Genre | Dramatic anthology |
---|---|
Running time | 30 minutes Sunday mornings |
Home station | WMAQ |
Starring | Oscar Brown Jr., Vernon Jarrett, Janice Kingslow, Fred Pinkard, Studs Terkel, Wezlyn Tilden; also, Maurice Copeland, Tony Parrish, Jack Gibson, Harris Gaines, Louise Pruitt, Arthur Peterson, Norma Ransom, Forrest Lewis, Hope Summers, Boris Apion, Jess Pugh, Ted Liss, Don Gallagher, Harry Elders, Everett Clarke, Jack Lester, Art Hern, Les Spears, Dean Olmquist, Russ Reed |
Announcer | Hugh Downs |
Created by | Richard Durham |
Written by | Richard Durham, Ray Derby, William Hodapp, Bob Ecklund, Madeline Peters, Billie McKee, Bob McKee, Christine Squires, Martin Maloney, Charles Flynn |
Directed by | Homer Heck, Dick Loughran, Norman Felton, Bob Wambold, John Cowan, Larry Auerbach |
Produced by | Homer Heck [1] Donnie L Betts [2] |
Executive producer(s) | Judith Waller |
Recording studio | Chicago |
Original release | June 27, 1948 – November 19, 1951 |
Opening theme | "Oh, Freedom" |
Sponsored by | The Chicago Defender , Chicago Urban League (1950), United Negro College Fund |
Destination Freedom was a series of weekly radio programs which was produced by WMAQ in Chicago. The first set ran from 1948 to 1950 and it presented the biographical histories of prominent African-Americans such as George Washington Carver, Satchel Paige, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Lena Horne. [3] [4] The scripts for those shows were written by Richard Durham. [4] Studs Terkel voiced some of the radio characters. [5] Hugh Downs also served as an announcer in both the initial and 1950 series. [6]
The second series of shows ran from 1950 to 1951, and it was produced without Durham. This second series featured patriotic themed dramas which were largely based on Americanism and anti-Communism.
The show was the brainchild of African-American journalist and author Richard Durham. [7] [8] In cooperation with The Chicago Defender , he began this series over NBC Chicago outlet WMAQ in June 1948, with scripts emphasizing the progress of African-Americans from the days of slavery to the ongoing struggle for racial justice. Airing in Sunday-morning public-service time, the series built a steady audience in the Midwest with inspirational stories of social progress, earning strong support from Civil Rights organizations, and offering employment to a wide range of African-American performers. Episodes began with a stanza from the spiritual "Oh, Freedom". [9]
Destination Freedom premiered on June 27, 1948, on Chicago radio WMAQ. Durham's vision was to reeducate the masses on the image of African American society, since he believed that it was tainted with inaccurate and derogatory stereotypes. Week after week, Durham would generate all-out attacks on these stereotypes by illustrating the lives of prominent African-Americans. For two years, Durham wrote script after script for Destination Freedom, receiving no financial compensation for his effort. In 1950, Durham's financial needs forced him to accept an offer by Don Ameche to write material for him. It is also said that Durham's relationship with NBC and WMAQ was not entirely harmonious. Continuing without Durham, the final year of the program turned to general themes of "American freedom," without the sharp focus on the African-American experience. This, WMAQ hoped, would create a show to rival Paul Revere Speaks, which was a popular show at the time. For about 50 years, the show was long forgotten until some transcripts were found, and the characters voiced by Fred Pinkard, [10] [11] Oscar Brown Jr., [12] Wezlyn Tilden, [13] and Janice Kingslow, [14] [15] were heard once more.
Two early recordings, "A Garage in Gainesville" and "Execution Awaited", are listed in National Recording Registry. [16] In 1949 it received a first-place commendation from the Ohio State University Institute for Education by Radio. [17]
Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, and singer. His innovations in the Harlem stride style laid much of the basis for modern jazz piano. A widely popular star in the jazz and swing eras, he toured internationally, achieving critical and commercial success in the United States and Europe. His best-known compositions, "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Honeysuckle Rose", were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1984 and 1999.
Amos 'n' Andy was an American radio sitcom about black characters, initially set in Chicago then later in the Harlem section of New York City. While the show had a brief life on 1950s television with black actors, the 1928 to 1960 radio show was created, written and voiced by two white actors, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, who played Amos Jones (Gosden) and Andrew Hogg Brown (Correll), as well as incidental characters. On television from 1951–1953, black actors took over the majority of the roles; white characters were infrequent.
Sam 'n' Henry was a radio series performed by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll that aired on Chicago radio station WGN from 1926 through 1928. The ten-minute program is often considered the first situation comedy. Gosden and Correll reworked the premise on a more ambitious scale to create their long-running radio show Amos 'n' Andy.
Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American writer, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.
Hugh Malcolm Downs was an American radio and television broadcaster, announcer and programmer; television host; news anchor; TV producer; author; game show host; talk show sidekick; and music composer. A regular television presence from the mid 1940s until the late 1990s, he had several successful roles on morning, prime-time, and late-night television. For several years, he held the certified Guinness World Record for the most hours on commercial network television before being surpassed by Regis Philbin, who died 24 days after him.
