What Happened
On this day in 1949, Jesse B. Blayton Sr. put WERD on the air in Atlanta, making it the first radio station in the country owned and operated by an African American. Blayton was also Georgia's first Black certified public accountant — a man who understood that ownership was the only real power. WERD broadcast from the same building as the NAACP's Atlanta office, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. later used it to reach the community during the Civil Rights Movement.
Why It Still Matters
There's a difference between being on the radio and owning the radio. WERD wasn't just a station — it was proof that Black Americans could build and control their own media, tell their own stories, and reach their own communities on their own terms. Every Black-owned media outlet that came after it owes something to what Jesse Blayton built in Atlanta in 1949.
Before WERD, Black voices on the radio were a novelty. After WERD, they were a business — and that changed everything.
Around the Kitchen Table
What station did your house keep the dial on? Was there a voice on the radio that felt like it was talking directly to your family — somebody who sounded like you, knew what you were going through, played the music that was yours? Tell us about that station and that voice.
Today on Grown Folks Bizness
Weekend edition. Put on something good today. And if you've got a memory of a radio station that meant something to your family — a DJ, a show, a song they played every Sunday morning — we want to hear it.
Sources
BlackPast · BET · Atlanta History Center
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