VOICE: (On cue) Oh freedom, oh freedom
Oh freedom over me
And before I’d be a slave
I’d be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free.
ANNOUNCER: (On cue) Destination Freedom.
(MUSIC: Theme up and under)
ANNOUNCER: In cooperation with the Chicago Defender, WMAQ brings you Destination Freedom, new radio series dramatizing the great democratic heritage of the Negro people, part of the pageant of American history.
Thus began each episode of Destination Freedom, Richard Durham’s most significant contribution to the annals of African American history. In its two-year broadcast, Destination Freedom celebrated the achievements of African Americans both past and present in an effort to counter the racist stereotypes dominating the airwaves. From this program and much of Durham’s earlier work, one sees an avocation for civil rights years before the formal start of the Civil Rights Movement. What is also apparent is his commitment to the city of Chicago, a city with its own legacy of racial segregation and discrimination, in his attempts to educate his audience and encourage social change. Durham’s relationship to Chicago embodies the atmosphere then surrounding much of the South Side’s “Bronzeville.” Culturally, Black Chicago was in the midst of a renaissance, burgeoning with literature, art, the social sciences, and the institutions serving as their forums. His work attests to the renaissance objective that improved race relations might emerge from artistic endeavors, and thus throughout his career, Richard Durham depicted the lives and accomplishments of numerous African Americans in a medium largely devoid of an African American presence. Concerned with more than the injustices faced by African Americans as a group, Durham specifically addressed those offenses inflicted upon women, and his writing portrays strong women who battled against discrimination. Although his programs were locally broadcast and his listeners were exclusively Chicagoans, he wrote of issues recognizable around the world, and his contributions to the renaissance helped to define the local cultural aesthetic.
Born September 6, 1917, in Raymond, Mississippi, as Isadore Richard Durham, Richard Durham moved with his family to Chicago’s South Side in his youth. As with many other African American families, the Durhams were among the waves of Southern migrants moving to the northern industrial centers of Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago in search of better opportunities and a life free of Jim Crow. Raised in Chicago and a resident until his death in 1984, Richard Durham attended Hyde Park High School and later Northwestern University. His interest in writing began when he won first prize in a poetry contest conducted jointly by Northwestern University and Mundelein College. This interest was encouraged through his friendship with Langston Hughes, who urged him to polish and publish his poetry. Consequently, several of Durham’s poems appeared in print on the pages of such publications as the Pittsburgh Courier, the Chicago Defender, New Masses, and Opportunity. The September 1939 issue of Opportunity featured his poem “Death in a Kitchenette,” of which Langston Hughes commented, “What a swell subject for tremendous poetry the South Side is! I want to live there sometime & write a whole series of South Side poems.”1 The poem, which typifies the lives of many impoverished African Americans living in South Side tenements, places Durham as a contemporary of Frank Marshall Davis and Gwendolyn Brooks. In its content, Durham’s commitment to local social change is obvious, and this continued attention to the South Side and the plight of its residents firmly situates his work in the canon of Chicago writing.
Richard Durham began his formal writing career as a writer for the Illinois Writers’ Project (IWP), a branch of the Works Progress Administration established to support writers during the Great Depression. During his time with the project, Durham wrote, “Don’t Spend Your Money Where You Can’t Work,” an essay highlighting the campaign for equal employment opportunities led by the Black Press. Perhaps most importantly, he received training as a radio script-writer writing for the IWP program, Legends of Illinois (1940), which recounted “true events in Illinois history” and was heard locally on WCFL radio. While writing for Legends, Durham was also employed by the Art Institute of Chicago to write a program dramatizing the lives of world-renowned artists. Broadcast on WMAQ as Art for Art’s Sake and on WGN as Great Artists (1940–1941), Durham wrote forty scripts dealing with artists and the works they produced. Though not a formal historian, Durham did substantial research on his subjects in preparation, creating scripts rooted in historical scholarship and possessing a literary dimension. “The Story of Auguste Rodin,” “Goya: The Disasters of War,” and an adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables were among several of the fifteen-minute episodes airing on Saturday mornings from 9:15–9:30 CWT.
