Kay Mills

In the years before the civil rights era, American broadcasting reflected the interests of the white mainstream, especially in the South. Today, the face of local television throughout the nation mirrors the diversity of local populations.

The impetus for this change began in 1964, when the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ and two black Mississippians, Aaron Henry and the Reverend R.L.T. Smith, challenged the broadcasting license of WLBT, an NBC affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi. The lawsuit was the catalyst that would bring social reform to American broadcasting.

This station in a city whose population was 40 per cent black was charged with failure to give fair coverage to civil rights and to integration issues that dominated the news. Among offenses cited by the black population were the cancellation of a network interview with the civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall and editorializing against the integration of the University of Mississippi.

However, muscle, money and a powerhouse Washington, D.C., law firm were on the side of the station. Despite the charges, the Federal Communications Commission twice renewed the station’s license. Twice the challengers won appeals to the federal courts. Warren Burger, then a federal appeals court judge, wrote decisions on both challenges. The first ordered the FCC to allow public participation in its proceedings. The second, an unprecedented move, in effect took the license from WLBT.

This deeply researched history of the case covers the legal battles over their more than fifteen years and reports the ultimate victory for civil rights. Aaron Henry, a black civil rights leader and one of the plaintiffs, became the station’s chairman of the board. Even before that occurred, an integrated group operating WLBT until a final licensee was chosen had hired William Dilday as the first black station manager in the South.

Burger’s first of two decisions on this Mississippi case had wide repercussions, allowing community groups in other regions to challenge local stations and to negotiate for improved services and for the employment of minorities.

Here’s what readers have said about “Changing Channels”:

“The law mandates that, in return for free use of the public airwaves, radio (and television) will operate in `the public interest and necessity.’ Changing Channels is a vivid account of how one little group of Americans made that come true for one station whose owners willfully discriminated against one segment of the public. They established in their suit that segregation flouts the mandate to perform in the public interest.”

--DANIEL SCHORR, Author of Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism

“Changing Channels tells the fascinating story of how local people and committed church activists helped crack open Mississippi’s Closed Society during the civil rights years, and in so doing changed the face of American television. Journalist and historian Kay Mills has written an important book, one that should command the attention of media professionals as well as students of the black freedom struggle.”

--JOHN DITTMER, author of Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in
Mississippi

“With Changing Channels. Kay Mills once again gives a comprehensive, detailed account of another important chapter in the history of the Civil Rights movement. Read it.”

--MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN, President, Children’s Defense Fund

"In complete control of the subject matter, (Mills)...outlines all of the players involved, spinning a great narrative of the long, legal struggle between the various courts and the owners (old, new and would-be) of the station."

--TODD STEVEN BURROUGHS in Black Issues Book Review