Richard Durham's Destination freedom : scripts from radio's Black legacy, 1948-50
Richard Durham (Author), J. Fred MacDonald (Editor, Writer of added commentary)
"The discrimination and stereotyping that black Americans have experienced in the popular arts in the twentieth century is a familiar story to students of popular culture. In literature, music, film, and television the barriers to black characterization and talent created pervasive distortions and stereotypes; yet in no artistic field was the racist pressure against blacks more prevalent than in radio, and into this cultural dimension the least amount of scholarship has been directed. In the light of such discriminatory traditions, the appearance in the late 1940s of the program Destination Freedom represents a striking incongruity. Broadcast for over two years over WMAQ, the Chicago affiliate of NBC, Destination Freedom was a provocative half-hour Sunday feature that probed with candor the achievements and careers of eminent blacks. Through dramatic sketches from Afro-American history, the series maturely illustrated the methods by which such black achievers as Sojourner Truth, Lena Horne, Joe Louis and Langston Hughes managed to cope successfully with bigotry in American society. During its run from 1948 to 1950, the one hundred and five scripts produced for the series were the creations of the writer Richard Durham."
Print Book, English, 1989
Praeger, New York, 1989