Broadcasting Freedom

“Savage’s deft treatment of the activists, programming, public policies, and symbolic politics broadens views of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and pioneers new scholarship in radio’s rich but virtually ignored historical role. . . . Highly recommended.”—Library Journal

“A polished, scholarly account that traces the evolution of national radio in confronting stereotypes of Blacks and pushing for political and economic equality. Serious readers of Black history will appreciate this carefully researched and well-written book.”—Emerge

“Clearly organized and well written, Broadcasting Freedom explores a previously unexamined area of the Civil Rights Movement.”—CHOICE

“Broadcasting Freedom is the remarkable story of the African American struggle for a national voice and the State’s reluctance to give up the mic. A powerful, eloquent testament to the men and women who took to the airwaves to fight racism at home, this book will change the way we think about World War II, the role of mass culture in the civil rights movement, and the tortured relationship between black folk and the federal government.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, New York University, author ofRace Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class

“While we have known the importance of television for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the mass media’s role in racial politics has not had a history — at least not until the publication of Barbara Savage’s extraordinary new book on radio and race during World War II. She has ingeniously opened up a whole new realm for exploring African American (and white) racial consciousness and ideology during the 1940s.”—Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University

“Barbara Dianne Savage offers a marvelous portrait of Americans in solution as they listened enrapt, during the golden age of the medium, to broadcast versions of their improving ethnic and racial selves. Broadcasting Freedom is splendid social history told at a nuts-and-bolts level of policy-making we seldom see.”—David Levering Lewis, New York University, author of W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919

“This is a brilliant and pioneering examination of the way in which the interplay between certain sections of the mass media and of the federal bureaucracy promoted a gradual shift in white racial attitudes during the later years of the New Deal.”—August Meier, general editor, Blacks in the New World