Art Gilliam’s WLOK radio stations still stand for activism
“We don’t really get too much into politics as far as WLOK is concerned, but the station does have activism as a part of its roots,” said Art Gilliam, who has owned the company for 46 years. (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian)
Art Gilliam owns the corner of South Second and Talbot. For 46 years, in a small brick building there, he’s amplified the voice of Black Memphis through WLOK-AM 1340/WLOK-FM 105, the only Black-owned broadcasting company the city has ever had.
As media conglomerates through the years bought up independent stations, Gilliam, now a week from turning 80, has persevered — with a sales force of three or four — to maintain the clarity of that voice, the power of free discussion and media access.
“We don’t really get too much into politics as far as WLOK is concerned, but the station does have activism as a part of its roots,” said Gilliam, speaking in the wood-paneled conference room that has changed little since he took over in 1977.
A full-size portrait of Gilliam, painted by Larry Walker, the North Memphis artist whose commissions include the official portraits of former mayors Willie Herenton and AC Wharton, has hung in the space nearly since the beginning, a gift from Walker in honor of Gilliam’s historic endeavor.
Gilliam bought the station in 1977 for $725,000, which he raised in a motor home he bought so he could go from lender to lender, across the nation.
About half the money came from a U.S. SBA-backed loan program designed to encourage minority entrepreneurship in the 1970s.
The challenge for Gilliam was that he had to get three participating SBA offices to back him to even get half of the purchase price.
“You had to go around to find one that was going to really be interested. I talked to one in Hartford, Connecticut; one in New York and one in Florida,” Gilliam said.
When they agreed, a local bank loaned him the rest.
WLOK at the time was part of cluster of stations in the Starr Broadcasting group. One of the major stakeholders was writer and commentator William F. Buckley.
It was an R&B station with Black on-air talent but the front office — including the sales force — was white.
Gilliam couldn’t stomach the divide and what it symbolized. He replaced the white staffers, who left when he came in,, with Black employees, including women.
“I made that change immediately,” Gilliam says.
Next, he called the bluff of national advertisers who had killed the local Rainbow PUSH air program by threatening to pull their ads.
“Operation PUSH was the BLM (Black Lives Matter) of that era,” Gilliam says. “They were considered a militant organization. Jesse Jackson was the head of it in Chicago, where it started.”
In Memphis, PUSH was led by Rev. Billy Kyles, pastor at Monumental Baptist Church and a onetime confidante to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“One of the first things I did, I went to Billy Kyles and said, ‘You are back on the air,’ ” Gilliam says, pausing a moment.
“I think you might say that set the tone for who and what we were going to be.
“My mindset had nothing to do with whether they want to advertise or not advertise. It just had to do with doing the right thing,” Gilliam said. “Being an African American, I knew the importance of PUSH. I knew what it meant to this community and what they were saying. From my perspective, they were speaking the truth.”
Not one company pulled its advertising.
Richard Ranta, founding dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts at the University of Memphis, says the companies couldn’t afford to lose the WLOK audience.
“If they wanted to reach a group of Black citizens, and these are typically middle class or higher-income folks, WLOK was it,” he said.
Nothing discounts how hard it is to be the first, Ranta said.
Gilliam was the first Black writer at The Commercial Appeal, starting in 1968, shortly after King was assassinated. He was the first Black on-air reporter and anchor at WMC-TV. He was also the first Black person to own a radio station in Tennessee and the Southeast.
“When you’re the first in anything, it’s often a pretty gutsy thing to do,” Ranta said.
PUSH hour
The PUSH hour, now hosted by Rev. Kevin Brooks, head of Providence AME Church on Decatur, has run nonstop since. “PUSH is the longest-running program on WLOK and probably the longest-running program in the history of Memphis radio,” Gilliam says.
In the past weeks, the 6 p.m. Sunday program has been an open forum for discussing community policing and airing the grief people bear about police.
“The goal is to unite the community around the democratic idea of conversation,” Brooks said.
“I anchor the program as a way to strategically discuss issues that I know have buzz in the community. We are using it also as a platform to organize and mobilize citizens for local meetings.”
More than 100 mothers turned out at City Hall after Brooks issued a call for action in support of Tyre Nichols’ mother and the dozens of other mothers who have lost children in cases that have never been solved, he said.
“To see the people come out, that’s really impactful.”
Voice of reason
Gilliam has been a voice of reason in the city, says former Judge George Brown, the first Black state Supreme Court justice in Tennessee. He has known Gilliam since the late 1960s.
“Art has been laid back in the way he has carried out his role. In my opinion, people who are laid back don’t raise their voices unnecessarily as opposed to someone who is always yelling about this or that. It’s easy to discount that person.
“Art is not discountable.”
