Black public affairs television began in the late sixties as African-Americans took control of the streets — and the airwaves. After decades of unfair representation in the media, a new generation of African-American producers, writers, and editors brought their news and views to programs like Black Journal, Soul!, Say Brother, and many others.

Black public affairs television was born of turbulent times, a product of America’s great societal upheaval in the 1960s. The passage of federal legislation to prohibit discrimination at the lunch counter and the voting booth (the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, respectively) did little to address the everyday indignities of economic and racial discrimination for most African-Americans. Urban schools remained woefully underfunded and overcrowded. Banks made it nearly impossible for black families to purchase homes and businesses, so African-Americans were segregated into low-cost, low-quality housing in urban ghettos. Poverty, powerlessness, and police brutality became the norm for many urban African-Americans. From 1964 on, in cities as far-flung as Watts, New York, Baltimore and Chicago, African-Americans took to the streets to violently protest racial and economic inequality.

ENTER THE KERNER COMMISSION
In response to race riots in Newark, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Minneapolis and Detroit during the “long, hot summer” of 1967, President Lyndon Johnson created the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission. The Kerner Commission was tasked with finding out why the riots happened, and what could be done to prevent future “civil disorders”. The commission concluded that

“Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans.

What white Americans have never fully understood—but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain, and white society condones it.”

The Kerner Commission recommended an overhaul of the educational, employment and law enforcement systems in America’s cities. In particular, the Kerner Commission took the news media to task for its portrayal of African-Americans, claiming that the media

“failed to report adequately on the causes and consequences of civil disorders and on the underlying problems of race relations. They have not communicated to the majority of their audience–which is white—a sense of the degradation, misery and hopelessness of life in the ghetto.”

The Commission recommended that the news media recruit and train African-American journalists in print and television media, and that the media should provide better coverage of African-Americans and issues in their communities.

ASSASSINATION AND AFTERMATH
In 1968, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. set America’s cities ablaze once more. Race riots ravaged Washington DC, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore and more than 100 other American cities in April of 1968. This new wave of unrest, coupled with the Kerner Commission’s report, spurred the news media to act. Local and national television stations began recruiting and training African-American journalists and created black-themed shows like Soul!, Say Brother, and Black Journal. But instead of merely accepting assignments, these new African-American journalists demanded more editorial control, increased funding, better broadcast times and a distinctly “Black” aesthetic for their programs.

These shows marked a turning point in the portrayal of African Americans in the media. For the first time, black producers, editors, writers and on-air talent took control of the way blacks were portrayed on TV. Here’s a look at some of the groundbreaking programs that changed the representation of African-Americans –- and the face of television –- forever.

SOUL!

Soul! aired on WNET (Thirteen) in New York from 1968-1973. The show was the brainchild of Ellis P. Haizlip, at the time the sole African-American producer working at WNET (then NET, National Educational Television). After Dr. King’s assassination in 1968 and the subsequent riots, Haizlip was approached by station management to consider the creation of a new arts program, along the lines of a black ‘Tonight Show’.

Instead, Haizlip created a black arts showcase more akin to Showtime at the Apollo, featuring both mainstream and avant-garde acts – from Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield and Patti LaBelle to Max Roach, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Haizlip orchestrated charged interviews with Louis Farrakhan, Stokely Carmichael, James Baldwin and more. As a producer, he juxtaposed artists like singer Bill Withers with poet Mae Jackson; author Toni Morrison with Junior Walker and His All-Stars; and singer Jerry Butler with Muhammad Ali. Soul! stepped away from the “minstrel show” portrayal of African-American artists, instead creating a sense of black ownership and community. As Haizlip himself said on the show in 1972:

“We’re trying to create programs of black love, of black encouragement … hope that you agree with what’s going down.”

