WERD was the first

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...

owned and programmed by

African Americans 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 ens ...

. The station was established in

Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

on October 3, 1949, broadcasting on 860 AM (now used by WAEC). The National Black Radio Hall of Fame Atlanta Chapter is reopening WERD which still exists at its birth location and will also include a historical museum with it after renovations of the facility are completed. WERD in Atlanta was the first radio station owned and operated by African-Americans. ( WDIA in Memphis was on the air in 1948 doing black—or Negro as it was then called—programming, but the owners were not African American). Jesse B. Blayton Sr., an accountant, bank president, and Atlanta University professor, purchased WERD in 1949 for $50,000. He changed the station format to " black appeal" and hired his son Jesse Jr. as station manager. "Jockey" Jack Gibson was hired and by 1951 he was the most popular DJ in Atlanta. Ken Knight from Daytona Beach, Florida was also hired to come in as the stations first Program Director when the station opened. The station is still housed in the Prince Hall Masonic Temple building on Auburn Avenue, then one of the wealthiest black neighborhoods in the United States. Located in that same building was the headquarters of the

Southern Christian Leadership Conference The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civi ...

, formed in 1957, led by Martin Luther King Jr., and staffed by Ella Baker. According to Gibson, King would tap the ceiling of SCLC office (just below WERD) with a broomstick to signal he had an announcement to make. Gibson would then lower a microphone from the studio window to King at the window below. WDIA, in Memphis, Tennessee, though white owned, had

Nat D. Williams Nathaniel Dowd Williams (October 19, 1907 – October 27, 1983), known as Nat D. Williams or simply Nat D., was an American high school teacher, disc jockey on Black Appeal radio, journalist and editor. He was born on Beale Street in Memphis, T ...

as part of the first radio station programmed entirely for African Americans, WERD had "Jockey Jack" Gibson, a friend of Blayton from

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. Blayton sold the station in 1968."Jesse B. Blayton Jr., Headed Radio Station WERD for 20 Years," ''The Atlanta Constitution'', November 8, 1986. Ken Knight purchased the callsign and took WERD to Jacksonville, Florida. He changed WRHC to WERD; until his passing in 1973. For many years it was a gospel station there and the station decided to name the street WERD Radio Drive; as it is still named today.

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External links

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WERD Radio – Atlanta

ERD ERD may refer to: * Érd, a city in Hungary * Berdyansk Airport, in Ukraine * Economic Relations Division (Bangladesh), of the Bangladeshi Ministry of Finance * Elastic recoil detection Elastic recoil detection analysis (ERDA), also referred ...

Defunct radio stations in the United States Radio stations established in 1949 1949 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state) African-American radio 1968 disestablishments in Georgia (U.S. state) Radio stations disestablished in 1968

{{GeorgiaUS-radio-station-stub

See also

References

External links