Gilliam grew up in Memphis, the only child of Herman and Leola Caruthers Gilliam. His father was second vice president of Universal Life Insurance and an avid reader, which Gilliam says had a great bearing on why they sent their son to Yale University.
“He’d read somewhere that Yale was the best college in the country; he set that as a goal (and started saving for it),” Gilliam said.
Gilliam graduated from Yale in 1963 and earned a master’s degree in actuarial science from the University of Michigan, destined to follow in his father’s footsteps.
Job offers poured in, the most lucrative from an insurance company in California.
Universal Life matched the offer. Gilliam came home to Memphis in 1967 and rose in the ranks to vice president.
When Harold Ford Sr. was elected in 1974, Gilliam went to Washington to work for him.
Benjamin Hooks, a Memphian Gilliam knew well, was head of the FCC Commission at the time, and living in Washington.
Gilliam knew the broadcasting business because he’d had a stint as a weekend anchor at Channel 5. He liked the work, but he preferred radio, even then.
“I contacted Ben Hooks about my interest in radio and the possible acquisition of a radio station. And he put me in touch with a media broker in Washington,” he said.
It turns out WLOK was for sale.
“I said, ‘Wow. That’s the station I listen to.’ I always listened to WLOK as a teenager.”
Brown knows the story well, and he applauds Gilliam’s courage, but for a different reason.
“I may be presumptuous, but I don’t think Art was a happy camper being in a corporate situation and functioning as an accountant. I don’t think that was his calling.”
He found his path, Brown said, in an entirely different world.
WDIA challenger
WDIA is famous for being the first radio station in the nation with all-Black on-air talent. It was owned by white Memphians, John Pepper and Bert Ferguson.
WLOK started as WHHM in 1946; it went off the air in 1962 in a contested sale and was silent more than a year. The station was sold later to the OK Group.
When Gilliam took over, his changes quickly made WLOK a contender to WDIA. WLOK attracted a younger, edgier audience, one willing to protest, Gilliam says.
“Even in the news department, you had people who were the protest type and who were getting out and covering things and saying, ‘OK, what things are wrong? What should be changed in Memphis?’ ”
Gilliam also later bought WERD, an AM station in Jacksonville, Florida, and sold it four years later. In 1999, he acquired WHGM in Savannah, Georgia, which he later sold.
In the mid-1980s, WLOK’s format changed from R&B to gospel.
“The music we play is gospel music, but we consider ourselves a community station that plays gospel music as opposed to a gospel station,” Gilliam said.
WLOK’s audience over time has aged, Gilliam says — a sign, he says, that many who were listening in 1977 have stayed loyal.
The station does not subscribe to Nielsen ratings. Even if management knows the number of estimated listeners, it cannot use the data.
Six years ago, WLOK branched out with its Black film festival, which is growing.
Media metrics
Radio stations in general have consolidated in the past 25 years to amass market share, says Jay Small, chief operating officer of Local Media Association, a trade group representing 3,000 local media outlets.
“To have sufficient marketing share, broadcast radio owners typically go after clusters of stations to get enough market share to be able to sell advertising, to have enough of a marketing and promotional presence.”
Independents still exist, Small said, but their focus tends to be community service over profit.
“At this point, if you are running as an independent, family-owned or independently owned local media of any kind — newspaper, television station, radio station — if your sole purpose were to be in it for the money, you wouldn’t still be in it.”
Today, Gilliam owns 85% of the company. The rest is held by shareholders who comprise a nonprofit board but have no oversight capacity.
Gilliam and his wife, Dorrit, COO of the Gilliam Foundation, have no children. According to Gilliam’s will, his share of the company eventually will go to the board.
Ranta likens Gilliam’s effect, on a smaller scale, to the influence Tyler Perry has had on Black film production.
“... A lot of Black voices got heard because of WLOK ... whether it’s an opinion show or in the commercial or being a DJ, without any kind of interference from somebody else.”
Topics
Art Gilliam WLOK Richard Ranta George Brown Jay Small Subscriber Only2025 is almost over. Now is the time to support your trusted local news source.
Will you help us reach more Memphians with quality, in-depth local news? Make a fully tax-deductible donation or other contribution to The Daily Memphian, a 501(c)3 nonprofit news organization, today.
Thank you for keeping up with what’s happening in Memphis. Thank you for investing in our community’s trusted local news source.
Jane Roberts
Jane Roberts has reported in Memphis for more than 20 years. As a senior member of The Daily Memphian staff, she was assigned to the medical beat during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also has done in-depth work on other medical issues facing our community, including shortages of specialists in local hospitals. She covered K-12 education here for years and later the region’s transportation sector, including Memphis International Airport and FedEx Corp.
Comments
Want to comment on our stories or respond to others? Join the conversation by subscribing now. Only paid subscribers can add their thoughts or upvote/downvote comments. Our commenting policy can be viewed here.