- Coming up on "American Black Journal," we're gonna talk about a milestone anniversary for the nation's first Black owned and operated television station, Detroit's WGPR TV62.

Plus, it's also a big year for the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

We'll talk about the museum's legacy with one of its longtime employees.

Don't go anywhere, "American Black Journal" starts right now.

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(upbeat music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

50 years ago this month, the nation's first African American owned and operated television station began broadcasting right here in the city of Detroit.

WGPR TV62 debuted in 1975 and remained on air until it was sold in 1995.

The WGPR Historical Society has preserved the station's legacy by transforming that original TV studio into the William V. Banks Broadcast Museum and Media Center, named after WGPR's founder.

Here to talk more about this milestone anniversary and the planned celebration are Joe Spencer, who is president of the WGPR Historical Society, and Vice President and Treasurer, Doug Morison.

Both were part of the original staff at WGPR.

Welcome to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you, Steven.

- So anytime I talk about WGPR, I have to talk about where I was in 1975, I was four years old.

But I lived not too far from that station.

And so I always felt like that was the station I kind of identified most with, not just because I listened to it, but because I would go by it all the time.

And then in high school, friends dared me to go on "The Scene."

And I did it, which is really a feat because anyone who knows me knows I don't dance well.

But I did it and there's a video tape somewhere of that.

But I've always felt a real closeness to GPR, and the idea that it's 50 years old.

- It's unbelievable.

- It's incredible, yeah.

First African American owned and operated in the country.

- Very exciting time for me and for all those people who were part of it.

That's why we're celebrating it, you know, because it is real history.

I mean, true American history, true business history.

I mean, can you imagine back in 1975 or early 1970s, the founder, William Banks, owned real estate property downtown, and he used some of that to fund the television station, which cost something like $2 million, which was a huge amount of money back then, just real.

- 10 or 12 million.

- Yeah, exactly, if not more, yeah.

And he took the leap and he launched that.

And that's why we're here today to celebrate that, to make sure that America does not forget America's first African American owned and operated television station.

- The two of you were there in the beginning.

- Yes, I was part of the anchor team that did the evening newscast, the very first evening newscast at 7:00 PM on channel 62.

We had two newscasts that day.

We had a Noon newscast, which Amyre Makupson was Amyre Porter at the time, and Pal DeQue, who was the co-anchor with Amyre.

And that's what kicked off our experience at Channel 62.

- How skeptical were people when this happened?

Like, you know, this is the first time that you've got this Black owned and operated TV, you have African Americans up on air.

- I think there were a lot of people that had slight skepticism, but there were a lot of people who were cheering us on.

That really wanted us to go on the air and be a success.

And that was something that we were striving to do.

- Yeah, I actually was not there the very first day.

I was working for Channel 4 at that time.

And I was invited to join the staff by Jerry Blocker, who was the original news director and the anchor that anchored with Doug on that very first show.

And Jerry was the one who brought me over to be part of the production team.

- He couldn't wait to get there.

He watched us on TV, he watched our debut on TV, couldn't wait to get over there.

- Yeah, I mean hey, me and all the folks at Channel 4 who, Jerry had come from Channel 4, sit there and watch the very first newscast.

And it wasn't longer, it was like 30 days later I was working at the station.

- Yeah, yeah.

Let's talk about the museum.

I can't remember how old the museum is now, but it's been there a while.

- 2017 is when we launched it, yes.

- And talk about what it is you're preserving there, the idea of this legacy.

- Well, we're trying to cover not only the founder, but some of the important legacies of the station.

You know, for example, so many people who have been successful in broadcasting got their start at Channel 62.

Because back then in those days, there wasn't a lot of African Americans on television.

And when so many of the then aspiring writers, producers, talent wanted to go on the air, they go to the other stations, they tell them, "Come back when you got some experience."

So many of those people came to us first and got a year, get that year, that two years, and so forth.

And, you know, they went on to have great careers, and some of the people have had tremendous careers, you know.

If I can just jump ahead a little bit, one of the people that we're gonna be giving an award at the ceremony we are having is a fellow by the name of David Roberts, who came in as a rookie right out of Wayne State University.

