![]() ![]() On radios in many black homes throughout the South, DJs and hosts used code words to communicate about where listeners could find reliable car rides, share locations of demonstrations or warn listeners about police blockades. KOKY joined a slew of other race radio stations in the South, following in the footsteps of the country’s first black-oriented radio station, WDIA, founded in Memphis in 1947. KOKY served as a beacon for black listeners from its beginning in 1956, establishing itself as a source for music, updates and community that African Americans in Little Rock - and across the state - couldn’t get anywhere else, particularly in the limited media landscape for black listeners in the mid-20th century. ![]() “To see what was able to happen with KOKY, at that event, it kinda shows that to say that people don’t care about the past is not right,” Booker said. An infamous Easter broadcast story in which eggs, hidden the night before at MacArthur Park, were all stolen, was shared with great laughter and affection, and the echo from attendees was one of recognition. Eight people sat shoulder to shoulder on the stage at CALS Ron Robinson Theater, where they paid tribute to mentors, beloved radio voices and their memories - some long buried - of lifetimes passed listening to and working at KOKY in its different iterations. 22, bringing together DJs from its earliest days, former program hosts, devoted listeners and current personalities. KOKY celebrated its legacy at a Central Arkansas Library System/Arkansas Sounds event Feb. Another user commented that they “grew up on the blues on KOKY,” while another person says they viewed it as “our only real radio.” An old slogan, as remembered by one listener, went: “Everything’s okee-dokee at KOKY.” Commenters say, too, that tuning in was a balancing act in and of itself: “You had to get the line just right on your radio dial to prevent static.” The baddest sound in town,” wrote one user. A recent Facebook post in the group “Remember in Little Rock” by KOKY Program Assistant Kimberly Armstrong-Smith received 82 comments with nuggets of history. ![]() Now, KOKY carries forward its legacy as Arkansas’s first radio dedicated to all-black programming and an Urban Heritage station, broadcasting as a city-grade station with an effective radiated power (ERP) of 4,100 watts.Īdvertisement Brian Chilson REVIVED FROM THE ARCHIVES: After KOKY’s hiatus, “Broadway Joe” Booker tracked down the original call letters for the station’s rebirth on New Year’s Day in 1998.Īsk folks who came of age from the late ’50s to the ’90s in Little Rock about KOKY, and memories flow. ![]() KOKY began airing again on New Year’s Day 1998, a revival marking both a slight deviation from its AM past and a kind of homecoming. KOKY formally returned to 102.1 FM when Citadel purchased the rights to the call letters and revived them from their place among the discarded. He was adamant about finding where the letters were being used and resorted to lots of digging, with the help of a lawyer, to trace them.Įventually, those discarded call letters were found, unclaimed, in a so-called “dead letters” file, abandoned and forgotten after the gospel station went off the air. So when Citadel Broadcasting decided in the ’90s to revive its Urban Adult Contemporary presence on a new frequency, longtime radio presence and director of programming at Cumulus Little Rock “Broadway” Joe Booker said he felt that the KOKY letters “would be perfect” as a marker everybody knew and loved. KOKY did disappear for a number of years in the 1980s after its call letters were bought and used by a Sherwood gospel station. ![]()
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