1948–1950 · WMAQ, Chicago

Destination Freedom

Richard Durham wrote Black history as radio drama, weekly, on a network station

Richard Durham got a Sunday morning half hour on NBC's Chicago station and used it to write the history of Black America as drama — not as uplift, not as pageant, but as conflict, with anger left in. The Knock-Kneed Man, Railway to Freedom, The Denmark Vesey Story: the titles alone place it decades ahead of anything the networks were carrying. It lasted two years before the pressure told and the scripts were softened; Durham left. What survives is the most radical body of work in American network-affiliated radio, and it was made in a studio on Michigan Avenue by a man who later wrote Muhammad Ali's autobiography.

45 broadcasts · 4 years held · Chicago

45 surviving broadcasts of the WMAQ series written by Richard Durham. Recordings held by the Internet Archive.