White Out: Blacks Screened Out on the Boob Tube--One Community's Story

Changing Channels: The Civil Rights Case That Transformed Television

by Kay Mills University Press of Mississippi, April 2004 $30.00, ISBN 1-578-06519-4

Watching Jim Crow: The Struggles Over Mississippi TV, 1955-1969

by Steven D. Classen Duke University Press, March 2004 $21.95. ISBN 0-822-33341-4

Teenagers have difficulty imagining a time in which American television consisted of five to seven channels. How many of those young devotees of MTV, VH-I, TV-One, BET, UPN's black sitcoms and Showtime's Soul Food know that blacks were once almost completely invisible on the nation's television screens--especially in the South? Or that the federal government once required independent television channel and network affiliates to provide programming that discussed controversial local issues from a variety of sides? Or that activists of the Civil Rights Movement had to spur the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), broadcastings regulatory body, to force those channels to come correct? Today's television (read: digital cable and satellite services, with auxiliary services such as TiVo and the soon-to-be-everywhere Video On Demand now ranges from 150 to 500 channels--narrowcast by race, gender and age, with sometimes interesting combinations of the three demographics.

So the stories that Kay Mills and Steven D. Classen tell in Jackson, Mississippi, seem like a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Both books tell the story of how, in the 1960s, white activist from the United Church of Christ in New York City and black activists in Mississippi petitioned the FCC to revoke WLBT's licence--a 16-year court battle that ended in compromise, new ownership and substantial black programming and hiring. Why? Because with Emmett Till's and Medgar Evers's freshly spilled blood covering Mississippi in the 1950s and 60s, WLBT-TV would deliberately blot out any coverage of the Civil Rights Movement, while letting the local White Citizens Council have a television slot. Station management would not hesitate to preempt, edit or editorialize over NBC's news and public affairs programs or Today Show segments on the movement, correcting what it called biased "Northern news." If local news programs mentioned blacks, they were "Negros," not "Mr." or "Mrs." The Jim Crow station was a blatant symbol of white power serving a viewing area almost half black.

Mills, the author of a biography of Mississippi Civil Rights Movement legend Fannie Lou Hamer, does not disappoint. In complete control of the subject matter, she tries her best to bring the often tedious account to life. She outlines all of the players involved, spinning a great narrative of a long, legal struggle between the various courts and the owners (old, new and would-be) of the stations. Mills also recreates the inside battle that newly named WLBT black executives and staffers had in the 1970s.

Classen takes a decidedly different tack with the material. In watching Jim Crow, rich historical description takes a backseat to trying-to-get-university-tenure theory. His book is saved from historical irrelevancy by his chapter on how black activists forced the stars of Bonanza to cancel a live appearance in Jackson, angering many of the whites for years afterward (a historical precursor to the WLBT legal struggle that Mills omits). "Then, as now," writes Classen, "local television and popular entertainment performances were often recognized as crucial sites of political and racial struggle, where social identities and fundamental notions of human dignity were at stake."

The struggle fro WLBT can be viewed as just another Civil Rights Movement-era victory worn away by time and dramatic changes in postmodern America. Or it can be commemorated as a victorious moment in the history of the oppressed. Or both. Either way, a black right now taken for granted in the Tom Joyner/Tavis Smiley era--being allowed to discuss political and social issues on national and local television--was paid in full by those who had to fight for it.

--Reviewed by Todd Steven Burroughs