Now he's the Executive Vice President of ESPN.

You know what mean?

That's pretty doggone high.

- That's a pretty good path.

- That's pretty good path, you know?

Yeah.

So he's in fact bringing in Isaiah Thomas and Cam Newton and Kendrick Perkins to help us celebrate.

That's the power that he has.

- That's amazing.

- Yeah, it is.

- Another side story about the whole experience thing.

My photographer at the time, the late Herman McAlpin, he started out with our new equipment, which was the video tape cameras.

We did not use film.

All the other stations were using- - [Stephen] Were still using film, right.

- Well, when he moved over to one of the other stations in the city, he moved up a hundred places in the seniority line because he knew how to use that videotape versus the film.

- Yeah.

That's amazing.

- Yeah.

- Although I feel like we might have to pause and explain to half the audience what videotape is.

(group laughs) If you said that to my children, I think they would look at you like, I don't know what you're talking about.

But once upon a time, that was the cutting edge.

- That's right.

Yes, yes.

- One of the exhibits we have in the museum is the chronology of video imaging.

You know, we go with the two inch tapes right on through the one inch to half inch and on down.

And so, like you say, now it's the telephone.

- Right, everything is on the telephone.

- Another legacy that the station has is that, you know, we were the first station to broadcast 24 hours, you know, back then, yeah.

Back then, in the late '70s, everybody, 12, 12:30, 1:00, you got snow, got the National Anthem and snow.

But we were the first that started, we started with the movies all night, and we showed movies all night to start that trend and other stations followed after we did.

So we were the first to use videotape, first to broadcast 24 hours.

And you know, that's a significant history there.

- Yeah, yeah.

So let's talk about the celebration, the 50 year celebration, you talked about David Roberts.

What else is on tap for that?

- Well, our goal there again is to just celebrate the 50 years, to honor some of the people who have been a part of this legacy, you know, and to honor the man probably more responsible than anybody, James Dogan, who was the president of WGPR and the International Masons who owned the station, who actually funded the building of the museum to honor David Roberts.

We're gonna honor him, and then we're gonna honor 10 other members of the staff that worked in the past years, we're gonna do that, and we're gonna just have a really nice dinner and have some music and just really celebrate 50 years.

And it's a fundraiser, so, you know, we're gonna be trying to raise some funds while we are there, you know, for people attending.

So we're gonna invite people to come, you know, they can find out about tickets going to our website, wgprtv62museum.

- And we'll put that info on our website as well.

- One of the other things we want to do as a result of our fundraising activities is to develop our media center where we can bring young people in and teach them storytelling from soup to nuts, where they can be a director, they can be a video person, they can be talent, whatever.

But we wanna set up a facility so we can do that on an ongoing basis.

- I can't stress how important that is right now.

If you talk to young people who are interested in broadcast or in journalism or any of those things, the opportunities to learn to do it are just going away.

And more and more of them every day are disappearing.

And of course that affects young people in our community more than other communities.

And there isn't a WGPR right now to give them that shot.

So the idea of trying to create something, that would make a huge, huge difference.

- Well, we're looking at it, you know, young people now are so involved with TikTok, everything's a 30 second story and so forth.

And we'd like to open their heads for a way to do things, to really tell some storytelling, really look at their communities in real ways and look at what's happening in their lives in real ways, and be able to talk about it, you know, and share it as opposed to, hey, you know, I can look at the dance stuff, I can fix my hair.

- Well that was important too.

Again, I was on the scene.

That was such a critical part of WGPR, I run into people all the time.

White, Black, lived in the city, lived in the suburbs, who every weekday at 6:00 turned on WGPR to watch that show.

- You know, Stephen, two weeks, three weeks ago, we had a senior 50th reunion.

- Oh, you did?

- We had it with 300 people.

- Probably a good thing.

- No, listen, we had 300 people in our age group dancing around.

(group laughs) You can go on our website.

You'll some of the video, you know, yeah, yeah.

- It's such a cultural guidepost I think in this community, that show, and the whole idea of that show, right?

That celebration of Detroit and Black culture.

- Well, that's what we're doing with the 50th anniversary as well, so yeah.

