Urban Unrest

29 August 2007 | Pacifica | Ernesto Aguilar

This is part one of a series that appeared in the KPFT Voice. It’s a great take by KPFT co-founder Ray Hill on KPFT’s earliest days. I’ll be posting part two tomorrow.

Wherefore KPFT?
A history and remembrance of KPFT in its earliest years: Part 1

By: Ray Hill

According to media wizard Marshall McLuhan, radio is the warmest most human form of the media. In that regard KPFT was born more than founded. There were three fathers, one mother and a whole village of nurturers as I recall. This article launches a three part series on that birth. There are others who may submit their experiences and versions but these are mine, flawed as they may be:

The atmosphere: Houston in the late nineteen-sixties was a hot, sweaty, socially adolescent yearning for a grown-up experience. All the media was plastic and artificial. Its superficiality was stretched so thin everyone could see reality below the sugar coating between the commercials but it never really reached the surface. I recall knowing Dr. Martin Luther King was coming to Houston but the newspapers and all the radio and television stations had a forced blackout on that news. Only one of several Black community newspapers and Space City News Weekly gave advanced notice of his coming and his appearance schedule. That combined circulation would reach less than ten percent of the population. All the media would cover his being here but almost none would cover his coming before the events.

There was a civil rights movement and the beginnings of an anti-war movement but one only heard of them in short crime stories when a demonstrator got arrested or sentenced. The news was about the rich getting richer and how wonderful the politicians were and those pictured were white and mostly male because they made a difference in our controlled information world. If ever there was a place that needed fresh media it was Houston, then.

Cracks in the shell: Dr. King came and we got the word out with wheatpaste posters, hand distributed fliers and some brave souls riding around neighborhoods with sound systems in the back of pick-ups. Some were arrested but punished lightly in courts the morning after, later to be recognized by name, with applause, at the rally. Space City News reported incidents of police brutality but the papers were gathered up by the cops and destroyed as quickly as they were put out. The funerals of those killed by cops were attended by hundreds who feared the same fate but had no other way to express their outrage except following the hearses and blocking traffic for hours. It was said that the biggest parades for freedom in Houston, Texas were those long funeral lines.

We had a kind of kamikaze electronic media team. It was informal and random but we learned that by calling the radio talk shows on AM commercial stations and quickly mentioning taboo topics like racism, homosexuality, women’s equality or anti-war topics, the other callers would get into a rage of hostile comments beyond the control of the hosts. At least that way we could get things stirred up and stop the silence. The other way was to subject ourselves to “public affairs” programs on radio and television where our ideas would be presented in a stacked deck atmosphere designed to make us fools. Those with substantial training in wit competition did well; others went down in flames to be congratulated later by their friends and allies for their sacrifices and courage.

Coming Out: It was after one such excursion that I learned of plans to build a Pacifica station in Houston. I was allowed to appear on Ray Miller’s Channel 2 public affairs show: The Last Word starting at Midnight, Sunday morning. The topic was homosexuality and to get on I was to debate a preacher, who thought I was a sinner; a psychologist, who thought I was sick; and a cop, who thought I was a criminal for being gay. (I was a criminal but he knew nothing of my career as a burglar). I won all three debates in the first 15 minutes of the hour show and used the remaining time to propagandize my point of view. As the controlling clock reached 1:00 AM, host Ray Miller asked me to give his program back so he could end it and take the station off the air to give the vacuum tubes a rest.

Several people in the broadcast audience had seen the first few minutes of the show and having never seen or heard a defense of gay people rushed to the station to greet me as I left the studio. One of those people was Larry Lee. Larry waited for me to work my way through gay men, lesbians and their parents desperate for something positive about their lives. After all others had left he stepped forward and asked me to join a small group of people hoping to build a Pacifica station in Houston.

I had no idea what he was talking about and wondered if he was under the influence of some of the stuff Dean Becker is trying to legalize these days but he was cute and I always have some time for a handsome man.

I later met Don Gardner who was working with him and I would bring a young Debra Danburg (whom I knew from Human Sexuality class at the University of Houston) into the fold.

Those are the parents of KPFT!

How to do it: Larry had been an awarded editor of The Daily Texan, the student newspaper at The University of Texas. Don Gardner knew about music. From the very beginning music/talk each played a part of the dream. Debra and I were the lackeys. My income from the burglary business usually paid for the postage to mail solicitations for pledges and Debra’s allowance usually fed us all. We put in staff hours and kept the office open (donated space Larry secured from some liberal supportive of the idea who preferred to remain anonymous). We held meetings at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, First Unitarian Church and in the Student Center at the U of H. We passed out fliers at political meetings and concerts. We had fund raisers at Anderson Street Fair and other friendly venues. Between 1968, when we started and 1970 when we got a transmitter we were never sure it would happen. I mean really happen.

More next time….

Ray Hill is a veteran KPFT programmer, host of The Prison Show (which airs Friday nights from 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm) and longtime gay rights and inmate rights advocate.

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