Photograph courtesy of Indiana University; Jack Gibson Collection
From Black-owned financial institutions and restaurants to Ebenezer Baptist Church, the NAACP, and the legendary Royal Peacock nightclub, Atlanta’s Black history makers have always made their way to Auburn Avenue. So it should be no surprise that, tucked away in a small brick building on that iconic street, is the site of the first Black-owned radio station in the United States, WERD.
WERD was purchased by Jesse B. Blayton Sr., Georgia’s first Black certified public accountant, in 1949 for $50,000. Blayton, who was also a bank president and professor at Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University), then hired his son, Jesse B. Blayton Jr., to work as the station manager.
“One thing that’s not talked about a lot is, originally,…
