Article Published in Religion and American Culture

My peer-reviewed article in Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation is out!

“Coloring Sound: Religion, Race, and Music in Radio’s Network Era” focuses on the 1930s and 1940s, when radio was at the height of its national influence – think FDR’s Fireside Chats, Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds, or the rise of crooners.

It was exceedingly difficult for racial and religious outsiders to make themselves heard on this powerful new medium. For instance, on national networks like NBC and CBS, which dominated the industry, listeners were far more likely to hear white comedians pretending to be Black (as on the hit program Amos ‘n’ Andy) than to hear Black performers themselves.

There were, however, crucial exceptions. My article reveals how Black Protestants and white Latter-day Saints used sacred music as a wedge to break into exclusive network programming lineups. Though largely sidelined by scholars, broadcasting’s so-called Sunday morning “religious ghetto” became home to network radio’s largest concentration of nonwhite performers prior to the 1950s.

To get on the air and to stay there, groups like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Wings over Jordan (pictured below) had to skillfully navigate the demands of white industry executives and multiracial audiences. The result was a set of flawed yet beloved programs that both challenged and reinforced the assumed whiteness of network radio and of the nation it purported to reflect.

We often think about race and religion as something we “see.” This article suggests that these exceptional programs shaped how Americans learned to “hear” them.

Ultimately, it’s a story about the promise and peril of cultural representation for underrepresented groups.

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For my non-academic friends: this is a big deal! Academic publishing is slow and rigorous. Articles go through layers of peer review to ensure the article is quality. Because the anonymous reviewers are overworked professors, this process can take a while. For reference, I submitted the article before P was born, and she’s almost two. And that doesn’t even count the fact that I first started thinking about this article about eight years ago while working on my dissertation proposal. I’m hoping it’s like a good crockpot meal: very slow but worth the wait!

Finally, I wrote this primarily for other professional historians but hope to write a more public-oriented version in the future. So no pressure to read the whole thing!

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Image below: Gordon Parks, Orlando, Florida. Wings over Jordan, a popular Sunday morning radio program broadcast by Columbia Broadcasting System from station WDBO. President James A. Colston of Bethune-Cookman college speaking to a nationwide audience, February 1943. Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, https://www.loc.gov/resource/fsa.8d13672.