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Following in the historical footsteps of Jessie B. Blayton, Sr., the founder of WERD-AM 860 on Auburn Avenue in 1949 comes yet another modern-day radio pioneer. He’s Auburn Avenue-based Tom Davis aka “Dr. Love”, the founder and owner of Love Internet Radio at www. dr-love.com. Internet radio is in its infancy. Davis, 55, ventured into the uncharted waters six years ago – far ahead of his competitors in the euphoric d.com. era. “Tom’s been an educator for years, he’s trained a majority
of the young disk jockey’s across the nation” opines Allen Johnson,
owner of Music Specialists, a 30-year Miami-based veteran of the music industry
who has successfully developed an array of entertainment companies. Love Radio
is one of his clients. Dr. Love is one of his favorite friends. “He is
the first man of color that I’ve ever met in my life who was able to create
grants that created national public radio stations.” “I did everything from building the towers, to putting the transmission system in place to training the volunteers at numerous stations around the country,” Davis reveals. The stations he built include KNON in Dallas, KBAF in Little Rock and KFFI in Kansas City. From 1990 to 1998 Davis helped WRFG in Atlanta move from a barely audible wattage to a 100-thousand watt powerhouse. “One hundred thousand watts is the most you can have,” says Davis who served as the struggling public radio station’s general manager for nearly a decade. “I raised the funds. I put together the engineering package. I made them what they are today.” “He put WRFG on the map and when he left it fell right off,” opines Johnson, a longtime Miami media friend of this reporter, of Davis’s radio prowess. “He brought national promoters; he brought the money they tried years to cultivate. When he got thru he had a score of grants written, the station grew up, and all the major announcers in town right now came through his system.” Then Davis or “Dr. Love” as he is known to his friends and colleagues decided to break new ground by establishing an Internet radio station – a business concept that seemed far-fetched, if not improbable at the time. “It’s the future,” Davis replies when asked what prompted him to launch his Internet station. “What the Internet offers is an opportunity for unsigned artists and unknown artists to get their music played and shared with a large international audience because the Internet and my audience are worldwide.” Davis says that while his station is yet to turn a profit, he can tell that his jazz, blues, gospel and Hip-Hop Love Radio format is steadily increasing in popularity. He says he regularly receives e-mails from as far away as Viet Nam, China, Japan, and London, North Korea and throughout the Caribbean. “We probably have about ten thousand people on our e-mail list that we send our newsletter out to, and they respond,” he says. Davis deliberately and purposefully located his enterprise on Auburn Avenue. When he first arrived in Atlanta he worked with what was then called the King Fest. “And, I was mystified by the whole Auburn Avenue story of it once being the richest street for blacks in America,” he recalls. “What drew me to Atlanta and convinced me to accept my job at WRFG was the legacy of Auburn Avenue. I intend to build on that. Broadcasting live from Auburn Avenue has a historical retrospect. And, it is something where people from all over the world can relate to because of Martin Luther King, because of industry like Atlanta Life Insurance Company and entertainment venues like the Royal Peacock.” Davis may be best known for the 10 or more festivals he produces each year – ranging from the MLK Celebration to the Sweet Auburn Fest to the Reynolds town Wheelbarrow Summer Theatre Festival – that annually draw thousands of music lovers from throughout the Southeast.Davis’ next and, possibly most profiting, pioneering enterprise are set to go into effect early this year. He has contracted to feed his signal and programming to AM stations in smaller markets. In effect, Davis is about to syndicate Love Radio via the Internet. “
If I can find 20 stations that will allow me to feed them a program at night,
and then we can reach some kind of commercial agreement that will help me get
my programming out much like satellite feeds or the Tom Joyner Morning Show,” he
says enthusiastically. “We hope this concept and our format will thrust
us into the forefront of Americana programming.” In my many years of experience in the field of elected politics, those associated with the actions of Chairman Charlie Griswold and his “out-going-gang” on the Clayton County Board of Commissioners, will always stand out s the most unsophisticated I have ever witnessed. This is the true mark of a “has-been.” The
idea that Griswold would stand up and walk out of a commission
meeting when newly elected African American Sheriff Victor
Hill was speaking was not only
rude but ignorant and will not be soon forgotten. It is one thing to be a
