Cecil Hale (Finding Aid)

Cecil Hale

1945 -

Favorite Color: Blue

Favorite Food: Dim sum and Sushi

Favorite Time of Year: Autumn

Favorite Vacation Spot: Maui and Tokyo

Interview Length: 122 minutes

Interview Date(s): February 22, 2002

Interview Location(s): 1900 S. Michigan, Chicago, Illinois

Abstract

Music industry executive and professor of broadcast communications Cecil Hale, Jr. remembers his childhood, mostly spent in Little Rock, Arkansas. Subjects include his early interest in music and reading, his mentors in the local black community and participation in the Boy Scouts where he was the second black Eagle Scout in the history of the state. Music industry executive and professor of broadcast communications Cecil Hale, Jr. talks about his youth, the beginnings of his fascination with radio and decision to pursue a broadcasting career, his college years at Southern Illinois University, his membership in Alpha Phi Alpha, and early jobs in radio; this included a summer stint as a radio disc jockey in a small North Dakota town where the twenty-year-old Hale was the target of a cross-burning, an incident that he says still rankles today. Music industry executive and professor of broadcast communications Cecil Hale, Jr. talks about his years in the late 1960s and 1970s during which he moved from a station in a Chicago suburb, to a new sister station that WVON was starting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and then to WVON itself, the top African American station in Chicago. Hale discusses WVON's owners until 1969, Leonard and Phil Chess, the family-like atmosphere among the station employees, the station's involvement with the Civil Rights Movement and support of Rev. Jesse Jackson, the major grand jury investigation into alleged payola in African American radio, and WVON's downfall in the late 1970s due to the rise of FM and to poor management by the station's new owners. Music industry executive and professor of broadcast communications Cecil Hale, Jr. talks about his academic degrees, his work in the music recording industry for Polygram Records and Capitol Records, his work on a project assisting the governmetn of Nigeria with its television system, and his move into a college teaching career. Music industry executive and professor of broadcast communications Dr. Cecil Hale, Jr. talks about the history of black radio and expresses concern over the changes that have come since deregulation in the communications industry which he sees as responsible for the present day state black radio being concerned solely with profits, not with the function of broadcasting as a platform to promote positive social change. Dr. Hale shares his thoughts on both good and bad aspects he sees in the black community today, and urges the black middle class to be about more than "the next big car and the next big house." Finally, he briefly considers the opportunities and success he has had in his life so far, and says that he believed in his grandmother who told him that he could be anything he wanted to be.

42 Stories (See Ordered Story Set)