Say Brother

After Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4th, 1968, riots swept through more than 100 cities across the country. But one major city remained relatively calm – Boston. Public television station WGBH teamed up with the legendary James Brown to broadcast the soul singer’s concert live from Boston Garden on the evening of April 5th. And instead of rioting, Bostonians stayed at home, glued to their TV sets. (see WGBH’s documentary on the event, “The Politics of Soul” and listen to entire 1968 James Brown concert)

The huge success of the James Brown concert at keeping the peace in Boston prompted WGBH to hastily put together their Black public affairs television program Say Brother. The show debuted on July 15, 1968, and is still aired on WGBH today as Basic Black. The African-American staff of Say Brother was younger than other shows like NET’s Black Journal; every staffer, even the show’s director, Stan Lathan, was an African-American in their teens or early twenties. Consequently, Say Brother took on controversial issues like Black Power, school integration, youth uprising and police brutality. As Ray Richardson, one of the Say Brother’s first producers, said on the show’s first anniversary in 1969:

“We attempted to create an outlet for many of the viewpoints that exist in our community and to deal with political, educational, and cultural activities relevant to black people. We have had successes, occasional failures, and many memorable incidents.”

Clip: Intro to Say Brother, from 1968, theme by The Crowd on The Street

For even more clips from Say Brother, check out:
Muhammad Ali
Ron O’Neal from “Superfly”
Bobby Seale

Black Journal

Black Journal was produced by NET in New York, beginning in 1968. The program was initially helmed by white professionals, but after African-American staff members went on strike in protest, NET hired filmmaker William Greaves to produce the show. This hour-long program was distributed nationally, featuring coverage of African-American news, arts, and editorial commentary. Watch the first episode of Black Journal

Unlike NET’s Soul!, which brought together artists in the studio in New York, Black Journal had the operational budget to send out film crews to cover African-American communities in Atlanta, Detroit, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, and even Ethiopia. By 1970, the show won an Emmy, Peabody and Russwurm awards.

Black Journal struggled financially at WNET for years before moving to commercial television in 1977, with the controversial Tony Brown as producer and host. Brown moved the show back to public television in 1982, where it aired until 2008 as Tony Brown’s Journal.

Colored People’s Time (CPT)

Detroit was especially hard-hit by racial violence in 1967 – a riot that summer lasted five days, claimed forty-three lives and resulted in over 7,200 arrests and 2,000 burned buildings. In 1968, Detroit public television station WTVS started production on an African-American news and public affairs show called Colored People’s Time. The show’s original mission was to build more community involvement among Detroit’s largely African-American urban population.

CPT was originally hosted by Tony Brown, who went on to host WNET’s Black Journal. The program covered local and national news and events pertinent to Detroit’s African-American community, as well as the arts, fashion and culture. Sample topics from early episodes of the program included the controversial Black Power salute at the 1968 Summer Olympics and the lack of African-American representation among Detroit’s politicians. The show is still airing today on WTVS as American Black Journal.

Watch a “public service announcement” from “Colored People’s Time”.

© Detroit Public Television; courtesy Michigan State University / MATRIX

Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant

On April 4, 1968 – the same day as the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – New York commercial TV station WNEW announced the creation of Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant. At the time, the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn was one of the largest African-American communities in the country – 400,000 strong. Despite its size, however, the neighborhood was virtually ignored by the mainstream media – and if Bed-Stuy was in the news, it was only in reference to crime and poverty.

That all changed when Robert Kennedy’s Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, the first community development corporation in the United States, conceived of Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant. BSRC brought in Charles Hobson to produce the show with an initial budget of $45,000. In contrast to the in-studio production style of programs like Soul! and Black Journal, Hobson and his crew went out into the streets to film the real Bed-Stuy, good and bad. Hosted by Roxie Roker and Jim Lowry, celebrities like Harry Belafonte, Eubie Blake, and Cleon Jones came on the program, but most of the show’s “stars” were simply people from the neighborhood, and, with the exception of only a few episodes, the entire show was filmed outdoors. Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant ran for 52 episodes from 1968-1970 before sponsorship money dried up, but the show painted an indelible portrait of a time and a place long forgotten.

Watch Leroi Jones Young Spirit House Movers and Players put on a spoken-word performance on “Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant”.

