When Memphis made radio history - history of WDIA, Memphis, Tennessee

American Visions, August-Sept, 1993 by George T. Wilson

Stansbury, who describes himself as a permanent part-timer (he does three gospel programs on Sunday), was an eager listener to WDIA when he was in the sixth grade. "That is when I met A.C. Williams and the late Nat Williams," he says. "I rode my bicycle down busy Union Avenue to go to WDIA to see what it was like.

"A.C. Williams and Nat Williams were my role models. Nat was what I wanted to be--a newspaperman [a columnist for the Tri-State Defender] and a disc jockey. I used to try to walk and stand straight like A.C. Williams."

There are many others in Memphis who grew up listening to WDIA. Shirlene Cosby remembers the role the station played in her life as a teenager in Memphis. "WDIA was the only station that had black people on it. If you wanted information about the black community, that's the way you got it." Her family's kitchen radio stayed on WDIA for years, and in their bedroom they woke up to Theo "Bless My Bones" Wade. "We didn't watch a lot of television in those days, and the only place we could find news about the black community--especially during the civil rights movement--was News Live at 55. They also had lots of local church news."

Cosby remembers participating in Quizzem on the Air, a quiz show developed by the Memphis Commercial Appeal and WDIA to feature students from the area's black schools. "WDIA was great for us then," she says. "We had a lot of confidence in the station. When you heard it on WDIA, you knew it was the truth."

Dorothy Saulsberry's teaching career in the Memphis school system spanned 30 years and three schools. Her memories of WDIA center around its positive impact on the community: "The station's worthwhile activities in the black community were almost beyond numbering. Cultural activities, philanthropy, youth work, help to the poor, whatever the black community in Memphis and the area needed, WDIA was there to help."

A.C. Williams adds: "WDIA was the first and best black radio station. For many years it was the center of our lives for communications about Memphis and the nation. It had top-quality programs all day every day."

A.C. Williams, once described as "a red-hot jockey whose flair for showmanship is unmatched on the air," retired in 1980, but remains active in WDIA activities, primarily the Goodwill Fund that he proposed to Ferguson in 1954. Originally, it was set up to buy school buses to transport crippled black children to school, but later the fund made college scholarships available, established boys clubs, set up a juvenile home for black children, provided 125 Little League teams in Memphis and surrounding cities and set up Goodwill Village to provide low-cost supplemental housing. Through the fund, the station has just purchased uniforms for 16 Little League teams. "We have raised over $900,000 over the years," A.C. Williams says.

Stansbury takes pride in the fact that, when his mentor Nat Williams passed away in 1983, the Goodwill Fund contributed $30,000 to LeMoyne-Owen College in Williams' honor. At the same time, Stansbury regrets that WDIA has had to succumb to the times. "I do not think it participates like it used to," he says, "but WDIA still means a lot to the Memphis community, and especially to my generation--the young generation listens to FM music. WDIA still continues to be number 1 or number 2 in the minority community on ratings."