[1] In September 1946, the Publix Broadcasting Service of Charlotte, Inc., owned by Francis Marion Fitzgerald, a progressive White man, made a request to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to open a general radio station.
Fitzgerald exploited this fact to propose the concept of a radio devoted to the Charlotte's black community, an unprecedented and bold idea.
[2] The major reason he chose this format was because there was no prior radio focused on the African American market, which made it a financial opportunity.
In the 1960s, WBT and WGIV were often paired as the driving force from Charlotte, North Carolina editorializing on the race issue that had become prevalent in the area.
Program director Pete "Hound Dawg" Toomey, "Hot Scott" Hubbs and "Little Joe" Wilson were white DJs.
[2] The making of the WGIV was an important part of Charlotte's transition to a non-racist region, and Fitzgerald foresaw this as something that would be greatly appreciated by people.
This enabled Fitzgerald full power over the structure and running of WGIV, and he was indeed free to fulfill his vision of integrating Black and White listeners through his station.
It allowed listeners to be exposed to genres easily associated with opposing races, and also ensured that a major portion of White youths in the region continued to make up the WGIV market as its focus slowly shifted to the Black community.
Leeper stated in an interview that they "all did everything together, the blacks and whites at the station" and that their office family was so well integrated that the ongoing rage against the Jim Crow segregation laws was "Greek to them".
Leeper stated that deejays sounded polished and spoke with good diction, irrespective of their race, both characteristics not associated with the stereotypical Black vernacularism of the time.
[6] In the midst of their struggle to be identified as equal in society by the White counterparts, the African Americans were susceptible to comments and speeches that spoke against them.
In July 1953, Fitzgerald was formally recognized by St. Paul's Baptist Church in Charlotte for his "excellent exemplification of unbiased citizenship and high Christian ideals" in his altruistic attempts to integrate African Americans and Whites in the community.
Fitzgerald and Potts maintained an extremely close friendship and the former never failed to publicly celebrate the latter, also WGIV's star attraction in its prime.
[7] Beyond tackling the identity issue that the Blacks were facing, Fitzgerald and WGIV gave rise to empowering Charlotte's African American Community in multiple ways.
[8] In the late 1960s, amidst an atmosphere of rising Black power, many young African Americans in Charlotte became skeptical of WGIV's stated ethos of biracial cooperation.
Later that year, BPI also purchased Gastonia-licensed WCKZ from the Beasley Broadcast Group and launched a current-based urban AC format under the calls WBAV-FM to that frequency in January 1994.
[13] In May 1997, due to low ratings, WBAV changed formats to Urban contemporary gospel and re-adopted the WGIV call letters on May 23.