Sources:

* Report Of The National Advisory Commission On Civil Disorders (1967) (pdf)
* Devorah Heitner, “Black Power TV: A Cultural History of Black Public Affairs Television 1968-1980″ (2007)
* Gayle Wald, “‘It’s Been Beautiful”: Recovering Soul!”
* Sarah-Ann Shaw, “The History of Say Brother”
* American Black Journal online archive
* Jim Yardley, “Black America Made Visible: TV Show Illuminated Culture Through Lens of Bed-Stuy” (New York Times, 1998)
* Jake Austen, TV a Go Go (Chicago Review Press, 2005)
* Christine Acham, Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Struggle for Black Power(U. of Minn. Press, 2004)

Moses Dillard, Jim Boling, and the band Lovejoy on Job Man Caravan from South Carolina public television

National Programs on Public Television

Black Journal/Tony Brown’s Journal (1968-2008) (transitioned from PBS - to commercial network - back to PBS)
Black Perspectives on the News, WHYY Philadelphia (1974-1979)
Soul!, WNET New York (1970-1973)
Say Brother, WGBH Boston
Talking Black, Eastern Educational Network, Boston (one-off program, 1968)
Another Voice, WHYY Philadelphia
The National Black Political Convention, WTTW Chicago (poss. 1973)

National Public Affairs Programs on Commercial Television

For You Black Woman (syndicated, 1978-79) (hosted by Freda Payne)
America’s Black Forum (1989-2003)
Black Omnibus (1972-73), (hosted by James Earl Jones) (episode list)
Clip: Black Omnibus, Taj Mahal plays the banjo and talks to JEJ:

Black Public Affairs Programs, 1968-on, by Region

Northeast

NYC
Like It Is, WABC (1968 - present)
Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, WNYW (1968-1970) (more about producer Charles Hobson, 2009 interview with Hobson)
Black Pride, WPIX
Positively Black, WNBC
Black News, WNEW

Syracuse, NY
Black on Black

Schenectady, NY
Black Telethon

Boston
Mzizi Roots, WBZ-TV
Black News, WHDH-TV
On Being Black, WTBH
Third World, WCVB Channel 5 (later City Streets, now CityLine)
Say Brother (later renamed Basic Black), WGBH (1968-present)

Philadelphia
Another Voice, WHYY (also Black Perspectives on the News; more about host Chuck Stone)
New Mood, New Breed, WCAU
Soul Scene, WCAU
Tell it Like It Was, WCAU
Black Book, WFIL

Pittsburgh
Black Horizons (1968-present), WQED

Connecticut
Lookin’ Better, CPTV

Washington DC
Harambee, WTOP (1969-?)
Black News, WTTG
Petey Greene’s Washington, WDCA-AM
Clip: Petey Greene’s immortal ‘How to Eat Watermelon’ segment, from Petey Greene’s Washington, 1982:

Midwest

Detroit
Go Tell It–Ben Hooks Reports, WDIV-TV
Colored People’s Time/CPT (later renamed American Black Journal), WTVS (1968-present)
Haney’s People, WXYZ (1967-1981)
For My People, WKBD (1970-) (more about producer David Rambeau)

Chicago
Our People, WTTW (1968-1972)
A Black’s View of the News, WCIU (1968-?)
For Blacks Only (renamed Face to Face), WLS (1968-1979) (article about host Werner Saunders)
Common Ground, WBBM Channel 2 (1972-?)
Clip: A roundtable discussion on black radio, featuring Tom Joyner (1982)

Cleveland
Black on Black
Black Peoplehood, WVIZ

Cincinnati
Right On, WCET

East Lansing, Michigan
Perspectives in Black, WKAR (1974-1977)

Milwaukee
Black Nouveau, MPTV (1991-present?)

Kansas City, KS
Dimensions in Black (renamed Dimensions), KMBC
Minority Matters, (later Urban Affairs), KCTV (1968-1997)
Go Tell It

Omaha
Black on Black

St. Louis
Heads Up, KMOX

Minneapolis
Black Voices, KTCA/KTCI (1969-?)

West

Los Angeles
Innervisions, KCET

San Francisco/Bay Area
Black Dignity, KGO
Vibrations for A New People, KPIX
Black on Black, KNXT

Seattle
Face to Face, KING TV (1965-70) and KCTS (1971-72) (Biography of the host, Roberta Byrd)

South

New Orleans
Perspectives in Black, WWL-TV

Atlanta
Ebony Journal, WXIA
Kaleidoscope, WAGA TV

Louisville
I Am Somebody, WLKY
Bridge, WHAS

Jacksonville
Kutana, WJXT (article on the host, Betty Bullock)

South Carolina
Job Man Caravan, SCETV (1968-?) (article about William Terrell, exec. producer)
For The People, SCETV (1971-?) (also see Terrell article)
Clip: Listervelt Middleton, who hosted the show from 1977 - on.

View a list of African-American news, public affairs and culture programs that have won Peabody awards.

