The Civil Rights Movement Wasn't Getting Much Airtime Back in the 1960s

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In 1955, a joint radio and TV station called WLBT in Mississippi cut the feed of Thurgood Marshall's interview with NBC. The manager of the station was an avowed white supremacist. This continued into the 1960s at WLBT when they repeatedly refused to let civil rights leaders appear on the station. Martin Luther King started explicitly calling out the lack of media attention by asking allies to help get coverage.

If you’ve ever flipped through the radio dial — not satellite, not podcasts, but good old-fashioned AM and FM radio — you may have noticed something. Right wing radio talk is everywhere.

But the airwaves weren't always so dominated by such a narrow range of voices. Reporter and friend of the show Katie Thornton has the story of how talk radio has evolved (and perhaps devolved at times) over the past century, and what all of it means for the airwaves today.

The Divided Dial

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