- All right.

Well congratulations, guys, on 50 years.

- Thank you.

- And on the celebration and the work at the museum, which is a real special place.

- Thank you for having us.

- Appreciate it.

- I hope you can make it too.

Yeah.

Well, I'm gonna try.

- [Joe] You're invited.

- I'm invited to this one, right?

I'm invited to this one, not the scene one, yeah.

It's election season, so we may be doing other stuff, but I'm gonna try and make it.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Up next, the Charles H. Wright Museum is gonna celebrate 60 years in Detroit.

But first, here's a clip from a 1995 "Detroit Black Journal" conversation with WGPR Radio's Electrifying Mojo.

- Joining us now from a remote location, the Electrifying Mojo.

Welcome to "Detroit Black Journal," Mojo.

- Well, Darrell, thank you very much for having me here.

This is definitely a profound experience for me.

- I'm gonna, by way of explanation for our viewers, indicate that for years in Detroit, one of the things that has been a part of your celebrity, if we can put it that way, is your anonymity.

And that is why we cannot see exactly what you look like.

How did that part of your persona become established?

- I've always just wanted to remain a voice on the radio facing the crowd, a figment of the imagination.

I think that, you know, when you are elevated too high on a pedestal, you remove yourself from the earshot of what regular people have to say and how they feel.

And sometimes it makes it impossible to relate on a relative level.

- You are not typically thought of as an author, and neither do you think of yourself as an author.

Is that true?

- Well, that's very true, and it is definitely strange to be here under these circumstances, but I think the circumstances that produced the book were equally as interesting.

- Well, I'd like to, by way of recitation, read the dedication, the special dedication in the book.

By the way, the book is entitled "The Mental Machine."

It's a 21st century book of narratives, poems, and prose.

And what's very interesting, if not awesome to me, is this special dedication to Ruben Elder.

And in your words, Mojo, "He is the child I met in a dream whose death activated the mental machine."

You have told me on at least two occasions that you did not write this book, but that this book wrote you, explain.

- It was around 8:30 on the night of the 16th.

I was watching a news program and was gonna go out to get something to eat.

And first, I was gonna go to Canada, and then I decided to go to the Edmund Place Restaurant.

But I turned the program on because that was during the time they were about to blow up the White House and Russia.

And suddenly, I just fell asleep with my clothes on.

The next moment that I recall, it was 4:00 AM in the morning.

And I had one of the most colorful, graphic, and horrendous dreams of my life.

It was a dream about the genocidal conditions that are existing in this country.

It's just so many people killing each other, just senseless bloodshed, drive-by shootings, EMS trucks, helicopters, a lot of mothers in black coming to see if their sons had been a part of this carnage that was taking place.

And when I woke up from the dream, I wrote what I had experienced in the dream of what I thought about it, and turned out to be the first poem called "Mothers in Black."

- And of course, that poem is in "The Mental Machine."

But another poem that you wrote, another body of work in the book deals with the case of Ruben Elder.

And I'd like to read just a few words.

Tuesday, August 17th, 1993, "Wished that I could write something bright.

I suppose I got overwhelmed by the 11-year-old who died in another drive-by shooting last night.

At this exact moment, I bet you they are trying to find money they never had to spend.

Got to buy a brand new suit to bury little Ruben in.

I wonder if Ruben ever had a new suit.

Is this his first, and yes, his last?

Another dreamer for the future, now a child of the past, another victim of a gun blast."

Your book is replete with work that talks of death.

It talks of violence, it talks of despair, particularly as it relates to the Black community.

And you talk a lot about gunplay and genocide in this book.

And I don't want to give the wrong impression that the book is filled with a plethora of problems.

But why did you choose to focus on these issues?

- I think it might be more appropriately put, those issues chose to focus on me.

And as opposed to having written the book, I think it might be more accurate to say it's a book that wrote me.

- It's a really big year for the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

The Detroit treasure is celebrating 60 years of preserving and honoring the Black experience.

The museum is gonna commemorate the momentous occasion at the Wright Gala on Saturday, October 11th.

They spoke with Kevin Davidson, the Wright's longtime Director of Design and Fabrication Services about the museum's rich history and his personal connection to the founder.

