Status Updates From We Are the Culture: Black C...

“But when we think about Chicago’s influence—that Chicago sound—even here in Chicago, many of us don’t know our own impact. “We don’t know how influential and impactful we have been on a global scope until somebody outside the marketplace has either incorporated [Chicago work] into their own creative piece or they have stolen it”

-Mary Datcher

“Very rarely did you see white record reps walk into a black radio station in Chicago. Because they felt like this: if you want our Black radio stations to continue to break your music, make this money for your white operated companies, then you need to have Black representation come into our Black radio stations. This was Chicago.”

-Mary Datcher

“Radio is an intimate medium. When listeners hear a person‘s voice, they connect to them. It can feel as close as a phone conversation with a good friend. So racism and discrimination also play a huge role in what Black people in radio are up against…What Herb Kent faced is a sound similar to what Black people in radio still face today—whether those biases are explicit or implicit.”

“We’re able to do it because Chicago amplifies around politics. It’s a segregated town. It’s got all of the makings of a never-ending conversation around issues, because we just think differently about it, and we come to that microphone every day being unapologetic about how we approach these issues”

- Melody Spann Cooper on WVON’s impact as a Black talk radio station.

“When we talk about Chicago…I don’t know too many other places where men go from being a cabdriver to working at the steel mill and, in. Very short period of time, considering our history in this country, [get] to go from being a sharecropper to becoming a shareholder. Only in Chicago”

Melody Spann Cooper on her father, Pervis Spann