Revolution Televised.pdf

What You See Is What You Get 59
tural catharsis and a release from the narrow roles of Sidney Poitier,
were often scripted and directed by white Hollywood studio personnel.
9 Therefore, although the films often spoke the politics of
black empowerment, because of the production environment they
proved less exemplary of the mandates of Black Nationalism at its
many levels. 10
The significance of black radio was exemplified on the night that
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Radio provided a source
of calm and reason in the nation’s black communities. As Del Shields,
jazz deejay on New York’s WLIB, describes:
[O]n the night Dr. King was killed, all across America every black
station was tested and everybody who was on the air at that time,
including myself, told people to cool it. We tried to do everything
possible to keep the black people from just exploding even more
than what they were. . . . When America looked at black radio in
that particular period, it suddenly hit them that this was a potent
force. If, in every major city, a black disc jockey had said, “Rise up,”
there would have been pandemonium. 11
The impact and influence of black radio, and the understanding of
the strength and community created among deejay, music, and audience,
brought Don Cornelius from black radio to television and
the concept of Soul Train.
Soul Train: The Oral and Visual Tradition
Don Cornelius began his broadcasting career as newsreader and
swingman, a deejay who covered open slots at Chicago’s WVON
in the 1960s. Frustrated by his inability to garner his own show,
he began to look for another creative outlet for his work. As
Cornelius explained, “It was with the advent of black radio that I
thought black people would watch music television programs oriented
toward themselves.” 12 He began a second job at WCIU-TV,
a local UHF station that was developing some minority programming.
Cornelius worked as sports anchor on A Black’s View of the
News and formed a relationship with the station owners, to whom
he pitched the idea of a black dance show patterned after Dick
Clark’s American Bandstand. Cornelius invested his own money
to create a pilot for Soul Train, which he then took to the merchandising
manager for the five Sears, Roebuck stores located in