WRVR Riverside Radio: A Pioneering Noncommercial Station

• Alford, Wallace Wayne. “A Force for Education: The National Association of Educational Broadcasters, 1954-1965.” PhD diss., George Peabody College for Teachers, 1965.

• Berg, Beatrice. “Let’s Not Burn, Baby, Burn, Let’s Talk, Baby, Talk.” New York Times. April 6, 1969, 176.

• “Beyond Vietnam,” King Encyclopedia, The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Accessed July 11, 2022. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/beyond-vietnam

• Bowie, Robert R., et al. “Daedalus-on-the-Air.” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 16, no. 6 (1963): 5-6.

• Brisbin, Richard A. “The Conservatism of Antonin Scalia.” Political Science Quarterly 105, no. 1 (1990): 1-29.

• Citizens for Jazz on WRVR, Inc. v. FCC. 775 F.2d 392 (D.C. Cir. 1985).

• ”Citizens for Jazz to Protest WRVR Format Switch; Legal Challenge Weighed.” New York Times. September 23, 1980.

• Decker, Jeffrey Louis. “Saint Oprah.” Modern Fiction Studies 51, no. 1 (2006): 169-178.

• Dougherty, Kevin D. and Andrew L. Whitehead. “A Place to Belong: Small Group Involvement in Religious Congregations.” Sociology of Religion 72, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 91-111.

• Eisenberg, Evan. The Recording Angel: Music, Records, and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

• Engelman, Ralph. Public Radio and Television in America: A Political History. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1996.

• Evans, Christopher Hodge. The Social Gospel in American Religion: A History. New York: New York University Press, 2017.

• Fagen, Donald. Eminent Hipsters. New York: Penguin Books, 2014.

• Fairclough, Adam. “Martin Luther King, Jr. and the War in Vietnam.” Phylon 45, no. 1 (1984): 19-39.

• Ferré, John P. “Protestant Press Relations in the United States, 1900-1930.” Church History 62, no. 4 (December 1993): 514-527.

• Fosdick, Harry Emerson. “’Shall the Fundamentalists Win?’: Harry Emerson Fosdick and the First Presbyterian Church in New York.” The Journal of Presbyterian History 94, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 76-81.

• Fritz, Jose. “The Night Call Experiment.” Arcane Radio Trivia. June 3, 2011. Accessed July 11, 2022. https://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2011/06/night-call-experiment.html.

• Gent, George. “Radio ‘Night Call’ Aims at Ghettos.” New York Times. June 3, 1968, 89.

• Gould, Jack. “Church’s FM Station Will Accept Ads.” New York Times. February 18, 1971, 71.

• Gould, Jack. “Radio: Aural Picture of Racial Crisis: WRVR-FM and WBAI Cover Birmingham.” New York Times. June 10, 1963, 63.

• Gould, Jack. “Radio: ‘Just Jazz’ Just Fine.” New York Times. May 11, 1964, 63.

• Hangen, Tona J. Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America, 1920-1960. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

• Harker, Brian. Jazz: An American Journey. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2004.

• Harmon, Francis S. “Testimony Before the Federal Communications Commission, in Re: Application of The Riverside Church in the City of New York.” 1958. Docket Number 12107, File Number BPH-2174. Riverside Church Archives, Folder 797/04.

• Harvey, Charles E. “John D. Rockefeller, and the Interchurch World Movement of 1919-1920: A Different Angle on the Ecumenical Movement.” Church History 51, no. 2 (June 1982): 198-209.

• Herman W. Land Associates. “The Hidden Medium: A Status Report on Educational Radio in the United States, 1967.” Current. April 1, 1967.

• Hudnut-Beumler, James. “The Riverside Church and the Development of Twentieth-Century Protestantism.” In Peter J. Paris, et al. The History of the Riverside Church in the City of New York (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 7-54.

• Huh, Do-Hwa. “Ernest T. Campbell: Prophetic Preaching in the 1960s.” PhD diss., Drew University, 1998.

• Keepnews, Peter. “Rev. Norman J. O’Connor, 81, ‘Jazz Priest.’” New York Times. July 6, 2003, N21.

• “Jack Summerfield Resigns as Manager of WRVR.” New York Times. June 29, 1968, 18.

• “Jazz Priest Gets Paulist Position.” New York Times. November 17, 1962, 17.

• Johnson, Aaron Joseph. “Jazz and Radio in the United States: Mediation, Genre, and Patronage.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2014.

• Lechtreck, Elaine Allen. “’We Are Demanding $500 Million for Reparations’: The Black Manifesto, Mainline Religious Denominations, and Black Economic Development.” The Journal of African American History 97, no. 1-2 (2012): 39-71.