Dick Barton – Special Agent is a radio thriller serial that was broadcast in the BBC Light Programme between 7 October 1946 and 30 March 1951. Produced and directed by Raymond Raikes, Neil Tuson, and Charles Lefaux, it was aired in 15-minute episodes at 6.45 each weekday evening. From 11 January 1947 an additional "omnibus" edition repeated all of the week's programmes each Saturday morning between 11.00 and 12.00. In all, 711 episodes were produced and the serial achieved a peak audience of 20 million. Its end was marked by a leading article in The Times.
Oscar Brown Jr. was an American singer, songwriter, playwright, poet, civil rights activist, and actor. Brown discovered The Jackson 5. Aside from his career, Brown ran unsuccessfully for office in both the Illinois state legislature and the U.S. Congress. Brown wrote many songs, 12 albums, and more than a dozen musical plays.
WSCR – branded 670 The Score – is a commercial sports radio station licensed to serve Chicago, Illinois, and the Chicago metropolitan area. Owned by Audacy, Inc., WSCR is a clear-channel station with extended nighttime range in most of the Central United States and part of the Eastern United States. WSCR is the Chicago affiliate for the BetQL Network, Infinity Sports Network, the Fighting Illini Sports Network and the NFL on Westwood One Sports; the flagship station for the Chicago Cubs and Chicago Bulls radio networks; and the home of radio personalities David Haugh and Matt Spiegel.
Hear It Now, an American radio program on CBS, began on December 15, 1950, ending in June 1951. It was hosted by Edward R. Murrow and produced by Murrow and Fred W. Friendly. It ran for one hour on Fridays at 9 pm Eastern Time.
The Screen Guild Theater is a radio anthology series broadcast from 1939 until 1952 during the Golden Age of Radio. Leading Hollywood stars performed adaptations of popular motion pictures. Originating on CBS Radio, it aired under several different titles including The Gulf Screen Guild Show, The Gulf Screen Guild Theater, The Lady Esther Screen Guild Theater and The Camel Screen Guild Players. Fees that would ordinarily have been paid to the stars and studios were instead donated to the Motion Picture Relief Fund, and were used for the construction and maintenance of the Motion Picture Country House.
"Stagger Lee", also known as "Stagolee" and other variants, is a popular American folk song about the murder of Billy Lyons by "Stag" Lee Shelton, in St. Louis, Missouri, at Christmas 1895. The song was first published in 1911 and first recorded in 1923, by Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, titled "Stack O' Lee Blues". A version by Lloyd Price reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959.
Dorothy Leigh Mainor , known as Dorothy Maynor, was an American soprano, concert singer, and the founder of the Harlem School of the Arts. Maynor is noted as the first African–American to sing at a presidential inauguration, performing at President Harry S. Truman's inaugural gala in 1949.
"Oh, Freedom" is a post-Civil War African-American freedom song. It is often associated with the Civil Rights Movement, with Odetta, who recorded it as part of the "Spiritual Trilogy", on her Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues album, and with Joan Baez, who performed the song at the 1963 March on Washington. Baez has since performed the song live numerous times, both during her concerts and at other events. The song became affiliated with civil rights activism when it was used at protests of the Atlanta Race Massacre in 1906 1906 Atlanta race massacre. The song was first recorded in 1931 by the E. R. Nance Family as "Sweet Freedom". Writer and radio producer Richard Durham used it as an opening in his 1948–1950 radio anthology Destination Freedom.
A & R Recording Inc. was a major American independent studio recording company founded in 1958 by Jack Arnold and Phil Ramone.
Vincent Lushington "Roi" Ottley was an American journalist and writer. Although largely forgotten today, he was among the most famous African American correspondents in the United States during the mid-20th century.
Judith Cary Waller was an American broadcasting pioneer. Despite the fact that she knew nothing about radio at the time, she became the first station manager of Chicago radio station WMAQ when it went on the air in 1922. She was one of the first female radio station managers in the United States, along with Eleanor Poehler of WLAG/WCCO in Minneapolis, and Bertha Brainard of WJZ and Vaughn De Leath of WDT in New York City. During her tenure as station manager, Waller was responsible for obtaining broadcast rights for Chicago Cubs home games for WMAQ and for hiring Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll as Amos 'n' Andy after they left WGN radio over syndication rights. Waller tried to interest the CBS radio network in the program with no success. NBC brought the program to its Blue Network three years before its purchase of WMAQ in 1931.
Here Comes Tomorrow was a radio soap opera featuring African Americans on WJJD. It was written by Richard Durham and Jack Gibson. Oscar Brown Jr. starred. The show's subject was the African American family.
Richard Isadore Durham was an African-American writer and radio producer.
Bird of the Iron Feather is an American television soap opera that aired on the National Educational Television network from January 19 to March 6, 1970. Created by script writer and radio producer Richard Durham, the series was notable as the first all-Black television soap opera. Bird of the Iron Feather starred African American actor Bernard Ward as fictional Chicago Police Detective Jonah Rhodes. The series addressed social issues like racism, school desegregation and the complicated relationship between Black people and the police. Produced in Chicago, Illinois, the series won a Chicago/Midwest Emmy Award, and was the highest-rated local show ever broadcast by WTTW-TV in Chicago.
Wezlynn Margaret Develle Tildon, sometimes billed as Wezlyn Tilden, was an American newspaper columnist and radio actress.
Includes a June 30, 1948 review of 'The Knock-Kneed Man' episode
Kinzie Blueitt, 1900–1971