We welcome additions, corrections, links to videos or any more information about any of these programs. Please let us know in the comments.

Devorah Heitner

Charles Hobson was a producer for WBAI radio when he was approached to produce a news program about Bedford-Stuyvesant. Robert F. Kennedy conceived a television series that would show the ‘real’ Bed-Stuy -– a neighborhood of working families, students, artists and professionals. “Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant” came to New York’s airwaves in 1968.

On “Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant”, Charles Hobson captured his neighborhood in black and white — local celebrities, activists, musicians, and regular residents all made appearances on the weekly show. The program ran for two years, and Hobson moved on to produce shows like “Black Journal” and “Like It Is”.

Watch Hobson Interview (7:45)


Watch excerpts from the two-year run of Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant:

* Interview with Actor/Musician/Activist Harry Belafonte
* Interview with Community Welfare Activists
* Interview with Author Julius Lester
* Interview with Boys High seniors
* Interview with NY Philharmonic violinist Sanford Allen
* The Leroi Jones Young Spirit House Movers performance

Today, Charles Hobson works at Thirteen as a producer on Great Performances. His next project is “Harlem in Montmartre”, a 90-minute performance documentary, telling the compelling story of the impact of the American jazz age on Paris between the great wars, exploring a fascinating yet often neglected era of African-American cultural history. PBS Engage recently interviewed Hobson about his old and new projects.

These kids, from Bed-Stuy and Brownsville, deliver a powerful protest about race relations in America.

Watch the Leroi Jones Young Spirit House Movers and Players (9:33), introduced by Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant host Roxie Roker:

The young players embody the activist spirit of their driving force, poet and Black Arts Movement originator LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka). Using synched movements and poetry, the kids address various issues from inequality to the lack of a well-rounded black history curriculum in the schools. One girl states affectingly: “We are taught to hate ourselves…America, why did you bring us here?” But the underlying message from Jones through these kids is the importance of pride and self-empowerment. As one of the children says near the end: “Today is ours/Let’s take it.”

Watch the Leroi Jones Young Spirit House Movers and Players (9:33), introduced by Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant host Roxie Roker:

Read more about Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant:
* Interview with producer Charles Hobson
* Overview of Black-produced television from 1968, including Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant
* Article on the show from the Brooklyn Rail

(Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant was originally broadcast on WNEW in NYC. Clips provided by Charles Hobson).

In this 1968 segment, singer/actor/activist Harry Belafonte talks to the Bed-Stuy community in a local Brooklyn park, and takes a Q&A from Bed-Stuy residents.

Belafonte had always been active in civil rights–Five years before this interview, he joined the historic March on Washington, D.C. with Martin Luther King, Jr. In this video, the entertainer, surrounded by a group of adults and kids in a park, discusses his problem with the inaccurate representation of blacks in the media. He later fields questions from several spectators on issues of poverty, education and politics affecting the black community.

Harry Belafonte interview(11:33)

To this day, Belafonte continues to speak on behalf of human rights. In 1987, he became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, and has traveled to countries such as Senegal, Rwanda and South Africa. Most recently Belafonte received the 2006 Black Entertainment Television Humanitarian Award.

Read more about Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant and Belafonte’s activism:
* Interview with producer Charles Hobson

* Overview of Black-produced television from 1968, including Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant

* Harry Belafonte’s biography on UNICEF Web site

* Harry Belafonte Web site

* A photograph of Harry Belafonte with actors Sidney Poitier and Charlton Heston at the 1963 March on Washington

* Harry Belafonte with his 2006 Black Entertainment Television Humanitarian Award

Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant was originally broadcast on WNEW. This clip provided to the web courtesy the producer.

Before it became Tony Brown’s Journal, Black Journal was a weekly newsmagazine originating from NET (National Educational Television–pre-WNET) and airing nationally. The tone was a mixture of serious, educational, and irreverent– in news stories, interviews (2 Black Panthers in this episode alone), profiles, and skits.

Hosted by Lou House and William Greaves, initially the staff on Black Journal, and, in fact, for this first episode, were NOT all black producers, directors, etc… but between when the first episode was being prepared and its airdate, the black staff of the show went on strike (more about this later, when we interview producer Charles Hobson, spokeperson for the group). The goals of the strike? For the staff, at the very least the senior staff, to be all black. These goals were met by the time the show, and this first episode, launched.

