J.D. Lewis, Broadcast Pioneer
Bill Schenley
Week of February 22-28 2007
FROM: The Wilmington (South Carolina) Journal ~
By Cash Michaels
It was a cold day in November 1997.
A number of "youngsters" in their 40's and 50's came back to the TV
studios of WRAL in Raleigh to recapture the magic of a legendary dance
program called Teenage Frolics. They also wanted pay tribute to the
broadcast pioneer who hosted the show long, long before a guy named
Don Cornelius wished the nation "Peace, love and sooooooooooooul," on
a little diddy called "Soul Train."
"We would practice all week so we'd be ready on Saturday," Gwendolyn
Horton, then 47, warmly reminisced to The Carolinian/The Wilmington
Journal about how, in 1965, she and her older sister Lena would
eagerly get dressed in their best to dance their cares away on TV.
Teenage Frolics, where every Saturday at noon (an hour before Dick
Clark's American Bandstand on ABC) for 24 years, viewers could see
Black youngsters boogie down to everyone from The Temptations to the
"wicked" Wilson Pickett, was Black appointment television at its best
for anyone with a decent antenna from Raleigh to Wilmington, and
beyond.
Frolics successfully ran from 1959 to 1983, with that reunion show
airing in 1997, and the man who made it all happen was "silver-
throated" broadcast veteran, J. D. Lewis.
"He's an institution, especially with a lot of our youngsters who grew
up here on his TV program," Lewis' lifelong friend and neighbor,
former Raleigh Mayor Clarence Lightner, shared with The Carolinian in
1997, the year Lewis retired from Capitol Broadcasting.
Mr. Lewis was humble, but proud of his contribution.
"To be sitting in Washington, D.C. at some restaurant, and a young
lady comes up to you and says, 'I was on your show,' and to hear he
say what it meant to her, gives me some rewards that most people don't
have the opportunity to enjoy," Lewis told The Carolinian almost a
decade ago at the Frolics reunion.
"As I look into some faces here, in some way or another, there's a
story in every one."
It was that love and caring for his community that made J. D. Lewis a
beloved, admired, and certainly respected historic figure.
Arguably one of the first African-Americans to take to the airwaves as
a broadcaster in the South, if not the nation, Lewis, 87, died last
weekend in Goldsboro of pneumonia. By all accounts a gracious man,
those who knew him, and worked with him, remember Lewis for his
leadership, generosity and wisdom.
"If anyone is deserving of a community state funeral, it's J. D.
Lewis," said community activist Bruce Lightner, son of the late Mayor
Lightner.
"Our community has lost a gallant soldier. His spirit will shine as an
example for years to come," Lightner continued. "People like J.D. are
godsends and irreplaceable. Yet, with Raleigh growing by leaps and
bounds, and the Black community becoming more and more marginalized,
its small wonder no one "steps up" or "stands out" like John Fleming,
J.J. Sansom, P.R. Jervay, Harveleigh White, Charles Ward ... and yes,
J.D. Lewis."
The night before he died, Mr. Lewis was honored at the Triangle Urban
League's First Annual Legends Gala.
"I was honored to have J.D. as a role model as well as a [Omega Psi
Phi fraternity] brother," said Keith Sutton, president and CEO of the
Triangle Urban League. "The Urban League was pleased to have the
privilege of honoring J.D. and his legacy before his passing."
Retired educator Dr. E. B. Palmer, now curator of the African-American
Cultural Complex in Raleigh, says J. D. Lewis was in every way, a
leader.
"When he hosted Teenage Frolics, he really had the teenage community
doing wholesome and positive things, getting a chance to express
themselves," Dr. Palmer said. "You'll never know how much he
contributed to society in helping teenagers to grow. He, himself, was
a role model, a very serious member of the community."
"He contributed every way he could to community life," Dr. Palmer
continued, adding, " We have a big loss."
John Davis Lewis Jr., born in Indianapolis, Indiana, grew up in
Raleigh on South Bloodworth Street near Shaw University.
He attended Washington High School, where he was a track and football
standout. Lewis later followed in his father's footsteps when he
graduated with honors from Morehouse College in Atlanta.
Lewis would soon make history when, in 1942, he became one of the
first African-Americans to join the US Marines, one of the first of
200 Blacks who were accepted, and trained at Camp Montford Point, a
swampy area near Jacksonville, NC.
Pres. Franklin Roosevelt, by Executive Order, had integrated the armed
services, but that didn't stop racist Marine commanders from
segregating Lewis and the other black Marine trainees from their white
counterparts.
