March on Washington; Revisiting the March on Washington; Interview with Roger Penn

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Transcript

Penn:

My name is Roger Penn. I am the President of a charitable organization

that operates out of Falls Church, Virginia. We give cars to needy

families. We've given away thousands of cars to people who are referred

to us by social workers and pastors, and we're supported by a number of

churches that provide funds in order to do that. I've been doing this

for 28 years or so.

In 1963, I was an Associate Professor at American University, and

director of the broadcasting program there. We were affiliated with the

Eastern Radio Network, ERN; at that time called the Educational Radio

Network, or educational radio stations were involved in it. We were

kind of a key part of that network, because being in Washington D.C.

there were a lot of originations that came from here. My role with the

March on Washington broadcast was more in terms of just watching over

the staff, and listening to the broadcasts, making my input what we

ought to be doing and how we oughta be doing it. We had a very capable

group of people that were working on it, and my role wasn't a major

one, certainly, but I was most supportive of it, and watched it

through.

And also over a period of time, I grew a little bit more alarmed about

the possibility of violence, which seemed to me was possible. In fact

toward the end, I sent a rather lengthy telegram to the people who were

running the March on Washington, just telling them that I thought that

they had achieved their goal, and it would probably be a good time to

de-camp, pack up and head home. And shortly thereafter, they did; I

don't know how much I had to do with that, but... we were very faithful

to cover this event and made it available, along the East Coast anyway,

and then through tape broadcast to other affiliates around the country.

The staff at WAMU, at the time, was made up of some very dedicated and

skilled people. George Geesey was one of them, I believe Susan Stamberg

was there then, and Elizabeth Young was involved to the best of my

recollection. Michael Harris was on the technical side, as was David

Eggleston although David also did some air work. We were the

coordinating station here in Washington; I don't remember whether we

had any boots on the ground downtown in the actual event or not. I

think most of our work was studio work at that time.

The Eastern Radio Network...I think it grew largely out of the mind of

some of the folks at GBH, Hartford Gunn was the manager there at that

time, and there were others. We collaborated; we met together

periodically, thought about how we might interconnect. One of the ideas

was to do a radio relay concept where one station would pick up another

one and then we would relay that electronically without being connected

by wire lines. That was a pretty advanced idea, the problem being that

most of the stations were rather low-powered, and we couldn't get a

clear signal between them. So it became necessary to use the telephone

company to - AT&T- as basically to interconnect our stations, rather

expensive.

And we managed to do that with resources for some period of time plus

some grants from the Ford Foundation until such time as the public

radio phenomenon grew in the Congress was eventually funded, and my

hope was that the Eastern Radio Network would be the nucleus for the

National Public Radio network and we actually work with Jansky and

Bailey, which was a large technical consulting firm, and developed a

proposal to do that. But the powers that be thought that that wouldn't

be appropriate because it put too much focus on some folks here on the

East Coast and they wanted to have a wider-ranging representation for

the network. However, I was on the radio board of NPR for some time,

during that period. My hope was that the Eastern Radio Network would

develop into the National Public Radio network. You know, we could

start right away; it was already operational. And I talked with some of

the folks on the ERN board at that time, and talked with Don Quayle

asked him if he thought it would be appropriate to develop a plan to

make ERN the beginning of the national network. He said yes, and that's

why we commissioned a study with Jansky and Bailey to see if that was

feasible, and that study was completed and submitted to the Corporation

for Public Broadcasting, and it was turned down. Very disappointing to

me at the time. However, I was asked to serve on the radio board, and I

that did that, and we met periodically.

I think I was influential in many ways, particularly in the development

of the criteria for the public radio stations. I pretty much wrote

that, although some people may disagree with that, but I remember

writing and rewriting and you discuss things and then it was kind of

turned down and rewrote the same things, and resubmitted it. And

finally, what I wrote emerged as being pretty much document the

governing and stations that would be affiliates with a national

network.

The March on Washington has come up in my mind over the years as being

a rather seminal event; a real opportunity for the black community to

express itself in a way that hadn't really happened before. And it was

a peaceful event, one that captured a great deal of attention in the

press, and I think we were privileged to be part of it.

Transcript

Transcript

Series: March on Washington

Program: Revisiting the March on Washington

Title: Interview with Roger Penn

Contributing Organization: WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)

AAPB ID: cpb-aacip/15-7940r9mp41

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Description

Credits: Interviewee3: Penn, Roger
Publisher: WGBH Educational Foundation

AAPB Contributor Holdings: WGBH
Identifier: 37965c4f22f5e410b3738e44bfea22e0ad00535d (ArtesiaDAM UOI_ID)
Format: Digital file
Duration: 00:06:46

Citations: Chicago: “March on Washington; Revisiting the March on Washington; Interview with Roger Penn,” 2011-03-07, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 13, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-7940r9mp41.; MLA: “March on Washington; Revisiting the March on Washington; Interview with Roger Penn.” 2011-03-07. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 13, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-7940r9mp41>.; APA: March on Washington; Revisiting the March on Washington; Interview with Roger Penn. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-7940r9mp41