While with the IWP, Durham’s scripts began to show signs of a strong political consciousness. One example is, “A Matter of Technique,” a sketch set in France shortly after Nazi occupation that uses the life of Pablo Picasso to comment boldly on issues of violence and domination under fascism. This political consciousness motivated him to write a letter to the editor of the Chicago Sun six months later. As a reaction to their “Parade” article, “What will we do with the children of fascism?” Durham asserts, “But suppose our postwar leaders did not think it necessary to teach tomorrow’s children that no race is inherently superior or inferior. Suppose that after the war the races of the world were not given equal freedom or equal rights. Then plainly the dying and suffering being done in Europe and Asia is worse than useless. Our victory would be empty and senseless.”2
The war years were a time of uncertain optimism for African Americans. The “Double V” campaign, a campaign originating in the Pittsburgh Courier calling for an end to fascism at home and abroad, was strongly supported in Chicago by many who felt the U.S. government’s hypocrisy of fighting to secure the rights of the oppressed overseas while denying equal rights to African Americans could no longer endure. Influenced by this political climate, Durham’s work, like that of much of the art emerging from Bronzeville, began to speak of injustice and often reflect this sense of hope.
After his time with the Illinois Writers’ Project, Richard Durham spent the year 1942–1943 at work on At the Foot of Adams Street. This program, cosponsored by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Tribune, and heard locally on WMAQ radio 670, showcased current artists on exhibit. Following Adams Street, Durham worked for two of the nation’s leading African American publications, as an editor for Ebony and as a feature writer and page editor for the Chicago Defender. In the four years Durham worked for the Chicago Defender he wrote a total of 508 special articles and stories, many of great significance including his coverage in 1945 of the birth of the United Nations at the San Francisco Conference. That same year, he won a Page One Award given for outstanding newspaper stories by the American Newspaper Guild for his series of Chicago Defender articles on race discrimination in war plants, an issue of particular relevance to Chicago because such plants had initially lured many African Americans to the city.
Durham continued to hone his craft during what is hailed as radio’s Golden Age (1930s–1950s), when radio was being used as both source of entertainment and as a political medium. As radio was becoming more popular and more powerful, many African Americans hoped the medium would promote positive images of black America and black American life. To their dismay, most of the depictions of African Americans broadcast on the radio relied on and further propagated prevalent racial stereotypes. As African Americans migrated to northern urban industrial centers and developed distinct communities, they soon began seeking accurate portrayals of themselves on the air. This was, coincidentally, a time when the radio industry itself was in flux, becoming less a national and more a local medium as networks turned their attention to television. Because radio was slowly being usurped by national television in the late 1940s, programs designed specifically for black audiences began appearing as advertisers realized the local market potential. Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City broadcast programs pertaining to the collective experience of African Americans. The local media provided the platform, where the national media ignored the situation as African American artists strove to promote positive race relations in a time of racial tensions. These changes within the radio industry afforded Durham the opportunity to use his post-IWP programs, Democracy U.S.A. and Destination Freedom, as vehicles to replace negative representations with more realistic depictions of African Americans.
In 1946, Richard Durham began Democracy U.S.A. Produced in cooperation with the Chicago Defender and CBS-owned WBBM’s Department of Education, this weekly fifteen-minute series sought to tell the “living story of American unity” by dramatizing the lives of exceptional African Americans. The program, Durham’s first major radio experience, presented biographical sketches of people such as Dr. Ulysses Grant Dailey, chief attending surgeon at Chicago’s Provident Hospital; Dr. Charles Wesley, president of Wilberforce University; and Albert W. Williams, president of Unity Mutual Insurance Company, all of whom made important contributions to the African American community. In the episode, “Albert W. Williams, the president of Unity Mutual Insurance Company,” Durham relayed experiences in Albert Williams’s life that led to his resolve to provide insurance to all in need regardless of race. At the end of the episode, Williams appeared to advocate for the creation of a Fair Employment Practices Law in Illinois. Such stories were characteristic of the type Durham wanted to tell—accounts of black individuals who were confronted with and overcame social and political injustice. These stories, as lived experiences or artistic retellings, were the essence of the renaissance. Although he gained valuable experience writing scripts for Democracy U.S.A. and the program won sixteen awards and a special citation from Harry Truman, Durham would later disapprove of the program over what he viewed was a demeaning representation of African Americans. It was with this that he turned his attention to new projects.
