“The Census Bureau says we’re a typical radio family.”

This 1946 article in Broadcasting magazine is referring to the “Moore’s Ford Lynchings,” when two young Black couples – George Dorsey, Mae Murray Dorsey, Roger Malcolm and Dorothy Malcom – were murdered by a mob of White men between Atlanta and Athens, Georgia.  

The murders attracted national attention, as indicated in the article.  President Truman created The President’s Committee on Civil Rights and introduced anti-lynching legislation in Congress (which failed).  

Despite being the first civil rights case the FBI investigated, no one could produce sufficient evidence to prosecute a suspect.  A wave of publicity surrounding the cold case emerged in the 1990s, but the new investigation did not lead to prosecution.  The state of Georgia and federal agents closed the cases in 2017.

A highway marker was placed at the site of the attack in 1999. 

WOL has been an influential voice in Washington, D.C.’s Black community for decades.  Here are previous posts about the station’s history.

Source: Wikipedia

Here are earlier posts about Baltimore’s WCAO-AM.  As of 2021, it’s still on the air as “Heaven 600,” an iHeartMedia-owned urban gospel station.  It is simulcast on the HD2 channel of sister station WQSR-FM.

Source: Wikipedia

WLAW went on the air from Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1937.  The publishers of the Lawrence Daily Eagle and Evening Tribune newspapers owned the station.  It opened a studio on Tremont Street in Boston in the early 1940s.   

WLAW-FM signed on in 1947.  In 1951, WLAW-AM/FM moved into new studios at the Hotel Bradford in Boston.  

In 1953, General Tire, owner of WNAC-AM, bought WLAW, which by that time was broadcasting at 50,000 watts on 680 kHz, the maximum allowed on an AM frequency.  It sold the weaker WNAC frequency and moved its call letters to the 680 frequency. 

WNAC tried a few different formats in the 1950s and 1960s, including middle-of-the-road music, Top 40 pop and a talk format.  In 1967, the owners flipped it to a Top 40 rock stations with new call letters: WRKO.  The gambit paid off and WRKO was among Boston’s most-listened-to stations in the 1970s.  Known as “The Big 68,” WKRO was home to well-known personalities. Here’s an aircheck from its heyday in 1976:

As music listeners migrated to FM in the late 1970s and early 1980s, WRKO’s audience disappeared.  It tried to adapt with a more adult contemporary format, but eventually flipped to the current all-talk format in 1981.  

The talk format was a success, attracting high ratings into the early 1990s.  After owner RKO General got into trouble with the FCC and lost most of its broadcast licenses, WRKO and sister FM station WROR were sold.  

As of 2017, Entercom owns WRKO-AM.  The WLAW call letters now belong to a Cumulus Media FM station in Newaygo, Michigan, serving the Muskegon market. 

Source: Wikipedia (WRKO)

Here are other entries about Pittsburgh’s KDKA-AM.

Here are earlier entries about Baltimore’s WCAO-AM.

Here are other entries about Rochester’s WHEC-AM.