Hal Jackson, black radio pioneer and civil rights activist, dies at 96 - The Washington Post

Hal Jackson, black radio pioneer and civil rights activist, dies at 96 - The Washington Post: Hal Jackson, who broke through the color wall on the radio in Washington in the 1930s, pushed the District’s major clothing retailers to let blacks into their dressing rooms and restrooms in the ’40s and became the first black host on a national broadcast network in the ’50s, died May 23 at a hospital in New York, his family confirmed.

Mr. Jackson was 96, by most accounts, and still hosted a weekly music show on a New York radio station he once owned.

Through most of the second half of the last century, many black New Yorkers grew up knowing Mr. Jackson as the man who introduced them to the latest R&B hits, a radio DJ whose smiling face appeared on billboards across the city. For decades before that, Mr. Jackson’s was a household name in black Washington.

A broadcasting and civil rights pioneer who repeatedly found ways to smash through barriers, Mr. Jackson as a Howard University student was determined to get on the radio, at first as a sportscaster.