“Soul!” (Famous!) TV Program with Ellis Haizlip

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Black Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Broadcasting ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Black Panthers ◽  
Public Media ◽  
Public Broadcasting Service ◽  
Broadcasting Service

Soul! was a publicly funded cultural affairs television program that aired for five seasons on Public Broadcasting Service affiliates in the United States from 1968 to 1973. Its first season aired on New York public television, and after that it was distributed nationally via the Public Broadcasting Service. A showcase for Black arts, culture, and politics, Soul! was closely associated with the producer and host Ellis Haizlip, a Black gay man, who emphasized a vision of “soul” culture that was eclectic, inclusive, and aligned with the radical political energies of the Black Power movement. Soul! provided a powerful platform for Black musicians and other artists and public figures at a time when their access to national TV was severely constrained. It also employed Black women in significant on- and off-camera roles and helped vault the poet Nikki Giovanni to national prominence. Filmed live in a small New York studio, Soul! included an in-studio audience within its representational frame, giving viewers an opportunity to see audiences reacting to guests. These guests ranged from the gospel singer Marion Williams to the soul singer Al Green; from the dancer George Faison to the spoken-word group The Last Poets; and from the activist and entertainer Harry Belafonte to Black Panthers leader Kathleen Cleaver. Other notable Soul! guests included Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, writer and activist James Baldwin, singer-actor Novella Nelson, and musicians including Labelle, Earth, Wind and Fire, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Horace Silver, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Valerie Ashford and Nick Simpson. As a Black-produced TV show aimed explicitly at Black audiences, Soul!’s trajectory was always precarious. Early funding for the show came from New York public broadcasting and the Ford Foundation, liberal institutions eager to support Black media in the wake of uprisings following Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. However, backlash to the Black Power movement—as represented by the election of “law and order” candidate Richard Nixon in the 1968 presidential election—translated into attempts to silence Black public media. Despite evidence that it resonated powerfully with Black viewers, the show was cancelled in 1973. Soul! inspired innumerable writers, performers, and technicians to seek opportunities in television. It set a mark for television that sought to entertain and educate, keeping an eye on diversity within the Black collective.

Radio-Québec: A Case Study of Institution-Building

1978 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Cabatoff
Keyword(s):  
Educational Television ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Broadcasting ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Broadcasting Service ◽  
Television Service ◽  
Broadcasting Service

Radio-Québec, or the Office de Radio-Télédiffusion du Québec, was founded by the Quebec government in 1969 as an educational television service. This meant that it was parallel, in some respects, to the Ontario Educational Communications Authority or to the “ETV” stations of the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States. It was also perceived (within Quebec) as an historic affirmation of Quebec's constitutional rights in the field of broadcasting.

Black Nationalism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Newman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Women ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Black Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Nationalism ◽  
Malcolm X ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Black Nationalist

The popular media often illustrate black nationalism with images of Malcolm X and black leather-jacketed, Afro-wearing, armed Black Panthers in the 1960s, and, in later decades, Louis Farrakhan and hip-hop artists such as Public Enemy. Although historians disagree about black nationalism’s composition and origins, they argue that it has a long pedigree in American history, traceable at least to the first half of the 19th century, if not earlier. While men were most often black nationalism’s public exponents, and some emphasized manhood and female subordination, black nationalism also appealed to many black women, some of whom also exercised leadership and organizational skills in its service. Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican, led the first mass black nationalist organization in the United States, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), during the 1920s. Like 19th-century black nationalists, Garvey advocated an independent state for people of African descent, black uplift, and the “civilizing” of Africa. Although not original to him, his emphasis on the right to self-defense, independent black economic development, and pride in African history boosted the UNIA’s popularity. Garvey fell victim to state oppression in the United States, but some former Garveyites joined the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) and probably also the Nation of Islam (NOI), both of which rejected Christianity, identified blacks as Asiatics, and adopted particularist interpretations of Islam. In the 1950s and 1960s, Malcolm X, the charismatic son of Garveyite parents, became the Nation’s chief recruiter. Personal differences with Elijah Muhammad, the Nation’s leader since the 1930s, eventually led to Malcolm X’s departure in 1964. Although he was assassinated in 1965, Malcolm X’s calls for armed self-defense, self-determination and black pride, and identification with anticolonial struggles heavily influenced Black Power advocates. Some civil rights organizations and workers, who were disillusioned by intransigent white racism and distrustful of white liberals, championed Black Power, which was multifaceted and sometimes more reformist than nationalist. In the early 1990s, polls suggested that black nationalist ideas were more popular than during their supposed heyday in the late 1960s, before internal dissension and state repression undermined many Black Power groups.

