Marconi, and the KKK Pleasure Club

Construction of the Belmar station began in 1912 and continued into at least 1914. The site even had a 45 room hotel for "unmarried employees." It's not actually in Belmar, Belmar was just the nearest city of any note. It was actually in the township of Wall, NJ. the Belmar station was duplexed with his station in New Brunswick, so the radio operator in Wall keyed signals to the New Brunswick transmitter, 32 miles away via a land-line connection. According to a 1971 article in the Asbury Park Evening Press it was the last tower of what was once an array of 30:

"The first antenna consisted of six towers, each 300 feet high. Other towers were added later; some were made of wood and some of steel. The company abandoned the site in 1924, after other stations father north proved more efficient. The Army acquired the area in 1941 and subsequently tore down 28 of Marconi's towers"

That army base referred to above is Camp Evans, a base associated with Fort Monmouth. The camp is named after Lt. Col. Paul Wesley Evans of the U.S. Signal Corps. He worked at the Belmar Station in the early 20th century. (Evans was later a signal officer at the Panama Canal Zone.)

Let's rewind. In 1912 Public Law 264 was passed. It was an early attempt by the federal government to regulate radio. It permitted the President of the United States "...in time of war or public peril or disaster may cause the closing of any station for radio communication and the removal therefrom of all radio apparatus, or may authorize the use or control of any such station or apparatus by any department of the Government, upon just compensation to the owners." More here.

In 1917 they actually did so as a part of WWI. The Navy took over 53 commercial radio stations, most of them owned by the Marconi Co. Most of them were simply shuttered. In 1919 President Wilson allowed the return of the radio properties, effective 1 March 1920. The Navy thereupon manipulated the GE buyout of the American Maroni Co. thus creating RCA. That's relevant because at RCA Armstrong used the Belmar station for the development of FM. But they had no interest in maintaining the 396 acre site in perpetuity, and abandoned it in 1924.

This is how it came to be that in 1925 it was bought by the Klu Klux Klan. That hotel, and the main Marconi building served as state headquarters for the KKK from 1925 to 1932. The property was owned by the Monmouth County Pleasure Club. The Klan's Grand Dragon Arthur H. Bell  posted fliers in the area advertizing the facilities amenities: swimming, fishing, boating, golfing, tennis, and polo with the tag line "SPEND YOUR SUMMER WITH THE KLAN."  More here. There was a lawsuit regarding title to parts of the property and the mortgage was foreclosed and the building changed hands in a sheriff's sale.

It was bought in 1937 by Reverend Percy Crawford who intended to build a college but didn't. The US Signal corps bought most of the property and established the Evans Signal Laboratory which was used for radar development in WWII. Even in the early 1960s the Marconi towers were still being used to receive signals from weather satellites.

KKK Radio

I've found a couple cases in the past where the KKK actually owned a broadcasting facility. It's rare today that they have any voice on the commercial FM or even AM band. That's not to say there's no voice for bigotry or racism in broadcasting, there's always FOX. Regardless, it makes these historical instances even more arcane.In the image above you see a Klansman sitting atop a defeated Catholic. It comes from the text "Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty" printed by the Pillar of Fire Church in 1926. Church founder, Bishop Alma Birdwell White went on to print dozens of books supporting the KKK and white supremacy. These works include "the Good Citizen," "The Ku Klux Klan Prophesy", "Guardians of Liberty," "Heroes of the Fiery Cross"etc. You may be thinking man.. that's a long time ago. But just wait. She reprinted them in 1943, shortly before her death in 1946. The 1992 Book "Women of the Klan" details Alma's role as a spokesperson for the Klan. (She even penned Klan poetry)

Bishop white had left the Methodist Church in 1917 because it was "hopelessly apostate." Really it just refused to recognize female preachers as equals. She'd been holding revivals and wanted some recognition. So she started a Pentecostal sect, the Pillar of Fire Church. They built a compound in Franklin country New Jersey that got so nutty that her husband divorced her and repudiated the sect. Strangely at this time in her life her politics took two major changes. She became an advocate for the ERA and also big time supporter of the KKK. She wanted women to be treated equally unless they were Jewish, black or (gasp) Catholic.

In 1925 when WBNY-AM signed on at 1430 MHz. The first owner was Shirley Katz, who sold to engineer Sydney Norton Baruch that same year. In 1926 the station moved to 930 AM then inexplicably moved to 1370 to share time with both WKBO, WKBQ and WFRL. It seems odd but really they'd only been running a little PM programming anyway. They moved again in 1928 to 1350 becoming a share time with WCDA, WKBQ and WMSG. Sick of the endless merry-go-round Baruch sold to The Pillar of Fire Church and one Bishop White.

