The first of its kind--the impact of WHER-AM and WDIA in postwar Memphis radio.

In 1947, WDIA Memphis became the first radio station in the U.S. to switch to programming featuring only Black performers and announcers. Eight years later in 1955, WHER-AM became the first all-female radio station in the country, also originating in Memphis, Tennessee. This thesis will discuss the ways WHER and WDIA have both contributed to and reflected social change movements between 1947 and 1970, from civil rights to feminism. Substantive sources include media perceptions of both stations through local newspapers, interviews with early participants, and various secondary scholarship on the impact of both stations. Ultimately, I argue that Memphis’s racialized demography, collaboration with other music icons, and increasingly affluent Black population particularly predisposed station owners in the city to take advantage of the “narrowcasting” boom in postwar era radio. However, WDIA achieved a significantly broader reach than that of WHER due to the growing nature of Black-appeal radio, as well as the station’s commitment to genuine community uplift, rather than performative activism. While WHER was launched as an interesting experiment in female broadcasting, the women’s movement ultimately rejected female-centric radio as contradictory to its aims, creating further gendered separation in broadcasting from which feminists sought to move away. The difference in success of the two stations suggests a difference in the goals of the women’s movement and the movement for civil rights, a difference between desire for integration and actual community empowerment.