• Lecky, Robert S. and H. Elliott Wright. The Black Manifesto: Religion, Racism, and Reparations. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1969.

• Lubasch, Arnold H. “Pastor at Riverside Pledges a Fund for the Poor.” New York Times. May 11, 1969, 40.

• McCauley, Michael. NPR: The Trials and Triumphs of National Public Radio. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

• Miller, Robert Moats. Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

• Monson, Ingrid. Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Our to Jazz and Africa. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

• Murchison, Gayle. “Mary Lou Williams’s Hymn Black Christ of the Andes (St. Martin de Porres): Vatican II, Civil Rights, and Jazz as Sacred Music.” The Musical Quarterly 86, no. 4 (2002): 591-629.

• “Night Call 1968-1969.” SoundTheology. Accessed July 11, 2022. https://soundtheology.org/night-call-1968-69/.

• Perkinson, Jim. “Rage with a Purpose, Weep Without Regret: A White Theology of Solidarity.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 82, no. 3-4 (1999): 437-463.

• “Platter Spinner Patter.” Cash Box. December 14, 1968, 32.

• "Radical Politics: The Far Right.” In 1960-1969, edited by Judith S. Baughman, Victor Bondi, Richard Layman, Tandy McConnell, and Vincent Tompkins, Vol. 7 of American Decades. Detroit, MI: Gale, 2001). Accessed July 11, 2022.

• Rhebergen, Marianne Okkema Rhebergen. “’A Lover’s Quarrel’: The American Jeremiad in Twentieth Century Mainline Protestant Preaching at the Riverside Church in the City of New York, 1930-1987.” PhD diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 2002).

• Rightmire, Roderick D. “Riverside Radio WRVR: The History and Development of a Church-Owned Radio Station.” M.A. Thesis, Boston University, 1962.

• “Riverside Church Will Give $150,000 a Year to the Poor.” New York Times. March 2, 1970, 41.

• Robinson, Haddon William. “A Study of the Audience for Religious Radio and Television Broadcasts in Seven Cities Throughout the United States.” PhD diss., University of Illinois, 1964.

• Schuller, Gunther. Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.

• Shelton, Robert. “Folk Music Heard on 12-Hour Show: WRVR-FM Program Marks Start of ‘Live’ Project.” New York Times. July 31, 1961, 15.

• Somerville, Rose M. “New Materials for Study of the Family.” Journal of Marriage and Family 28, no. 3 (1966): 364-374.

• Sousa, William Noel. “The White Christian Churches’ Response to the Black Manifesto.” M.A. Thesis, University of the Pacific, 1973.

• Stebbins, Gene R. “Listener-Sponsored Radio: The Pacifica Stations.” PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1969.

• Steinman, Michael. “What Ed Beach Gave Us.” Jazz Lives. January 6, 2010. Accessed July 11, 2022. https://jazzlives.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/what-ed-beach-gave-us/.

• Summerfield, Jack D. “A Report on WRVR by Jack D. Summerfield to the Spring Meeting of the New York State Educational Radio-Television Association.” April 1962. Riverside Church Archives, Folder 795/16.

• Summerfield, Jack D. “Jack D. Summerfield Oral History.” Public Radio Oral History Project. July 27, 1978. WGBH Archives.

• “Two New York Clergymen Run Jazz Show.” The Chicago Defender. December 8, 1962, 10.

• Voy, Eckard J., Jr. “The Right Side of the 1960s: The Origins of the John Birch Society in the Pacific Northwest.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 105, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 260-283.

• Ward, Mark, Sr. Air of Salvation: The Story of Christian Broadcasting. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994.

• Weisenfeld, Judith. “Universal in Spirit, Local in Character: The Riverside Church and New York City.” In Peter J. Paris, et al. The History of the Riverside Church in the City of New York (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 179-240.

• Wicklein, John. “Riverside Radio: New FM Station Offers Varied Programs.” New York Times. January 1, 1961, X11.

• “Worlds of Religion and Jazz Meet on New Radio Program.” Call and Post (Cleveland, OH). April 27, 1963, 6C.

• ”WRVR Names General Manager, Shifts Policy.” New York Amsterdam News. June 19, 1971, 23.

• ”WRVR Will Switch to a New Format.” New York Times. June 9. 1971, 87.

• ”WRVR-FM Wins Peabody.” New York Amsterdam News. May 1, 1965, 23.

Notes

¹ James Hudnut-Beumler, “The Riverside Church and the Development of Twentieth-Century American Protestantism,” in Peter J. Paris, et al., The History of the Riverside Church in the City of New York (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 7, 21.