loser, but it is much worse to be a sore loser. By Griswold’s actions of not appointing an African American as head of a major department in Clayton and by his personal attacks against Sheriff Hill and others, he is confirming to me that he doesn’t want to see one African American department head in Clayton. Griswold can not be speaking for the people of the county. He shouldn’t let his pettiness be so apparent. He has put in too many years of public service to go out like this. I don’t know what his political advisers are telling him, but he needs to clean up his act and do it fast. He says he is acting in the interest of the people. I want to know what people, Charlie? In my conversations with blacks in Clayton, they are convinced that Griswold is either acting as a racist or on behalf of racists. We need to know from Griswold just where does he stands. I have known him for a long time and I am ashamed of Griswold’s behavior. A final note, my community access cable television program “The Hot Seat” returns in January. We will continue to scrutinize the actions of our elected and public officials. More information on it later. Civil Rights Commission Moves Right By. Ron Walters The recently appointed head of the U. S. Civil Rights Commission, replacing Mary Francis Berry, is Gerald Reynolds a Black Kansas City, Mo. attorney, who served President George Bush as head of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Education. Reynolds is a throwback to Clarence Pendleton, a Black businessman from San Diego, who Ronald Reagan appointed as chair of the Commission, as someone who was allied with the radical conservative movement and who really does not believe in the continued necessity of enforcing civil rights laws. The legacy of the Civil Rights Commission has been forcefully crafted by Berry, who served on the body for 24 years, but who, most especially, was critical of the civil rights record of all of the presidents for not doing enough to push forward the enterprise of equal justice in America. Berry deserves not only our admiration for her long service, she deserves our respect for her courage in the face of the emergence of a movement whose stiff wind of retrogression has threatened all of the legacy that was built to make Blacks and other disadvantaged people in this country have access to an open opportunity structure. And this is not just empty congratulations. Look at the Web site of the U. S. Civil Rights Commission and you will see a just completed 181 page assessment of the civil rights record of the Bush administration. The report blast Bush on almost every conceivable score. He has under-funded the civil rights offices of the cabinet agencies; he has under-funded by $29 billion No Child Left Behind, his signature education program; he has failed to enact a strong hate crimes bill; he has opposed affirmative action as quotas and the University of Michigan case in particular; he has not enacted a racial profiling law that he promised, but set about allowing the profiling Arabs and people who “look Middle Eastern; he has weakened Title IX; he has not followed through on the great plans to empower Black colleges through the White House initiative; and he has failed to fully operationalize the program announced to achieve much greater levels of home ownership by Blacks and Hispanics. Reynolds comes
to be appointed through his service as a legal analysts for the
Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO), one
of the organizations
that brought the Michigan higher education case. It has
also been suing universities for operating summer programs in
math and science
enrichment for Blacks only, causing many to close such
programs
or open them to whites. In 1997, Reynolds criticized the “civil
rights industry” and called Affirmative Action “a
corrupt system of preferences, set-asides and quotas.” In
doing so, he was following the belief of Roger Clegg, head
of the CEO that: “The
obstacles facing African Americans today are not problems
of discrimination, but of not seizing opportunities that
are available.” In
other words, it is the old slavery time allegation that the
basic reason why Blacks don’t do better because they
are lazy. This result is echoed by another recent study from Duke University by Sociology Professors Angela O’Rand and Mary Elizabeth Hughes found that Black baby boomers earn about 66% of the income of non-Hispanic whites. Thus, the irony that more Blacks have made it into the middle than ever before, but because middle class status is a moving target, these researcher found that Blacks are not equal, in fact, “are no better off relative to Whites than their parents and grandparents.” This is the reality that Blacks who consider themselves having made it are still struggling with and that many Whites reject. Well known conservative Abigail Thernstrom, Gerald Reynolds’ new vice chair on the Commission and her husband, Harvard historian Stephan, have written a steady stream of books trying to manufacture an equal status for Blacks, building a case for the elimination of all government assistance or “preferences” for “special interests.” This new regime would be the last to admit that there is much more to be done and so, the new Commission, in the words of veteran attorney William Taylor, will be like “the fox guarding the chicken coop.”Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, director of the African American Leadership Institute in the Academy of Leadership and professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland-College Park. His latest book is “White Nationalism, Black Interests” (Wayne State University Press).