Segments:

* Open: actor Godfrey Cambridge, playing a maintenance worker, paints the screen black.
* Harvard Class Day: Coretta Scott King speaks to the graduating class at Harvard.
* Graduation ‘68: interviews with graduating students at Harvard, Southern University, Morehouse and Spelman.
* Press Roundup: history of the black press and review of stories in the news, from the 1800s to today.

Time: 21:00

* Poor People’s Campaign: footage of shantytown built on the mall in Washington, DC, and an update about the status and effect of the movement.
* New Breed Fashions: profile of the all-black clothing design firm, including a runway show. New Breed was the company who basically invented the dashiki in 1967–they adapted an African garment and gave it the name–and then heavily promoted it as the black-identity garment to have.
* Profile of a Jockey: Ronnie Tanner, an apprentice jockey, and a short history of black jockeys in horse racing.

Time: 39:25

* Black Panthers: Review of the Panther-police conflict in Oakland, California.
* Interview with Huey Newton, from prison
* Interview with Bobby Seale
* Dateline: brief news update
* Mass Media Satire: a skit, spoof of the media and how they approach black issues or characters at the time. Lots of semi-veiled ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ jokes.

Running time: approximately 1 hour.

This episode of “Black Journal,” one of the earliest black-produced newsmagazines on television, features:

* A profile of L.A. grassroots empowerment organization Operation Bootstrap, including one of their components, a factory that produces black dolls and babydolls.
* A skit about racial disharmony, featuring actor Antonio Fargas.
* A segment on the challenges faced by elected black public officials (including an interview with Shirley Chisholm).
* The words and music of singer Nina Simone, including a performance by Ms. Simone at Morehouse University.

It is one of two episodes of Black Journal nominated for a Peabody Award. It originally aired in 1969, and is hosted by Lou House and William Greaves.

Episode Segments:

* “Fire”: a short film, in which a white man tries to convince a black man (Antonio Fargas!) on the street to give him a pay phone to report an emergency: serves as a larger discussion about race relations.

Time: 7:05

* Operation Bootstrap: a feature on the grassroots, self-help organization in South Central L.A. –includes a sub-story on Bootstrap’s subsidiary Shindana Toys, a company that makes toys for black consumers.

Time: 23:41

* Elected Black Officials: a discussion of the issues facing American black officials who gathered at a conference in Washington DC Representatives Julian Bond, Shirley Chisholm and John Conyers are among those featured, with commentary by Columbia University’s Dr. Charles Hamilton.

Time: 42:36

* Nina Simone: The jazz and soul singer is interviewed and seen performing at Morehouse College, including “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.”

* “Nightcall”: A news story about the cancellation of this national call-in radio show about race relations.

Starting in 1968, Detroit public TV station WTVS produced an African-American news and public affairs show called Colored People’s Time, abbreviated as CPT. The show’s original mission was to build more community involvement among Detroit’s largely African-American urban population.

CPT was originally hosted by Tony Brown (picture at right), who went on to produce WNET’s Black Journal, and later helm his own show for over 30 years, Tony Brown’s Journal. CPT covered local and national news and events pertinent to Detroit’s African-American community, as well as the arts, fashion and culture, including live performances from musicians, dancers, more. The show is still airing today on WTVS as American Black Journal. Many shows from the archives are online.

This episode was originally aired in 1969.

Episode Segments:

Time: 0:00
*“Git White Overnight”: A public service announcement about how skin-lightening creams don’t work – “black don’t wear off.” (Length: 0:58)

Time: 1:04
* “The Making of a Rioter”: a feature that finds the roots of the 1967 Detroit riots in the poor condition of Detroit’s public schools. The segment includes interviews with students at Detroit’s Northeastern High, and concludes with commentary by Tony Brown about urban schools in Detroit and beyond. (Length: 5:45)

Time: 6:53
* “The Grapevine”: a segment on black Detroit’s fashion, entertainment and celebrities of the day, including Florence Ballard of The Supremes and Motown star Kim Weston. (Length: 2:49)

© Detroit Public Television; courtesy Michigan State University / MATRIX

Other highlights from the CPT/Detroit Black Journal/American Black Journal archives:

* 1977 interview with Alex Haley
* 1978 interview with James Brown on his 45th birthday.
* 1978 interview with Bobby Seale
* 1978 interview with Eartha Kitt
* 1981 interview with Sun Ra, after he was given the key to the city.
* 1985 show on Blacks in Corporate America
* 1989, “Old Hastings Street”, a history of black neighborhoods in Detroit

Ashford & Simpson perform on Soul!