² Harry Emerson Fosdick, “’Shall the Fundamentalists Win?’: Harry Emerson Fosdick and the First Presbyterian Church in New York,” The Journal of Presbyterian History 94, no. 2 (Fall 1994): 76-81; John P. Ferré, “Protestant Press Relations in the United States, 1900-1930,” Church History 62, no. 4 (Dec. 1993): 514-527; Charles E. Harvey, “John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Interchurch Movement of 1919-1920: A Different Angle on the Ecumenical Movement,” Church History 51, no. 2 (Jun. 1982): 198-209.

³ Roderick D. Rightmire, “Riverside Radio WRVR: The History and Development of a Church-Owned Radio Station” (master’s thesis, Boston University 1962), 8.

⁴ Rightmire, “Riverside Radio WRVR,” 31.

⁵ Francis S. Harmon, Testimony Before the Federal Communications Commission, in Re: Application of The Riverside Church in the City of New York (1958), 22-24. Docket Number 12107, File Number BPH-2174. Riverside Church Archives, Folder 797/04.

⁶ Rightmire, “Riverside Radio WRVR,” 11-14; Harmon, FCC Testimony, 23.

⁷ Rightmire, “Riverside Radio WRVR,” 15-16.

⁸ WRVR New York Fine Arts Guide, November 1961, 3.

⁹ Rightmire, “Riverside Radio WRVR,” 2; John Wicklein, “Riverside Radio: New FM Station Offers Varied Programs,” New York Times, January 1, 1961, X11.

¹⁰ Rightmire, “Riverside Radio WRVR,” 70.

¹¹ Wicklein, “Riverside Radio.”

¹² Robert McCracken, “Open Letter,” WRVR New York Fine Arts Guide, March 1961, 2.

¹³ Gene R. Stebbins, “Listener-Sponsored Radio: The Pacifica Stations” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1969), 6.

¹⁴ “WRVR-FM Wins Peabody,” New York Amsterdam News, May 1, 1965, 23.

¹⁵ Jack D. Summerfield, “A Report on WRVR by Jack D. Summerfield to the Spring Meeting of the New York State Educational Radio-Television Association” (April 1962), Riverside Church Archives, Folder 795/16.

¹⁶ WRVR New York Fine Arts Guide, December 1961, 5-6.

¹⁷ Minutes, Special FM Committee, 5 December 1960, 3, Riverside Church Archives, Folder 795/16.

¹⁸ WRVR New York Fine Arts Guide, October 1961, 3-4.

¹⁹ WRVR New York Fine Arts Guide, December 1961, 19.

²⁰ Rightmire, “Riverside Radio WRVR,” 83.

²¹ Herman W. Land Associates, “The Hidden Medium: A Status Report on Educational Radio in the United States, 1967,” Current, April 1, 1967.

²² Minutes, Special FM Committee, 14 December 1965, 2, Riverside Church Archives, Folder 795/17.

²³ “Jack Summerfield Resigns as Manager of WRVR,” New York Times, June 29, 1968, 18.

²⁴ Jack D. Summerfield Oral History, Public Radio Oral History Project, 27 July 1978, WGBH Archives, 9; “Night Call 1968-1969,” SoundTheology, https://soundtheology.org/night-call-1968-69/.

²⁵ Summerfield, “A Report on WRVR,” 2.

²⁶ Minutes, Special FM Committee, 23 January 1966, Riverside Church Archives, Folder 795/17.

²⁷ For example, the Babbott Foundation. See Minutes, Special FM Committee, 13 October 1964, Riverside Church Archives, Folder 795/17.

²⁸ Minutes, Special FM Committee, 14 December 1965, Riverside Church Archives, Folder 795/17.

²⁹ Summerfield Oral History, 15.

³⁰ Jack Gould, “Church’s FM Station Will Accept Ads,” New York Times, February 18, 1971, 71.

³¹ “WRVR Will Switch to a New Format,” New York Times, June 9, 1971, 87; “WRVR Names General Manager, Shifts Policy,” New York Amsterdam News, June 19, 1971, 23.

³² Judith Weisenfeld, “Universal in Spirit, Local in Character: The Riverside Church and New York City,” in Peter J. Paris, et al., The History of the Riverside Church in the City of New York (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 214.

³³ Weisenfeld, “Universal in Spirit,” 214-15.

³⁴ “Citizens for Jazz to Protest WRVR Format Switch; Legal Challenge Weighed,” New York Times, September 23, 1980; Citizens for Jazz on WRVR, Inc. v. FCC, 775 F.2d 392 (D.C. Cir. 1985); Richard A. Brisbin, “The Conservatism of Antonin Scalia,” Political Science Quarterly 105, no. 1 (1990): 1-29.

