Martha Jean "The Queen" Steinberg (September 9, 1930 – January 29, 2000) was an influential

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

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 transmit ...

broadcaster and later was also the pastor of her own church. She was born Martha Jean Jones 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 ...

. Her first radio job was on Memphis's

WDIA WDIA (1070 AM) is a radio station based in Memphis, Tennessee. Active since 1947, it soon became the first radio station in the United States that was programmed entirely for African Americans. It featured black radio personalities; its success in ...

starting in 1954. There, she was one of the first female

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 personality, radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music f ...

s in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, with a program that included the latest R&B hits along with the typical "household hints" programming that was ''de rigueur'' at the time for female radio personalities. In 1963 she moved to

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

, where she was heard on

WCHB WCHB (1340 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Royal Oak, Michigan, and serving the Detroit metropolitan area. It broadcasts an urban gospel radio format and is owned by Crawford Broadcasting. The station is a reporter to Billboa ...

and then throughout the late 1960s and 1970s on

WJLB WJLB (97.9 FM) is a radio station in Detroit, Michigan. Owned by iHeartMedia, it broadcasts an urban contemporary format. WJLB's studios are located in Farmington Hills. WJLB's transmitter is located in Highland Park near the intersection o ...

. On July 23, 1967, Steinberg convinced WJLB to cancel its normal evening programming and she did an on-air program calling for people to calm down and stop rioting. It has been suggested that this prevented the 1967 Detroit Riot from being worse than it was.Sidney Fine, ''Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967'' (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), p. 184 During her time at WJLB, she led the station's on-air staff in protest of the fact that the station at the time had no African-American employees outside of the air staff. In 1980, WJLB converted from AM to the FM dial (where it remains to this day), and Steinberg's show was dropped in the process. The former WJLB-AM became WMZK with an ethnic format. In 1982, Steinberg purchased WMZK-AM and changed the call letters to WQBH in order to offer more

gospel music Gospel music is a traditional genre of Christian music, and a cornerstone of Christian media. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of gospel music varies according to culture and social context. Gospel music is com ...

oriented programming. Steinberg remained on the air at WQBH (1400 on the AM dial) until her death. WQBH is now

WDTK WDTK (1400 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Detroit, Michigan, and known as "The Patriot." It broadcasts a conservative talk radio format and is owned by Salem Communications. The studios and offices are on Radio Plaza in Fernda ...

. She had a

cameo role A cameo role, also called a cameo appearance and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief appearance of a well-known person in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking ones, and are commonly ei ...

as a television show host in the 1973 film ''

Detroit 9000 ''Detroit 9000'' is a 1973 American action film directed by Arthur Marks from a screenplay by Orville H. Hampton. Originally marketed as a blaxploitation film, it had a resurgence on video 25 years later. Plot Street-smart white detective Dan ...

''. In 2017 she was inducted into Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. She is buried in Detroit's Elmwood Cemetery. She is featured in an episode of Little America on AppleTV.

See also

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Further reading