Free Radio by Lawrence Soley

Author:Lawrence Soley [Soley, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Social Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9780429723865
Google: rtmiDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-04-10T01:35:07+00:00

Decatur’s Black Liberation Radio

The first station inspired by Kantakos example and the second micropower station to take to the air was Black Liberation Radio of Decatur, Illinois. Like Springfield, which is forty miles west, Decatur is a predominantly white city with an entrenched white power structure that perpetuates itself through at-large elections, ties to business, and a police force that doesn’t hesitate to use brute force against political dissidents, minorities, and union workers, as demonstrated during the Caterpillar, Bridgestone, and Staley strikes.17

Started by Napoleon Williams and Mildred Jones on August 20, 1990, Black Liberation Radio broadcast from a studio in the couple’s small west-side home using a less-than-one-watt Panaxis transmitter tuned to 107.3 MHz FM, a vacant frequency in the Decatur-Springfield radio market. The station was created to give Decatur’s African-American community uncensored access to the airwaves. A leaflet distributed in the African-American community to announce its sign-on reported that Black Liberation Radio would give “a voice to those who have no voice of their own through the mass media.”18

“We want total community involvement, so anybody can be one the air,” said Williams about the station’s philosophy. “If you have a problem with the judicial system, you don’t have to call Napoleon Williams and ask him, ‘What can you do?’ You can come on and present your case to the people. There may be someone out there that will hear you, who has had the same problem and knows what to do.”19 In Williams’s view, radio should operate like public access channels on cable television, where interested groups and individuals can produce and air programs.

Two weeks after Black Liberation Radio signed on—and started criticizing Macon County states attorney Lawrence Fichter for herding African-Americans through the judicial system like slaves through a plantation-era auction—Williams and Jones learned firsthand how justice was dispensed in Decatur. The couple had their house raided by police, were repeatedly arrested and jailed, and even lost custody of their daughter, Unique Dream. A journalist at the Decatur Herald & Tribune, the city’s daily newspaper, acknowledged that the arrests and harassment give “the appearance [the states attorney and police] are out to silence him [Williams]. That’s very obvious.”20 An African-American newspaper put it more bluntly, describing the actions as a “harassment campaign” waged by “a white states attorney.”21

Then Williams was charged with fondling his ten-year-old daughter, whom he fathered with another woman. The Nation reported that “there was uncertain evidence even according to the prosecutors, [so the charge] was reduced to battery on a plea bargain offered by Williams himself in exchange for release from prison and recovery of possessions confiscated when police invaded his home.”22

The next bizarre encounter occurred several weeks later, when Fichter asserted that Williams was hired to videotape the issuing of a gang contract for the killing of two narcotics officers. To get the videotape, members of the Police Emergency Response Team conducted a late-night, guns-drawn, battering ram invasion of the Williams’s home on October 13, 1990, two months after Black Liberation Radio signed on.

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