Riding around in Tommy B.’s car in the summer in Dallas, back in high school from ‘85-’88, Tom Joyner’s weekday morning show on KKDA would invariably be in the background. He had the “black” songs that other stations wouldn’t play until they made it to cross-over status. Sure, you’d eventually get your Run DMC, a little LL Cool J, and that one Timex Social Club song on the other stations, but KKDA is where you had to go to hear Whodini, Public Enemy, Doug E. Fresh, and many others that I don’t even remember. It was either KKDA, or buy the cd (like Mike M. did), because you weren’t hearing ANY of that on any other station in Dallas.
I loved the music, but wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about the actual “morning show” banter, because I didn’t really get some of it. It went right past me, in the same way that Howard Stern later would when his show got picked up by a DFW station. In a way, Howard’s gang was as different to me as Tom’s was; that brand of NY obnoxiousness just didn’t resonate, and Joyner’s morning entourage was having a great time and laughing really loudly at things that weren’t that funny to me. At the time, I thought it was because I wasn’t black; now, I realize that ALL morning shows do that “over-laughing” thing when it just ain’t that funny. But that’s not the point of this story.
The point is that, right now today, over 20 years later, Joyner has once again made his way into my world. Again, it’s through his direct bringing of another world into my own, and once again, it is a welcome intrusion. Tom found out that two African-American men in South Carolina were wrongfully, legally executed in the state of South Carolina in 1915 for a murder that they did not commit, and he wanted to do something about it. Why? Because these men just so happened to be relatives of his. Did he want money? Did he want people to be punished who had nothing to do with it, since it happened a hundred years ago in a different world? No. He simply wanted the names cleared of the wrongdoing that they did not commit. After research and assistance from Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (who first informed Joyner of the case) and historian Paul Finkelman, pardons were granted for both men.
Tom Joyner appears able to look at the past, deal with it, learn from it, and apply it to fixing the present and bringing hope for the future. He had help in South Carolina from people who are interested in the same thing. I know there are more of them, more of us, out there. That’s why I read, and that’s why I write.
Tags: Meeks Griffin, Thomas Griffin, Tom Joyner
