HBCU Radio Preservation Project: Charles Harrison
Charles Harrison reflects on growing up in a large family, playing in band, developing a love of music, navigating the radio industry, and more.
Need a pick-me-up to make it through the rest of the week? Listen to the new episode of the HBCU Radio Preservation Project! As a collaborator in the project, the Margaret Walker Center serves as a repository for the histories of HBCU stations and the community members who have been a part of them.
This time, meet Charles Harrison, who served as Music Director at WSHA in North Carolina during the late ‘70s. Born in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, Charles recalls a positive, fun childhood and a vibrant community centered around church, school, and family. Banking, agriculture, and industry that was structured around the railroad running through town also characterized Rocky Mountain. His father trained horses and was a mechanic and truck driver, and his mother was a domestic worker. Charles reflects on growing up with a large family and being able to bond with family members near his age while learning wisdom passed down from his elders.
‘‘By the time I was in junior high school, I was buying my own 45’s, and my sister got a job at a record shop, so we got exposed to a lot of new music that came to the record store even before we heard it anywhere else. That was probably the seed that was planted into me to love music and understand how it impacts you, from a dance perspective as well as from an inspirational perspective.”
At home, Charles had been “immersed in music.” After he was gifted a trumpet, Charles played in band from junior high through college. Though at first he didn’t realize Shaw University had a radio station, hearing its band inspired Charles to attend the school. In his first class, he learned about WSHA and saw students working there. He started out as an on-air news broadcaster and then branched out throughout his time at Shaw, working at WSHA all four years. He worked at WLLE during the summer and received a full-time job there after graduating. He would later become a program director for the station. Charles also has a knack for writing, which was very helpful for his entry into radio, when announcers had to do tasks like write their own commercials. Charles reflects on the evolution of radio in Raleigh, such as its slow switch to FM, and the value of having a station for students to gain experience.
There’s much more to hear, so click on the video below!
About the Project
Each Wednesday, tune into our YouTube channel, @mwalkercenter, to catch a new oral history from the HBCU Radio Preservation Project!
We are proud to partner with several organizations for the HBCU Radio Preservation Project, which is dedicated to honoring and preserving the rich history and cultural resource of HBCU radio.
Here’s some more info from their website:
Much of the material created at these stations is at risk of being lost, though they document the rich history and diversity of the Black experience through the Civil Rights era and beyond. The goals are to preserve the stations’ audio collections and to foster a community of sustainability for the stations and institutional archives on campus.
The project provides preservation training and workshops for campus stations, archivists and community members, recruiting HBCU graduates as interns and fellows.
Field archivists will collaborate with stations and campus archivists on collections assessments and follow-up field services such as inventories, reformatting, rehousing, and other preservation activities.
Oral historians will interview a range of community members to document the history of the stations. Training in gathering oral histories and using historical audio in content creation will also be offered. Other goals include launching an interactive website, a podcast series, and annual symposia.
