My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 143

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The inaugural episode of Black Journal
was met with considerable media
attention, including praise from the
New York Times’ veteran television critic,
Jack Gould. He hailed it as “one of
the most exciting new television shows
of the season,” and praised its mission
to “bridge the gap between white
and black communities.” Gould’s
article chided the commercial networks
“for not having thought of it first.”
During the early years of Black Journal,
Gould — known for his unsparing
critiques of Sen. Joe McCarthy, evangelist
Oral Roberts, and the television quiz
show scandals — was a consistent
advocate for the program. When Black
Journal appeared the next month, the
New York Times’ critic continued to
be an enthusiastic supporter and he
argued that whites should watch the
program precisely because it addressed
a primarily black audience. Gould’s
article hinted at an unstable future for
the program, however, indicating that
it was scheduled to end in September
and would need to find more permanent
funding. Highlighting the ephemeral
nature of television programming on
race relations, he needled net officials
not to view Black Journal as a temporary
solution to urban unrest: “Financial
support for the program might even
convince some of the skeptics that race
is not just a summer phenomenon.”

Other journalists echoed Gould’s
enthusiasm. One review, titled
“Regular Television Fare Put to Shame
by Negro Production” highlighted the
revolutionary nature of the program —
“It is actually created by Negroes, from
the first ideas all the way through
production.” The writer offered a biting
critique of the state of commercial and
public television: Black Journal “states
unequivocally not only that black is
beautiful, but black is brainy, while the
rest of us are what you see on Love
of Life, on Bonanza, on all the sadism
and sentimentality shows.” A reporter
from Newsday noted the novelty of a
television program designed to provide
“the majority an idea of what’s going
on behind the black curtain…” Kudos
poured in from media outlets across
the country, from Seattle and San
Francisco to a number of Southern
markets including Memphis and
Houston. Underscoring many of the
reviews was a critique of the bland
uniformity of television fare.

Despite the strong start, the backbone
of Black Journal began to facture in
its third month. Bourne and other staff
members struggled to define their
audience and their place amid a
predominantly white management.
White-produced segments outnumbered
those created by Blacks and “Little
by little, questions of assignments and
editorial points of view became points
of dispute among the staff,” he wrote.
Another staff member, filmmaker
Charles Hobson, remembered that “the
structure of the program made a number
of people uncomfortable because
basically all of the producers where
white and the blacks on staff were the
assistants to the white producers…”
A fight ensued when a white producer’s
segment stated that there was widespread
black support for Israel and the seizure
of Arab land. Eleven of Black Journal’s
12 black staff resigned and held a
press conference to announce their
frustration over the lack of editorial
control and to call for the appointment
of a black executive producer.
A particular point of contention was
net’s promotion of the show as “by,
for and of ” blacks, which they argued
was misleading and hypocritical.
Bourne told the gathering of reporters
that net’s behavior smacked of
“frontism” — the prominent display of
black workers to suggest that “Negroes
controlled the program.” Another of
the protestors, producer Kent Garrett,
declared “right now, it’s cool at all the
networks to have black shows, but
we’re at the stage where blacks will have
to have control.” net’s management
defended the show’s organizational
structure in the pages of the trade
journal Variety, but within days the
network agreed to the protestor’s terms
and William Greaves was named
executive producer, replacing
Perlmutter. During this crisis Black
Journal functioned as media subjects
rather than as producers and they
deployed the tropes of those they
covered such as the underdogs fighting
white control.