Photo Credit: Yasmin Amir

Did You Know?: Jesse B. Blayton, a bank president and professor, a radio station for $50,000 for a in 1949. With the purchase, WERD became the country's first African American-owned and run station, as well as a key part of Atlanta's expanding civil rights movement. The station was famed for being headquartered in the same building as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and as such, it naturally provided a platform for SCLC founder and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. When Dr. King wanted to make a statement over the radio, he would strike the first-floor ceiling with a broomstick, leading Gibson to lower a microphone through a window from the second story to one below, which would be used to broadcast the message.