³⁵ Ralph Engelman, Public Radio and Television in America: A Political History (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1996), 24.

³⁶ Engelman, Public Radio and Television in America, 48, 83.

³⁷ Engelman, Public Radio and Television in America, 84.

³⁸ Land Associates, “The Hidden Medium”; Michael McCauley, NPR: The Trials and Triumphs of National Public Radio (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).

³⁹ Summerfield Oral History, 11.

⁴⁰ Weisenfeld, “Universal in Spirit,” 216.

⁴¹ McCauley, NPR; Land Associates, “The Hidden Medium”; Summerfield Oral History, 8; Engelman, Public Radio and Television in America, 87-88.

⁴² Wallace Wayne Alford, “A Force for Education: the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, 1954-1965” (PhD diss., George Peabody College for Teachers,1965), 178; Haddon William Robinson, “A Study of the Audience for Religious Radio and Television Broadcasts in Seven Cities Throughout the United States” (PhD diss., University of Illinois 1964), 4.

⁴³ Mark Ward, Sr., Air of Salvation: The Story of Christian Broadcasting (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994); Tona J. Hangen, Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America, 1920-1960 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

⁴⁴ WRVR New York Fine Arts Guide, November 1961, 3.

⁴⁵ Rightmire, “Riverside Radio WRVR,” 94.

⁴⁶ Robert Moats Miller, Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

⁴⁷ Christopher Hodge Evans, The Social Gospel in American Religion: A History (New York: New York University Press, 2017); Marianne Okkema Rhebergen, “‘A Lover’s Quarrel’: The American Jeremiad in Twentieth Century Mainline Protestant Preaching at the Riverside Church in the City of New York, 1930-1987” (PhD diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 2002); Hudnut-Beumler, “The Riverside Church and the Development of Twentieth-Century American Protestantism.”

⁴⁸ Kevin D. Dougherty and Andrew L. Whitehead, “A Place to Belong: Small Group Involvement in Religious Congregations.” Sociology of Religion 72, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 91-111.

⁴⁹ WRVR New York Fine Arts Guide, November 1961, 5.

⁵⁰ Minutes, Special FM Committee, 15 May 1962, Riverside Church Archives, Folder 795/16.

⁵¹ Minutes, Special FM Committee, 1 November 1962, 2, Riverside Church Archives, Folder 795/16.

⁵² For example, see a recording from the station’s Listen! series (posted on the website of WNYC, but produced at WRVR) of a thirty-minute taxi ride in September 1963 to visit the construction site of the future 1964 World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows: https://www.wnyc.org/story/288519-worlds-fair-sound/.

⁵³ Jeffrey Louis Decker, “Saint Oprah,” Modern Fiction Studies 52, no. 1 (2006): 169-78; Jose Fritz, “The Night Call Experiment,” Arcane Radio Trivia, June 3, 2011, https://tenwatts.blogspot.com/2011/06/night-call-experiment.html; Beatrice Berg, “Let’s Not Burn, Baby, Burn, Let’s Talk, Baby, Talk.” New York Times, April 6, 1969, 176; George Gent, “Radio ‘Night Call’ Aims at Ghettos,” New York Times, June 3, 1968, 89.

⁵⁴ For example, WRVR partnered with United Nations Radio and the Voice of America to record a show called “Voice of UNESCO,” described as “unrehearsed interviews with the personalities who carry out UNESCO’s work in education, science, and culture.” See WRVR New York Fine Arts Guide, January 1961, 7.

⁵⁵ Rose M. Somerville, “New Materials for Study of the Family.” Journal of Marriage and Family 28, no. 3 (1966): 366.

⁵⁶ Eckard J. Voy, Jr., “The Right Side of the 1960s: The Origins of the John Birch Society in the Pacific Northwest,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 105, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 260-283; "Radical Politics: The Far Right," in 1960-1969, edited by Judith S. Baughman, Victor Bondi, Richard Layman, Tandy McConnell, and Vincent Tompkins, Vol. 7 of American Decades (Detroit, MI: Gale, 2001).

⁵⁷ Robert R. Bowie, et al, “Daedalus-on-the-Air,” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 16, no. 6 (1963): 5-6; “Dimensions of a New Age” series on space science produced at the University of Texas, see WRVR New York Fine Arts Guide, January 1961, 25.

⁵⁸ “The Hispanic Voice of Riverside,” WRVR New York Fine Arts Guide, April 1961, 6-13; Rightmire, “Riverside Radio WRVR,” 100-101.

