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biography
Glen Ford is a distinguished radio-show host and commentator. In 1977, Ford co-launched, produced and hosted America's Black Forum, the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on commercial television. In 1987, Ford launched Rap It Up, the first nationally syndicated Hip Hop music show, broadcast on 65 radio stations. Ford co-founded the Black Commentator in 2002 and in 2006 he launched the Black Agenda Report. Ford is also the author of The Big Lie: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of the Grenada Invasion.
Glen Ford, executive editor of Black Agenda Report, spoke with Real News Senior Editor Paul Jay about his upbringing as a “red diaper baby.”
“My mother was a lifelong activist,” said Ford, “and so there were always leaflets and pamphlets and discussions of how to organize people and little triumphs and little victories and what she thought were big triumphs and big victories. My father was a disc jockey in New Jersey and then went back down south where he came from, Georgia, and became the first black man to have a television show in the Deep South, Rockin' with the Deuce.”
“I was batted back and forth between these two influences, my mother being a very political person and my father being deeply involved in the entertainment industry. So I developed a bifurcated brain,” said Ford.
Glen also spoke about his mother’s deep ties with the black community in Jersey City, NJ, and described his first exposure to white children when he started eighth grade.
“A wall of hostility and the crudest kind of conduct I'd ever witnessed among kids. You know, when you grow up in segregation, you imagine how the other half, the white half lives, but you don't know. All you get in terms of information is from the television and other forms of white propaganda. But when I was actually exposed to these foul-mouthed young'uns, I was really shocked that from a cultural standpoint these were some very crude people. That was my first reaction to being immersed in a mostly white environment in terms of school, how crude these guys were.”
Ford also talked about his experience in the army during the Vietnam war as a soldier and political activist combating racism.
“I think, and I thought at the time, that the collapse of the American effort in Vietnam was at least as much based on the fact that the black soldier did not allow himself to be moved around by the chain of command. I believe that that had as much to do with the U.S. withdrawal as demonstrations back home,” said Ford.
“American apartheid was the reality of the day. You don't just derive some of your experience from that. You are immersed in it,” said Ford.
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