In 1928 Pillar of Fire branched out and bought a stick in Westminster Colorado. 1490 KPOF-AM was initially licensed as KGEY-AM at a mere 15 watts. Pillar of Fire refers to this as their oldest station forgetting that Katz started WBNY years earlier. Their ownership initiated was only months apart. They also own 93.3 WAKW in Cincinnati which they actually founded themselves rather than purchased. In 1961 the FCC grated them the calls WAKW standing for Arthur Kent White, the initials of the Bishops son.
WMSG was shortly thereafter absorbed into WBNY making WAWZ a much more valuable property. It was a share-time with new York station WBNX-AM. WAWZ-AM still only broadcast about 4 hours a day. In 1954 in a very-forward-thinking move they bought 99.1 FM from the New Brunswick Home News. In 1984, after the last descendant of Ms. White left the helm, P.O.F. sold off the AM stick allowing WKDM-AM to go to 24 hour service. Just to reiterate their bigoted roots, they ran a special day of programming before handing off. It was a full-day of recordings of Bishop Alma Birdwell White preaching her nutty head off.

Despite being dead for decades WAWZ didn't repudiate the KKK until 1997. They described their dalliance with the KKK as "brief" an adjective that vastly understates the connection.

A Complete Broadcast day Sept. 21, 1939

This was an interesting find. In 1939 the radio station WJSV recorded an entire broadcast day.
WJSV originally went on air in 1926 as WTRC based in Brooklyn, NY. It was named for the Ttwentieth district Republican Club. Interestingly enough that batch of Republicans were also members of the KKK. The federal government ran them out of New York City.

A year later it moved to Arlington, Virginia, as 1470 WTFF-AM. It was named for The Fellowship Forum, the Klu Klux Klans newspaper. Soon after flipping calls to WJSV; now named for the papers publisher James S. Vance.In 1932 CBS bought the station ousting the bigots in bedsheets and cleaned house. They changed the city of license to Washington D.C. and changed its call letters to WTOP-AM in 1943. But while it was still WJSV in 1939 on September 21st an entire 19 hour broadcast day was recorded. Starting at 6 a.m. and running through 1 a.m. a veritable time capsule was created.
The project was at the behest of the the National Archives. But this was no random selection. PD Harry C. Butcher was a naval aide under Eisenhower, and it was he that first named FDRs fireside chats and his start reporter Robert Trout that introduced the president each week. The Schedule looks like this:

6:30 Sundial with Arthur Godfrey (music)
8:30 Certified Magic Carpet (quiz show)
8:45 Bachelor's Children (soap)
9:00 Pretty Kitty Kelly (soap)
9:15 The Story of Myrt & Marge (soap)
9:30 Hilltop House (soap)
9:45 Stepmother (soap)
10:00 Mary Lee Taylor (soap)
10:15 Brenda Curtis (soap, featuring Agnes Moorehead)
10:30 Big Sister (soap)
10:45 Aunt Jenny's True Life Stories (soap that Bob & Ray loved to parody)
11:00 Jean Abbey (news for women)
11:15 When a Girl Marries (soap)
11:30 The Romance of Helen Trent (soap)
11:45 Our Gal Sunday (soap)
12:00 The Goldbergs (comedy)
12:15 Life Can Be Beautiful (soap)
12:30 Road of Life (soap)
12:45 This Day Is Ours (soap)
1:00 Sunshine Report (news)
1:15 The Life & Love of Dr. Susan (soap)
1:30 Your Family and Mine (soap)
1:45 News
2:00 President Roosevelt's Address to Congress (speech)
2:40 Premier Edouard Daladier
3:00 Address Commentary (news)
3:15 The Career of Alice Blair (soap)
3:30 News (news)
3:42 Rhythm & Romance
3:45 Scattergood Baines
4:00 Baseball: Cleveland Indians at Washington Senators (sports)
5:15 The World Dances (music)
5:30 News (news)
5:45 Sports News (news)
6:00 Amos and Andy (comedy)
6:15 The Parker Family (comedy)
6:30 Joe E. Brown (comedy)
7:00 Ask-It Basket (quiz)
7:30 Strange as it Seems (true stories)
8:00 Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour (variety)
9:00 The Columbia Workshop - "Now It's Summer" (drama)
9:30 Americans at Work (true stories)
10:00 News (news)
10:15 Music (music)
10:30 Albert Warner (news)
11:30 Teddy Powell Band (music)
12:00 Louis Prima Orchestra (music)
12:30 Bob Chester Orchestra (music)

You can stream it here or download it here. WJSV calls now reside on 90.5 in Morristown, NJ on a high school station. They have no affiliation with the KKK, The Fellowship Forum or CBS radio. the public domain focal blog Counter Clock, also visited this subject. It's worth the read, and they lumped the audio together in one download for your convenience. .

