. But in 1939, people obstructed the success of even talented educated blacks. Hal Jackson was just damn determined.

He was born in 1915 and grew up in Washington. He attended Howard University, then an all-black school. It as a good school though. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall attended as well. (It's often referred to as "the black Harvard" by condescending white ingrates.) It was there that he would later become the first African-American radio sports announcer, broadcasting American Negro Baseball League games over 1340 WOOK-AM. (Today we only know Howard for WHUR-FM) WOOK-AM eventually became WYCB-AM a reputable gospel outlet. WOOK had been founded by Richard Eaton as a "Negro" radio station playing R&B.

Hal first started broadcasting in 1939 with on a program called The Bronze Review, a nightly interview program on 1600 WINX-AM He was not received warmly at first. Actually he was first told "No nigger is ever going on the air in Washington," by an unnamed manager at WINX.
So Hal bought time on the station through Erlich & Merrick an advertising agency that cared more about the color green. His program did very well. Eventually he forced his way in. By the end of the year he was on other stations including WUST, WOOK-AM, WSID-AM, and WANN-AM. So he lapped the D.C. area daily doing shows in baltimore, Annapolis and Washington D.C.

He went on to New York where he worked at WLIB, WMCA, WPIX WNJR, WWRL, and syndicated programs for both ABC and NBC throughout the 1950s and 60s. More here. In 1971 Jackson was part of the group that bought out WLIB-AM, the first black owned and operated station in NYC. Today, Jackson is on the board at Inner City Broadcasting. Today he's on air at WBLS hosting Morning classics sixty years later. He was inducted into the radio hall of fame in 1995. In 2001 he penned an autobiography, The house that Jack Built... a book worth reading.