It’s 1973. An impressively-dressed Ashford & Simpson launch into “Keep It Comin’,” a radiant soul song about the sustaining power of love. As she sings, Simpson raises her arm above her head, the gesture simultaneously a nod to the rhythm and a revolutionary salute. Both she and Ashford are beaming. As the camera pans back from the singers, it becomes apparent that so, too, is the audience. Heads keep time, feet tap gently; the room is softly alive and buzzing, the massed bodies a single unit, riding the song’s unifying and sustaining groove. “Keep it comin. Keep it comin.’”

The warmth and celebratory air of the “Ashford and Simpson” episode was a hallmark of Soul!. From its September 1968 debut to the final episodes in 1973, Soul! provided a stage for a breathtaking array of black cultural and political luminaries, including many performers who had never before appeared on TV. It did so, moreover, in a variety-show format that mixed “high” culture with “low,” well-known names like Sidney Poitier with (then) up-and-coming figures like Stevie Wonder and poet Nikki Giovanni. Most importantly, Soul! was unapologetic about aiming its diverse and self-critical weekly affirmation of black culture and politics to African American viewers, a group that had previously not had the pleasure of seeing itself widely, or truthfully, represented on television.

Soul! was the brainchild of Ellis Haizlip, the first black producer at WNET (then WNDT), who joined the station in the mid-60s. Haizlip was approached by Christopher Lukas, the station’s white director of cultural programming, with the idea of launching an arts program for black audiences. Haizlip developed the notion of a program that would use the variety-show format (familiar from commercial fare such as The Ed Sullivan Show) to display the breadth and variety of black culture. Soul!’s mission would be not merely to entertain African American viewers, but to challenge them to ponder the possible meanings of black culture and black community at a time when African Americans were driving American social transformation.

Initial funding for Soul! came from a combination of public and private sources, including a start-up grant from the Ford Foundation. With money in place, Haizlip pulled together a creative team of camera operators, set designers, and producers, the majority African Americans. (As a ‘first’ himself, Haizlip never forgot the entrenched discrimination he had experienced working in New York theater and television.) Alice Hille, Soul!’s first associate producer, and one of the first black women to hold such a position, became Haizlip’s close collaborator and, through her connections to Harlem’s Apollo Theater, his link to the rhythm-and-blues world.

Soul! bore the stamp of Haizlip’s visionary leadership, impeccable taste, and skill as a social connector. A product of segregated Washington DC, Haizlip had witnessed contralto Marian Anderson’s legendary 1939 concert on the steps on the Lincoln Memorial. For him, opera singers, funk musicians, lyrical poets, and political revolutionaries were equal participants in the black cultural project. Haizlip’s philosophy was “it’s all our culture,” recalls actor Anna Maria Horsford, who worked as an associate producer at Soul! “It was a celebration. Look what we’ve produced in spite of.”

Ellis Haizlip's low-key onscreen presence

Soul! also gave artists a chance to go beyond their usual roles (on Soul!, singers might conduct interviews), and relished the unexpected juxtaposition. Among the most intriguing Soul! pairings: Bill Withers, the hit-making singer-songwriter, with poet Mae Jackson; Jesse Jackson (then best known for his work with PUSH) with former Raelette (Ray Charles’ backup singer) Merry Clayton; Toni Morrison, recent author of The Bluest Eye, with Junior Walker and His All-Stars; Louis Farrakhan with musicians Mongo Santamaria and the Delfonics; Jerry Butler with Muhammad Ali. (See episode list)

Designed by Chris Thee in its first season, the set of Soul! sent a powerful message. It “imagined the dawn of a new world—fiery orange sunbursts were projected on electric blue backdrops,” according to cultural critic Lisa Jones. “Abstract sculpture served as scenery. Interviews were shot from unexpected angles and the editing style was up-to-date psychedelic—lots of dissolves and superimpositions.”

