“On Fire with Hope”: African American Classical Musicians, Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour, and the Hope for a Colour-Blind Radio

Abstract

Amateur talent shows were among the most popular programs on mid-1930s network radio, but for African Americans they had an importance that went beyond entertainment. These shows attracted considerable attention in the black press and from black audiences because they held out the promise of escape from the constraints of Jim Crow into a colour-blind national public sphere. This article explores the participation of African American performers on the most popular of the radio amateur shows, Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour. It focusses particularly on two black classical performers on the Amateur Hour – singers Otis Holley and La Julia Rhea – contrasting their success on the radio show with the obstacles they encountered in the segregated world outside the studio. Radio did stimulate hope about the possibility of a race-free sound world, a new sense that such a thing could be possible. That the first generation to test the idea – gifted performers such as Holley and Rhea – often failed to translate radio success into mainstream acceptance, should not lead us to neglect the increase in hope that the early mass media provoked among African Americans.