"Montford Point was just a stone's throw from Camp Lejeune, where the
white Marines were trained. It was set up to prevent the white and
black troops from training together," Carolyn Ferren, member of the
Montford Point Marine Association, is quoted as saying in a February
2006 US Marines press release. "Unless accompanied by a white Marine,
they [black Marines] were not allowed to set foot in Camp Lejeune.
And after they were shipped off to battle zones, they served
exclusively in all-black units."
Like fellow Marines, Lewis toughed it out, determined to make the
experience a success, no matter what the odds, or obstacles. He was a
trained radio technician, and assigned to Pearl Harbor to teach his
craft.
That training would serve him well when he left the service.
Lewis came home to Raleigh shortly after the end of World War II and
opened a television and radio repair shop. He had already married the
former Louise Cox, and was slowly but surely building his business.
People took notice, especially when Lewis built a mobile public
address system, and rode through the community announcing the Negro
League baseball games. It wasn't long before Lewis was doing play-by-
play for the local games, and not long after that when Fred Fletcher,
general manager of Capitol Broadcasting Company's WRAL-AM, contacted
Lewis for a job.
"J.D. came to me by reputation," Fletcher, who admired Lewis' voice
and smooth delivery, told WRAL-TV.
"I went up to the radio station and auditioned with (Fletcher)," Lewis
recalled for a WRAL-TV special called J. D. Lewis, A Broadcast Legend.
"And he said, 'Just tell me some stories. I want to hear you talk.'
And I talked, and afterwards he said, 'Maybe you and I could do some
business."
They did, and in 1948, Lewis took to the air on WRAL-AM as a disc
jockey playing the big band sound.
There were no black-owned, or Black-formatted radio stations on the
air in North Carolina at the time.
Though Lewis' program became very popular, Fletcher still took heat in
some quarters for hiring a Black announcer at the white radio station.
"He only got a few calls complaining about J.D.," said longtime WRAL-
TV director Clarence Williams, who started at the station in 1966.
"[Mr. Fletcher] had a man call him and say, 'You've got that [n-word]
working for you,' and Fred's words to the guy on the phone was, 'Well
I heard people refer to him as that, but uh, we don't call him that.'
He dealt with the man with humor, and just hung-up."
In his 1997 interview with The Carolinian upon retirement, Lewis
credited Fletcher with "having the guts" to hire him when he did.
"I worked with respect; I worked with dignity," Lewis said then. "That
was unusual back there then."
There was no question Fletcher valued Lewis' participation in the
company.
When Capitol Broadcasting made application to the Federal
Communications Commission to put WRAL-TV on the air in 1957, showing
that a black announcer was employed was an absolute plus.
It was the following year when Fletcher and Lewis put Teenage Frolics
on the air, and the rest was history.
During his tenure at Capitol Broadcasting, Lewis became a goodwill
ambassador for the company to the African-American community. After
all, WRAL-TV may have been the home of the South's premier Black
teenage dance program, but it was also the station where, during the
1960's, a controversial editorialist and future Republican US senator
named Jesse Helms, would make viewers' blood boil as he routinely
lashed out at the civil rights movement and black leaders like Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Lewis made it point to mentor and help nurture every black employee
hired by WRAL, giving them the benefit of his experience and wisdom.
That proved indispensable to young, talented technicians, and
certainly reporters and anchors like Renee' McCoy and Pam Saulsby.
"He made time," WRAL-TV's Clarence Williams said, recalling that in
1966, Jesse Helms was station manager, and racial tensions in the
South were high. "[J.D.] found me and talked to me. There were about
three other [African-Americans] who came in with me. He took us aside
and kind of schooled us on what to expect and how to comport
yourself."
"He knew it was a challenge, and that we were pioneers in a sense,"
Williams added. "Just prove to them that you're better than anyone
else."
Mr. Lewis would later become Capitol Broadcasting's first human
resources director, and also headed up WRAL-TV's Call for Action
consumer affairs department. Before he retired from the company, Mr.
Lewis did editorials for WRAL-TV, and served as a director of minority
affairs for Capitol Broadcasting.
Lewis was a member of many community civic organizations and boards.
One of J.D. Lewis' favorite places was the black-owned-and- operated
Garner Road Family YMCA, which the A.J. Fletcher Foundation donated
tens of thousands of dollars throughout the years to help grow.
"He broke some barriers long before most areas of the country, even
progressive areas, had Blacks on TV," Clarence Williams said.
J. D. Lewis is survived by his four adult children - J.D. Lewis III,
Evelyn Lewis, Yvonne Lewis-Holley, Patricia Waddell and Lee Lewis, and
nine grandchildren.
First Baptist Church, where Lewis and his late wife, Louise, were
members, will host the wake this Friday evening 7 to 8:30 p.m., and
then the funeral on Saturday at 12 noon.