In 1947, Durham began writing a black soap opera for WJJD entitled, Here Comes Tomorrow. Sponsored by the Metropolitan Insurance Company of Chicago and airing three times weekly, Here Comes Tomorrow told the story of the Redmonds, an African American family and their everyday struggles with racial prejudice and discrimination. At the time, it was the only Black serial in existence. The political consciousness that emerged with Democracy U.S.A. had solidified as Durham used the series to stage direct attacks on racism. In its short run, it was hailed by critics. One critic observed: “Here Comes Tomorrow might well be one of the best things that has come along to further understanding between the races.”3 Acclaim also came in the form of Billboard Magazine’s award for best dramatic show on the radio in 1948.
Destination Freedom premiered on June 27, 1948. It is undeniably Richard Durham’s most mature radio series. Durham, then in his midtwenties, was even bolder in expressing his social agenda than he had been in his prior work. The thirty-minute program aired weekly in Chicago on NBC-owned WMAQ. However, after the program’s first few months, its sponsor, the Chicago Defender withdrew its financial support. Destination Freedom continued to air because the Urban League of Chicago assumed sponsorship in an attempt to further positive race relations. In the series’ original run, 1948–1950, Durham wrote 105 scripts, all which were produced by Homer Heck and performed by an interracial ensemble cast of young actors that included Oscar Brown Jr., Janice Kingslow, Fred Pinkard, and Wezlyn Tilden. All of the actors were members of Chicago’s liberal Du Bois Theater Guild, and they, along with Durham, brought to the series a sense of “crusade,” a passion indicative of the renaissance. As Durham stated, “at that time you were running with the wind in your face [so] there was that thing of a crusade spirit—of a drive to get the story over.”4
The purpose of the Destination Freedom was didactic—to demonstrate the achievements of African Americans past and present while contradicting the black caricatures offered by radio programs such as Amos and Andy and the Jack Benny Show. At the same time, it advocated civil rights. Through strong storytelling and characters providing positive examples of self-achievement, Durham attempted to lessen the inequalities of race and gender.
For Destination Freedom as with Democracy U.S.A., Richard Durham wrote biographical sketches based on the experiences of prominent African Americans. Selecting historical and contemporary subjects, Durham dramatized the accomplishments of Crispus Attucks, Mary McLeod Bethune, Jackie Robinson, and Gwendolyn Brooks, among others. Durham’s accounts lacked sentimentality; facts took precedence over emotions in order to advance freedom and equality. Destination Freedom was particularly striking in its concern for gender discrimination and women’s rights. Durham saw parallels between the exploitation of women and the exploitation of African Americans and felt that women could identify equally with his characterizations of men as those of his women. As he told an interviewer, “The women of the world of all races and creeds in their upward swing toward real emancipation, find it natural to identify their striving with the direction and emotional realism in Negro life today.”5 He selected as subjects strong, independent women such as Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, and Katherine Dunham because of their determination to battle intolerance founded on racism and sexism. He also tackled issues pertinent to African Americans living locally in Chicago, such as housing and the origins of the Chicago Urban League. In “Housing: Chicago,” the realities of the inadequate housing of many of the city’s African Americans is portrayed. At one moment in the episode, the protagonist Jack Warren and his family seeking new housing are refused because of their race, a common scenario for many Black Belt families, “Thus were, the Jack Warrens denied the right to rent; the right to move and live and grow and stretch out free not only for one man, but for his children born and yet to come.”6
Destination Freedom won awards from the Institute for Education by Radio, the City of Chicago’s Commission on Human Relations, and the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and it received a special citation from Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson. These accolades speak to the importance of the program in combating racism, as well as granting recognition to the artistic creativity occurring among Chicago’s Black artists. In view of radio broadcast history, the forcefulness and revolutionary tone of the scripts is impressive. The quality and content of these scripts speaks to the new direction African American art was assuming in the city. As a product of the renaissance, Destination Freedom is an imaginative channel to positive racial representation. As J. Fred MacDonald rightly asserts, “Throughout the last half of the 1940s, then, Richard Durham wrote and produced what undoubtedly was the most consistent and prolonged protest against racial injustice by a single talent in all the popular arts.”7
Destination Freedom as a series was discontinued in 1950. Facing an increasingly conservative Cold War climate, WMAQ canceled the program and replaced it with a revised version hosted by “Paul Revere,” who lauded the accomplishments of whites rather than African Americans. After the cancellation of the original Destination Freedom, Durham remained in Chicago but left radio work to become the National Program Director for the United Packinghouse Workers of America. Intent on advancing the cause of African Americans within the union, Durham’s agenda was met with resistance and he was forced to resign in 1957.