Kevin, welcome to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you.

It's good to be you.

- So let's start with your history with the Wright, which goes back quite a ways.

Not quite 60 years, but to the majority of that, right?

How did you come to the museum?

- I actually was introduced to the museum in 1980, and I was on loan, placed on loan to the museum from the Detroit Council of the Arts at the time to work on an exhibit that focused on Black insurance companies.

And we completed that project.

And I went on and I got a call from the museum in 1982, and Dr.

Wright wanted me to come in and work on an exhibit on Black voting rights.

And so I met with him and he gave me a book and said, "You know, this is something that you're gonna extract your script from."

I remember the author's name was Holt.

I can't remember his first name.

I think it was Robert Holt.

And so from there, he kind of paired me with one of the longtime volunteers, Margaret Zarif.

And she collected images, I did some additional research and designed and installed that exhibit on voting rights.

And he loved it.

- And he hired you, and you've been there since.

- Right, he invited, he said, "I need you to do one on Charles Drew."

And I did that.

And then he asked me to redesign the mobile unit, which traveled over all around the state.

And so I did that, and he said, "Well, you know, you may as well stick around."

- Right, we're gonna keep you here.

- So it's really interesting to hear you talk about the things you were working on then, you know, an exhibit about Black insurance companies, an exhibit about voting rights.

That really does sum up the range of Dr.

Wright's imagination and vision about what this could be, the full gamut of the Black experience.

And that's really a good way to describe the museum.

- Yes, yes it is, yes it is.

- Yeah.

Talk about in those early days though, what the museum was like and how different it is now.

I mean, now, it's basically like a monument, right?

I mean, it's this wonderful physical space.

Back then, it was a little more understated.

- Yeah, it was located first in the basement of a three row house on West Grand Boulevard and Warren, right on the corner, it was Dr.

Wright's residence.

You know, he and his family lived there.

And so when he founded the museum, he set up exhibits in the basement.

He eventually moved out, moved downtown, and basically went in and converted all of those spaces to gallery spaces.

So when I started, part of my job too was convert some spaces.

So I worked with a carpenter and we went in and, you know, tore out walls and, you know, did some plastering, and I converted some spaces.

And so I started installing exhibits.

It's a house, it's a three row house.

So, you know, when we had tours, you know, you had to take them up the stairs, into the gallery, back out, and into the next building, and back out, and then into the next building and back out.

Dr.

Wright's sister volunteered with us at the time, Pearl Battle, and it was the two of us conducting these tours through the building.

And, you know, we went from that to a structure that we built from the ground up in the cultural center that's occupied by CCS now on the corner of Frederick Douglass and Brush.

And even before we moved into that building, plans were already underway for the Phyllis facility we're in right now.

- [Stephen] For the museum itself that everyone is so familiar with now.

- [Kevin] So Dr.

Wright had his vision, and then Coleman Young had his vision.

And so they kind of merged.

And Coleman Young came up with the funding to support the construction and to maintain the facility.

- Talk about the difference between making exhibits in the basement of a three row house and the space you have now.

I'm thinking of the Jefferson exhibit that was there just a few years ago.

The wonderful art and the costume exhibit that was there last year.

I mean, these are large scale kinds of exhibits now.

Very different from being in a basement.

- It's a different world.

(both laughing) You know, everything had to be put together by hand.

And I'm taking little letters and creating, you know, these introductory panels and, you know, everything had to be constructed by hand back then, more time consuming, you know, we were doing key lines for prints and all of that.

And so it's a different world.

And of course, you know, when you compare just, you know, the space you're talking about, you know, a bathroom versus a mansion.

But along with the change in facilities, you know, you can bring in contractors.

And so that's part of what I do is, you know, do the elevations and floor plans and construction drawings, and they take those and, you know, build these platforms, cases and- - I mean, they're experiences, right?

I mean, I always feel like you're walking through the subject matter when I'm there.

- That's our goal.

- That's gonna do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org, and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care, and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Across our Masco Family of Companies, our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work, and do business.

Masco, a Michigan company since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Announcer] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide, to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Announcer] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you, thank you.

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