Superman Vs. the KKK

With the overt nationalistic jingoist zeal that comes with the new superman movie, I thought I'd revisit the less politicized roots of Superman. Well, I thought wrong. Superman was always been a political figure. I was not aware how much so. The surprise is that the original supes was a lib.So hated a LIBERAL was the man of steel in the 1940s radio dramas that right-wing commentator and reactionary evangelist (and Republican) Gerald L.K. Smith, denounced Superman as "a disgrace to America." To be fair, When Smith began suggesting that the Holocaust never he shunned by most politicians, even prune-juice-guzzling racists like Strom Thurmond.In looking at the history of the Superman character, you can see that his pursuit of the American way was even more overt, in the last years of the 1940s. The Radio's Adventures of Superman broadcast nightly at 9:30pm, from 960 KABL-AM. It was an extraordinarily popular show on the Mutual Broadcasting Network, claiming 4.5 million listeners in 1947.

But the left-lean didn't come from KABL-AM, it came from Folklorist and author Stetson Kennedy. He contacted the producers of the Superman series and proposed a story where the superhero battles the Klan. The producers, agreed to the idea. Kennedy then upped the ante, infiltrating the Klan and providing Klan information, including secret code words, to the writers of the Superman radio program. This resulted in a series of four episodes in which Superman took on the KKK. Kennedy's intention was to strip away the Klan's mystique and trivialize the Klan's rituals and code words.

The Klan tried to retaliate by pressuring Pep Cereal--sponsors of the Adventures of Supermanoff of grocery shelves in Atlanta. Despite Green's actions, the sponsors continued to green-light the anti-Klan shows. That's right, Kelloggs was willing to stand up to inbred hicks wearing bedsheets, even the ones carrying pointy sticks. The anti-KKK story arc earned spectacular ratings which might have prompted their loyalism.

The Bombing of KPFT

KPFT was founded by journalist Larry Lee, who convinced Pacifica Radio to establish an independent radio station in Houston, TX. His dream became a reality in March of 1970. In that same year, KPFT became the first, second and only radio station in the United States to have its transmitter bombed by terrorists. More here. 

The first sound to emanate from 90.1 FM in Houston was the song Here Comes The Sun from the then-brand-new Beatles album, Abbey Road. About two months later on May 12 members of the KKK blew up the KPFT transmitter, and the station was off the air for weeks.

Several months after completing repairs and returning to the air, the transmitter was bombed a second time! The October 6th bombing caused much more extensive damage. The cost of the damage was estimated to be about $35,000 —that's $222,000 in today's money adjusted for inflation. KPFT was off the air for more than three months. They resumed broadcasting on Wednesday, January 20th, 1971. A guard of armed police surrounded the station. They interviewed the mayor and the chief of police who both sided with the KKK, questioning their right to broadcast, and accusing them of airing obscene records.  Arlo Guthrie performed live in studio opining his set with Alice's Restaurant. This was the song that they had been playing when the October bombers struck.  Guthrie stepped up to the mic and said:

"So I was sitting in West Palm Beach yesterday, —this is in Florida— and I said "Wow, I'm gonna go over to Houston. What am I going to do there?" I mean maybe somebody will bomb me.. I didn't have any songs about bombs, or nothing like that, so I had to write one. I'd like you to sing it with me..."

A decade later, the KKK's Grand Wizard claimed that his greatest act "was engineering the bombing of a left-wing radio station," hinting none-too-subtly at KPFT. In 1977 bomber Jimmy Dale Hutto was ratted out by FBI informant Russell Rector. Russ has been in the witness protection program since the bombing because the KKK was pretty upset about his informing. Ultimately a whole quartet were indicted: Louis R. Beam Jr., a 24 year old salesman; Peter Lout Jr., a 26 year-old construction worker; Jimmy Dale Hutto a 24 year old chemical worker, and Paul William Moratto a 24 year old electrician. Hutto for his part was arrested in February by the FBI as he was driving toward California with Moratto. His intention was to dynamite more Pacifica radio stations.

Despite the actions of these right-wing terrorists, The Pacifica Network grew to five stations: KPFA in Berkeley, KPFK in Los Angeles, WBAI in New York, WPFW in Washington, and KPFT in Houston. Until 1983 it also included KRAB in Seattle. More here.