The First Black-Owned Radio Station in America

is WERD

Image by BlackHistory.com

The first African American-owned radio station was in 1949. Jesse B.Balyton, the bank president and professor purchased a radio station for $50,000 and named it WERD.

WERD, a 1000-powered radio station officially became the first African-American owned and operated station in Atlanta. Later on in his career, he hired his son, Jesse Jr., as station manager and the famous Atlanta DJ Jack Gibson in 1951 and WERD became a fixture for black-centric programming.

As fate would have it, the station WERD became a natural platform for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) founder and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Gibson was often credited as an influential voice in the popularization of hip-hop music and inducted into the Black Radio Hall of fame in 1989. Gibson would continue to be the owner of the station until 1968 while his community involvement continued until his passing in September 1977.

He was posthumously inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1995.

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