HBCU Radio Preservation Project: Sharon Kay
Sharon Kay talks about growing up in a close-knit community, discovering a love for DJing, forming a business, breaking into radio, and becoming a general manager!
We’re back with a brand new edition of the HBCU Radio Preservation Project! As a collaborator in the project, the Margaret Walker Center serves as a repository for the oral histories of HBCU stations and the community members who have been a part of them.
Meet Sharon Kay, General Manager for Fisk University’s WFSK station. Born in Leavenworth, Kansas, as the youngest of four, Sharon reflects on growing up with “the world’s greatest parents.” She recalls a fun childhood in a close-knit, active community. Her family was both musical and athletic; Sharon played clarinet. Jazz played frequently in the household, and she remembers family members talking about going to local juke joints. Outside of being involved with their church, Sharon’s parents were lifetime members of the NAACP, and her father belonged to several veteran-related groups. She also reflects on social issues illustrated in her hometown, such as segregation and economic disparity.
‘‘It wasn’t foreign for us to hear music and meet people that would play instruments and different things. It was not foreign to us at all. I guess maybe that’s why I stayed in this industry, because I was already familiar with a lot of things and knowing it was in me, literally just embedded in my soul.”
After getting her GED, Sharon attended Washburn University as a criminal justice major, drawn in by the potential job security and problem-solving aspects of that career track; she had also worked at the university as the criminal justice film librarian. Ultimately, Sharon realized that she wanted to be a DJ. She worked as a mobile DJ for a while and developed her own persona, complete with an iconic outfit and stage name. She eventually created her own DJ business. Her first job in radio was at WREN, where she completed tasks such as changing the tapes and keeping the station on the air. Her journey into radio would go on to include a variety of opportunities and positions, during which she often learned on the job and gained new experiences, utilizing her love for problem-solving and for the industry itself.
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.