Congress’ cynical decision to disregard the urgent health care needs of low-income children may seriously damage a crucial program and inflict real harm on children. But it is more than that. It is an ominous sign of struggles to come over the next four years-another example of unjust budget and tax policies designed to starve the federal government of resources to help children, the poor, and hard working families, while lining the pockets of the rich and powerful. The $1.1 billion in child health funds reverted to the Treasury on Sept. 30 when the federal government closed the books on its 2004 budget. In letters to every House and Senate member, a coalition of 73 organizations urged Congress to act immediately to protect SCHIP funds in order to maintain health coverage for children in low-income working families. Currently, 9 million children are uninsured and infant mortality has increased for the first time in 22 years. Not since SCHIP passed seven years ago has Congress let its funds go back to the Treasury rather than distribute them to states to provide health coverage to children. SCHIP serves nearly 6 million children. More than 200,000 could lose coverage by 2007 if the money is not rescued from this “use-it-or-lose-it” rule. Six states will likely lack sufficient 2005 funding to cover current children enrolled in SCHIP and by 2007 as many as 18 states could face similar shortfalls. A broad-based group of public and private organizations joined with the Children’s Defense Fund in urging Congress to restore SCHIP funds, including Catholic Charities USA, United Way of America, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems, Ascension Health, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the National Council of La Raza, Church Women United, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Urban League, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors and others. Congress paid no heed. Yet the 108th Congress found time and money to enact more corporate handouts. If a lame-duck session continues in December, lawmakers still have a chance to restore SCHIP funds in the same bipartisan spirit that helped create it seven years ago under the leadership of Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass). A key player
in this unjustified decision was U.S. Rep. Joseph Barton (R-Tex.),
House Energy
and Commerce Committee chairman. Barton and the
House Republican
leadership claimed in October that they couldn’t keep the $1.1
billion in SCHIP funds from reverting to the government unless an equal
sum could be
taken from another part of the budget to offset the expense. By that
point, Congress had already used every dollar that might have been used
to offset the $1.1 billion
for children’s health, including funding an obscene $140 billion
package of corporate tax breaks hypocritically mislabeled as the American
Jobs Creation
Act of 2004. That bill initially was written to address a $5 billion
annual export subsidy prohibited under international trade agreements.
Corporate lobbyists
piled on a bundle of new special favors, and President Bush signed it,
lavishing new tax breaks on powerful corporations like General Electric,
Exxon Mobil, Eli
Lilly, Hewlett-Packard, CSX Corp. and Starbucks. The goodies went to
electric utilities, movie studios, oil and gas interests, mining and
timber operations
and NASCAR track owners, to name just a few. These corporate handouts
were pushed through at a time when corporate tax payments are approaching
an all-time low
as a percentage of gross domestic product, child poverty has increased
for three years in a row and the national deficit has become astronomical. You and I must get ready to stand up and fight with all our might against more unjust tax and budget policies that take from the poor to give to the rich; that widen the gap between rich and poor; and that contribute to growing child poverty and infant mortality. If we don’t cry out for justice for children and the poor, who will?
In the midst of all the self-hatred we are always talking about taking place in the belly of our community, the mother of this young sensational golfer, Wanda Allen, is cleverly directing the moves of our next golf impresario. It is more like a well-orchestrated melody of the future of a one-day great golfer. We have a habit of jumping on the train after it has left the station. This time, it is no one’s fault but our own if we wait until it is too late to be a part of something great. I would like to say to Mr. Cosby that a lot of the things you have to say about the way some of our parents act are true. However, I think you need to meet some parents with the spunk and creativity of a woman and mother like Wanda Allen. Like Curtis Dunn of the Atlanta Journal & Constitution said about Phillip, “It was his mom, Wanda, who five years ago demanded her son take up golf. Phillip was a baseball player who knew nothing about golf, had no interest in it and wanted to play it as much as a vegetarian desires steak.” “But,” said Wanda, “I heard there was much more to golf than playing it, so I made him go.” It truly makes a difference if we spend time giving directions and sound advice to our children. For example, take Phillip, who was described by Dunn, as an affable, engaging youth with a quick wit and ‘Woods-like’ smile. Allen maintains a 3.2 grand point average and Benjamin E. Mays High School. He gave up baseball to concentrate on golf, the game he now hopes to make his profession. Wanda takes pride in some of his many accomplishments, such as his winning first place at the 2003 Gabrielson Cup shooting 66, and his first place with a 75 and 85 at the Georgia Public Links Championship at Southerness Golf Club. Wanda talks with great pride when she discusses some of his other great performances like his winning first place in the 2004 Atlanta Junior Tournament at the Capital Club, and his performance in the 2004 Southern Golf Tour, where he shot 84. It’s unfortunate there is not enough news focus is on the many other positive examples out there like Wanda Allen and her son Phillip. |
Dr.
Love Another Auburn Avenue Pioneer
The actions
of Charlie Griswold
Children’s
Health Jeopardized to Subsidize Powerful Special Interests