Holding Up Half the Sky

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 84-100
Author(s):  
Angharad Valdivia
Keyword(s):  
Global South ◽  
Public Broadcasting ◽  
The Public ◽  
Brand Recognition ◽  
Structural Forces ◽  
Public Broadcasting Service ◽  
Global North ◽  
Broadcasting Service

In this article I explore the Half the Sky (HTS) phenomenon, including the documentary shown on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) network in 2014. I explore how the girls in whose name the HTS movement exists are represented in relation to Nicholas Kristoff and six celebrity advocates. This analysis foregrounds Global North philanthropy’s discursive use of Global South girls to advance a neoliberal approach that ignores structural forces that account for Global South poverty. The upbeat use of the concept of opportunities interpellates the audience into participating in individualized approaches to rescuing girls. Ultimately girls are spoken for while celebrities gain more exposure and therefore increase their brand recognition.

Television Programming and Disability

1977 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Keith Byrd ◽  
P. Dianne Byrd ◽  
Conrad M. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Rehabilitation Counseling ◽  
Public Broadcasting ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Television Programming ◽  
The Public ◽  
Graduate Degrees ◽  
Program Type ◽  
Public Broadcasting Service ◽  
Network Program ◽  
Broadcasting Service

Determining the nature of television programming during prime time in 1976 as it relates to the depiction of disability was the purpose of this study. Two judges read program descriptions, each being responsible for six months of the programming year. Both judges held graduate degrees in Rehabilitation Counseling and have professional experience in work with various disabilities. Chi-square analyses were performed on network, program type, disability, days of the week, and months of the year. Significant results at p < .01 are reported for network, program type, and disability. The largest frequency of disability-related programs were presented by the Public Broadcasting Service and were news documentaries. Mental illness was depicted most frequently by the private networks, and the largest portion of programming depicting disability is of a dramatized or comedic nature. There is a need for educating viewers on the realities of disability along with entertainment.

scholarly journals Little Founders on the Small Screen: Interpreting a Multicultural American Revolution for Children's Television

2010 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW M. SCHOCKET
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Children's Television ◽  
First Century ◽  
Public Television ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Broadcasting Service ◽  
Whoopi Goldberg ◽  
Broadcasting Service

From 2002 to 2004, the children's animated series Liberty's Kids aired on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the United States' public television network. It runs over forty half-hour episodes and features a stellar cast, including such celebrities as Walter Cronkite, Michael Douglas, Yolanda King, Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Liam Neeson, and Annette Bening. Television critics generally loved it, and there are now college students who can trace their interest in the American Revolution to having watched this series when they were children. At the turn of the twenty-first century, it is the most extended and in-depth encounter with the American Revolution that most young people in the United States are likely to have encountered, and is appropriately patriotic and questioning, celebratory and chastening. Although children certainly learn a great deal about multiculturalism from popular culture, the tropes and limitations of depicting history on television trend toward personification, toward reduced complexity and, for children, toward resisting examining the darker sides of human experience. As this essay suggests, the genre's limits match the limits of a multicultural history in its attempt to show diversity and agency during a time when “liberty and justice for all” proved to be more apt as an aspiration at best and an empty slogan at worst than as an accurate depiction of the society that proclaimed it. This essay is not an effort to be, as Robert Sklar put it, a “historian cop,” policing the accuracy of the series by patrolling for inaccuracies. Rather, it is a consideration of the inherent difficulties of trying to apply a multicultural sensibility to a portrayal of the American Revolution.

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