⁵⁹ Rightmire, “Riverside Radio WRVR,” 96-97.

⁶⁰ Minutes, Special FM Committee, 17 June 1963, p. 1, Folder 795/16, Riverside Church Archives.

⁶¹ Jack Gould, “Radio: Aural Picture of Racial Crisis: WRVR-FM and WBAI Cover Birmingham,” New York Times, June 10, 1963, 63.

⁶² Alford, “A Force for Education,” 323.

⁶³ Adam Fairclough, “Martin Luther King, Jr., and the War in Vietnam,” Phylon 45, no. 1 (1984): 19-39; “Beyond Vietnam,” King Encyclopedia, The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Accessed July 11, 2022, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/beyond-vietnam.

⁶⁴ William Noel Sousa, “The White Christian Churches’ Response to the Black Manifesto” (master s thesis, University of the Pacific, 1973), 5-8.

⁶⁵ Elaine Allen Lechtreck, “’We Are Demanding $500 Million for Reparations’: The Black Manifesto, Mainline Religious Denominations, and Black Economic Development,” The Journal of African American History 97, no. 1-2 (2012), 47.

⁶⁶ Lechtreck, “We Are Demanding,” 48.

⁶⁷ Arnold H. Lubasch, “Pastor at Riverside Pledges a Fund for the Poor,” New York Times, May 11, 1969, 40.

⁶⁸ Lechtreck, “We Are Demanding,” 50. See also Ernest Campbell, “What Shall Our Response Be? Riverside Speaks First,” in Robert S. Lecky and H. Elliott Wright, The Black Manifesto: Religion, Racism, and Reparations (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1969), 127-132.

⁶⁹ Do-Hwa Huh, Ernest T. Campbell: Prophetic Preaching in the 1960s (PhD diss., Drew University, 1998); “Riverside Church will Give $150,000 a Year to the Poor,” New York Times, March 2, 1970, 41.

⁷⁰ Jim Perkinson, “Rage with a Purpose, Weep without Regret: A White Theology of Solidarity,” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 82, no. 3-4 (1999): 447.

⁷¹ Sousa, “The White Christian Churches’ Response”; Lechtreck, “We Are Demanding”; Perkinson, “Rage with a Purpose,” 447.

⁷² Summerfield Oral History, 22.

⁷³ WRVR New York Fine Arts Guide, January 1961, p. 20; WRVR New York Fine Arts Guide, April 1961, p. 26.

⁷⁴ Robert Shelton, “Folk Music Heard on 12-Hour Show: WRVR-FM Program Marks Start of ‘Live’ Project,” New York Times, July 31, 1961, 15.

⁷⁵ “Platter Spinner Patter,” Cash Box, December 14, 1968, 32.

⁷⁶ Evan Eisenberg, The Recording Angel: Music, Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 70.

⁷⁷ Ingrid Monson, Freedom Sounds: Civil Rights Call Out to Jazz and Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 91; see also Brian Harker, Jazz: An American Journey (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2004), 340.

⁷⁸ “More Jazz,” WRVR New York Fine Arts Guide, February 1961, 19.

⁷⁹ “Jazz Priest Gets Paulist Position,” New York Times, November 17, 1962, 17; Gayle Murchison, “Mary Lou Williams’s Hymn Black Christ of the Andes (St. Martin de Porres): Vatican II, Civil Rights, and Jazz as Sacred Music,” The Musical Quarterly 86, no. 4 (2002): 624; Peter Keepnews, “Rev. Norman J. O’Connor, 81, ‘Jazz Priest,’” New York Times, July 6, 2003, N21; “Worlds of Religion and Jazz Meet on New Radio Program,” Call and Post (Cleveland, Ohio), April 27, 1963, 6C; “Two New York Clergymen Run Jazz Show,” The Chicago Defender, December 8, 1962, 10.

⁸⁰ Jack Gould, “Radio: ‘Just Jazz’ Just Fine,” New York Times, May 11, 1964, 63; Donald Fagen, Eminent Hipsters (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 55-56.

⁸¹ Michael Steinman, “What Ed Beach Gave Us,” Jazz Lives, January 6, 2010, https://jazzlives.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/what-ed-beach-gave-us/.

⁸² Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968).

⁸³ Citizens for Jazz on WRVR; “Citizens for Jazz to Protest WRVR Format Switch”; Aaron Joseph Johnson, “Jazz and Radio in the United States: Mediation, Genre, and Patronage” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2014), 428.

⁸⁴ Johnson, “Jazz and Radio in the United States,” 54-55.