Unlike programs such as The Tonight Show, Soul! was “taped as live,” which allowed its camera operators to capture the un-teleprompted reactions of a modest studio audience made of local New Yorkers. Indeed, in making the audience part of the spectacle, Haizlip brought to television the aesthetic principles he had imbibed in the churches of his youth, and he was able to represent black music as a conversation between musicians and audiences. As Haizlip explained, the goal was for the audience to appear “in relationship to a performance that [they are] enjoying as opposed to a performance that is being presented for [them].” In this way, a viewer might “catch the flavor of people interreacting. Some sort of exchange was going on.”

In addition to working behind the scenes, Haizlip put himself on camera, appearing as a frequent host and interviewer. Always sharply-dressed, sporting a mid-length Afro and “serious” glasses, he crafted an unusual, unassuming on-stage persona. He conducted interviews with intense interest, pushing conversations as far as they could go, all while never hogging the microphone. This laid-back style attracted notable, reticent figures: activist (and former SNCC leader) Stokely Carmichael, the writer Chester Himes, and black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan all accepted Haizlip’s invitation to appear on the show.

Haizlip was a black gay man in a pre-gay liberation moment–the Stonewall riots that would catalyze the gay and lesbian liberation movement would not occur until summer 1969–and thus not an obvious choice to host a show as central to a Black Arts project as Soul!. Needless to say, Haizlip never came “out” as a homosexual on television; not only would it not have been his style, but such a move would have been fatal to the show. Yet neither did he shy away from “gay” issues. When Farrakhan appeared on Soul!, Haizlip boldly asked him whether the Nation of Islam welcomed black gays and lesbians, and reminded Farrakhan that many black people had experienced conversion to the Nation in prison. Higher-ups at Channel 13 tolerated Haizlip’s visibility on the show, but only barely; according to many people who worked on Soul!, station executives were uneasy with Haizlip’s presence, and worried that a gay man wasn’t an appropriate or fitting on-camera embodiment of black masculinity.

For reasons divorced from Haizlip’s sexuality, Soul! ran out of funding before he could be replaced. The reason wasn’t popularity. From the beginning, critical reviews of the show had been strong, and Soul! had been quick to develop a following, first locally in New York, then nationally when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting picked the show up for syndication. “I feel this show is a part of me and represents what we the black people stand for—PROGRESS!”, wrote one viewer from Fort Tilden, New York.

As the 1960s gave way to the ’70s, Haizlip and others at Soul! came under increasing pressure to tamp down the show’s message of black pride. From the beginning, Soul! had to fight for its survival. For a time after the first season ended in 1969, Soul! aired in repeats while Christopher Lukas courted Mobil Oil Corporation. (The corporation was on the verge of giving the station money for Soul! until it decided to fund a new show called Masterpiece Theatre). In 1970, with viewers pleading for the show to stay on the air, a three-year, $3.5 million grant from the Ford Foundation saved Soul!.

But the January 1969 transfer of presidential power from Lyndon Johnson–whose administration had created PBS–to Richard Nixon meant a new set of priorities for public broadcasting. By the end of 1972, CPB officials had deemed black shows such as Soul! hindrances to racial progress. Haizlip was given a choice: integrate Soul! or see it cancelled. The last episode aired on March 7, 1973.

Soul! did not go away without a fight. Via an on-air appeal to viewers, the show gathered 100,000 letters and telegrams of support. Haizlip was frank in his public pronouncements in the press: The cancellation of Soul! is “part of a policy to destroy all black programming on the network,” he told the Washington Post. “The Corporation for Public Broadcasting … preferred a sociological production rather than a cultural one which is really no reason for canceling Soul!” he informed Jet in 1973. Haizlip ended his run at WNET dispirited about public television, which he deemed “limited and limiting.” (That didn’t stop him from returning: five years later he produced the WNET program “Watch Your Mouth“.)

Ellis Haizlip talks to Amiri Baraka in a promo image for the show

Was all television programming created equal? Haizlip, who died in 1991, would probably have said no. Today, the program he shepherded from idea to national hit remains one of the most successful and culturally significant black-produced television shows in U.S. history. Soul! had a depth of discourse and diversity of content that still has had no equal on the small screen. - Gayle Wald

Gayle Wald is a professor of English at George Washington University, where she teaches African American literature, popular music and U.S. culture. She is author of Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Beacon 2007) and Crossing the Line: Racial Passing in U.S. Literature and Culture (Duke University Press, 2000).