Reviews
"This innovative and engaging book restores radio to its rightful place in the history of Black protest, race relations, and southern culture during the middle fifty years of the 20th century."
--The Birmingham Times
"Elegantly written, Ward's book profiles the leading stations and DJs who deserve as much attention and admiration as more recognized leaders of the black struggle for freedom"
"Essential."
--Choice
"Most valuable is Ward's overview of the structure of the southern radio industry and the postwar growth of black-oriented stations."
"Ward's careful account is a helpful reminder that radio reached far more blacks than did either print or television in this era."
--The Alabama Review
"Painstakingly traces the connections between the entertainment industry and the struggle for civil rights in the post-World War II era."
--Reviews in American History
"An incredibly significant study in furthering the history of the civil rights movement."
"One of the many strengths of this study is Ward's sophisticated understanding of the frequent disparity between the political ideologies that dominated various stages of the civil rights movement and the ways in which southern broadcasters crafted their own racial meaning based on immediate economic and political conditions."
--The Journal of American History
"An important contribution to the study of radio broadcasting and the civil rights movement. The scope of the study and the depth of the research are truly impressive."
--American Studies
"A richly detailed analysis of the role radio played in the black freedom struggle during the middle decades of the twentieth century."
--Arkansas Historical Quarterly
"As with his previous work, Ward provides much for scholars to contemplate. He has brought to the forefront a subject that many historians have rarely granted serious attention. By successfully incorporating the unconventional into a familiar story, he has once again helped to legitimize popular culture within his chosen profession. More importantly, Ward has proved that he is one of the leading civil rights historians of his generation."
--The American Historical Review
"Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South is a seminal study of "cultural miscegeniation via the airwaves"."
--The Journal of American Studies
"Offers important new insights into the connections among radio, race relations, and the civil rights and Black power movements in the South from the 1920s to the mid-1970s."
--The Birmingham Times
…impressive… …the first full-length study of radio and the black freedom movement. …argues that in order to appreciate radio's importance to the freedom movement we need to look beyond overtly political programming-rare in the Jim Crow South-and consider radio's more subtle and subversive political roles.
--The Journal of Southern History