Jack Leroy Cooper (September 18, 1888 – January 12, 1970) was the first
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...
radio
disc jockey
A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile ...
, described as "the undisputed patriarch of black radio in the United States." In 2012, he was inducted into the
National Radio Hall of Fame
The Radio Hall of Fame, formerly the National Radio Hall of Fame, is an American organization created by the Emerson Radio Corporation in 1988.
Three years later, Bruce DuMont, founder, president, and CEO of the Museum of Broadcast Communicati ...
.
Biography
He was born in
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...
, one of ten children of William and Lavina Cooper. He left home at the age of ten to work in
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wi ...
, and in his teens was a successful
boxer Boxer most commonly refers to:
* Boxer (boxing), a competitor in the sport of boxing
*Boxer (dog), a breed of dog
Boxer or boxers may also refer to:
Animal kingdom
* Boxer crab
* Boxer shrimp, a small group of decapod crustaceans
* Boxer snipe ee ...
and semi-professional
baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...
player. By 1905, he was working in vaudeville on the
Theater Owners Booking Association Theatre Owners Booking Association, or T.O.B.A., was the vaudeville circuit for African American performers in the 1920s. The theaters mostly had white owners, though there were exceptions, including the recently restored Morton Theater in Athens, ...
(TOBA) circuit as a singer and dancer, and started writing and producing sketches and stage shows, soon running his own touring troupe with his first wife. He managed at least two theaters for TOBA, and began writing for newspapers in Memphis and Indianapolis.
After moving to
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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around 1920, he began writing theater reviews for the ''
Chicago Defender
''The Chicago Defender'' is a Chicago-based online African-American newspaper. It was founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott and was once considered the "most important" newspaper of its kind. Abbott's newspaper reported and campaigned against Jim ...
'', while attempting to break into the new
radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...
Washington, D.C.
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he first appeared on radio, writing and performing comic sketches on station WCAP. He returned to Chicago in 1926 and developed a proposal for a new show,
The All-Negro Hour
''The All-Negro Hour'' was an American broadcast show that was the first radio program to feature an exclusively African American cast of performers. This sixty-minute variety show was created and hosted by Jack L. Cooper who was known as the fir ...
, which premiered on
WSBC
WSBC (1240 AM) is a radio station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, which broadcasts brokered programming. It is owned by Newsweb Corporation.
History
WSBC began broadcasting in 1925 and originally broadcast at 1430 kHz. The show was initially broadcast on a weekly basis, and contained live music and comedy sketches, but Cooper gradually modified and expanded its content. It became successful with both listeners and commercial sponsors and continued until 1936. By the mid-1930s, Cooper presented 9 hours each week on WSBC. He was one of the first, if not the first, to broadcast
gramophone record
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English), or simply a record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts ne ...
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
, using his own phonograph. Corey Deitz, "A Profile of Radio Personality Jack L. Cooper", ''About.com'' . Retrieved 20 May 2014 In 1938, he created a new show, ''Search for Missing Persons'', designed to reunite listeners with family members who they had lost contact with. He also pioneered a mobile news team to cover items of interest to Chicago's black community.
By 1947, his production company Jack L. Cooper Presentations controlled about 40 hours per week on four different stations in Chicago. He promoted African Americans as presenters, and was among the first to broadcast commentaries on Negro league baseball games and news targeted at the black community. He also actively supported African-American youth organizations including the South Side Boy's Club. In contrast with later DJs like
Al Benson
Arthur Bernard Leaner (June 30, 1908 – September 6, 1978), who was known professionally as Al Benson, was an American radio DJ, music promoter and record label owner in Chicago between the 1940s and 1960s. He was particularly significan ...
, Cooper scrupulously avoided using slang expressions or broadcasting vaudeville or
urban blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
recordings:
"His announcing privileged standard American English over the black vernacular, a preference he shared with the most affluent and educated African Americans. In effect, Cooper and his team became the voice of the urban black bourgeoisie and a symbol of racial uplift."
Cooper retired from broadcasting in 1959, and died in Chicago in 1970 at the age of 81. In 1975, a park in the West Pullman neighborhood was officially named Cooper Park in his honor.
Radio Hall of Fame
The Radio Hall of Fame, formerly the National Radio Hall of Fame, is an American organization created by the Emerson Radio Corporation in 1988.
Three years later, Bruce DuMont, founder, president, and CEO of the Museum of Broadcast Communicati ...