From 1964–1970, Durham worked with Elijah Muhammad as editor of the newspaper column, Muhammad Speaks. In the early 1970s he began editorial work for Muhammad Ali on what would become Ali’s autobiography, The Greatest (1975) and created and wrote scripts for the local television show, Bird of the Iron Feather, funded by the Ford Foundation. Debuting in 1970 and airing on WTTW television, the show captured the tense relationship between police and local residents that existed in the mid-1960s. Though airing for only thirteen weeks, the importance of the program was recognized and it later received an Emmy Award. Richard Durham spent the remainder of his life living on Chicago’s South Side, living in the same section of the city he had moved to as a child. He died April 24, 1984.
Richard Durham’s work was, in many ways, ahead of its time. His collaborations with Elijah Muhammad and Muhammad Ali clearly situate him as a prominent figure in the radical phase of the Civil Rights Movement. However, his prior work, with its attention to the civil rights of African Americans and those abroad, displays an enduring interest and critique of inequity. Using this interest as the basis for much of his radio scripts, Richard Durham exemplifies the prolonged process that culminated in the modern Civil Rights Movement, demonstrating that such concerns emerged prior to the 1950s. His varied characterizations and political aims epitomize the mission of the Chicago Renaissance. Broadcasting in an era when radio programming was almost exclusively operated by whites, Richard Durham gave a voice to the voiceless and replaced racial stereotypes with historically accurate accounts of African American achievements.
1. Richard Durham Papers. Richard Durham’s papers, including the transcripts from Democracy U.S.A. and Destination Freedom, are in a collection at the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, Woodson Regional Library, Chicago. Tapes of the Destination Freedom broadcasts are held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, and the Museum of Broadcast Communications, Chicago.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. MacDonald, J. Fred. “Radio’s Black Heritage: Destination Freedom, 1948–1950.” Phylon 39 (1960): 66, 67.
5. Durham interview with Cordier, Cordier, 25.
6. Durham, “Housing: Chicago,” in Destination Freedom, 7.
7. MacDonald, J. Fred, ed. Richard Durham’s Destination Freedom: Scripts from Radio’s Black Legacy, 1948–50. New York: Praeger, 1989, 7.
Art for Art’s Sake/Great Artists. Radio Series. (1940–41).
At the Foot of Adams Street. Radio Series. (1942–43).
Bird of the Iron Feather. Television Series. (1970).
Cordier, Hugh. A History and Analysis of Destination Freedom. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1949.
Democracy U.S.A. Radio Series. (1946).
Destination Freedom. Radio Series. (1948–50). 32 episodes available on 1 mp3 CD at OTRCAT.com.
Here Comes Tomorrow. Radio Series. (1947).
Legends of Illinois. Radio Series. (1940).
MacDonald, Fred J. Don’t Touch That Dial!: Radio Programming in American Life, 1920–1960. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979.
———, ed. Richard Durham’s Destination Freedom: Scripts from Radio’s Black Legacy, 1948–50. New York: Praeger, 1989.
Savage, Barbara Dianne. Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938–1948. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
Chicago Defender (1943–46).
Ebony (1945–46).
Muhammad Speaks (1964–70).
The Greatest (1975).