Join me on Women’s Voices at 7:00 PM Pacific Time Monday January 31 on KZYX for an interview with Belva Davis, author of Never in My Wildest Dreams, A Black Woman’s Life in Journalism. Ms. Davis was the first black female television journalist in the western United States. A reporter for nearly five decades, Davis was born to a fifteen-year-old Louisiana laundress during the Great Depression, and raised in the projects of Oakland, CA. She suffered abuse, battled rejection, and persevered to achieve a career beyond her imagination.
“No people can say they understand the times in which they have lived unless they have read this book” –Dr. Maya Angelou
“Belva Davis has lived this country’s history as only a brave black woman could, and has witnessed it as a journalist with a world-class head and heart,” noted feminist leader Gloria Steinem. “I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to read her words in Never in My Wildest Dreams without becoming a better and braver person.” The memoir, written with award-winning journalist Vicki Haddock and published by PoliPoint Press, reminds us all never to fear the space between reality and our dreams.
Here’s an excerpt from Belva Davis’s website:
Never in My Wildest Dreams is a book about courage and achievement from pioneering journalist Belva Davis, who helped to change the face and focus of TV news. When Davis started her journalism career, the major media outlets were largely closed to African Americans and female reporters. In the earliest part of her career, she worked for black newspapers and black-programmed radio stations. In 1966, when, racial barriers began to fall, she became the first black woman hired as a television news reporter in the western United States.
Many of the explosive stories of the ‘60s ’70s and ’80s intersected with her private life. She spent months covering campus demonstrations, anti-Vietnam war protests and the rise of the Black Panthers. She married William Moore, who became the first black television news photographer at a commercial station in California – at one point each of them had station-issued gas masks to protect them during the protests. As she covered the kidnapping ordeal of heiress Patty Hearst, police informed her that white supremacists were threatening to abduct her own daughter. When she reported a series about alleged police misconduct, her son was mysteriously arrested. The family housekeeper turned out to be a likely spy on behalf of the Rev. Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple. And her daughter worked in San Francisco’s City Hall and was there the day Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated.
Never in My Wildest Dreams also covers Davis’ years of reporting on the AIDS epidemic, stories of her travels to Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro, and travels to Kenya and Tanzania after the bombing of U.S. embassies in those countries. With honesty and openness, she talks about the difficulty of managing her family and professional career, while quietly fighting racism and sexism. Along the way she held fast to her dream and changed the perception of who should and could be a good television news reporter. Join me on Women’s Voices–this should be a fascinating interview. 
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Tune in to Women’s Voices at 7:00 PM Pacific Time on KZYX Monday May 16 for an interview with two filmmakers, Emmy award winning Dayna Goldfine, and Jen McGowan who will screen films at the upcoming Mendocino Film Festival June 3-5. I’ve just taped an interview with Dayna, who has, with her husband Dan Geller, been making documentary films for more than 25 years, including Ballets Russes (available on Netflix, by the way) and Isadora Duncan: Movement from the Soul as well as several other award winning documentaries. Something Ventured, the Geller/Goldfine film to be shown at 2 PM Saturday, June 4 at the festival, is a fascinating, quirky weaving of the stories of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs from the 1950s to the 1970s, and follows their stories into the present, with insightful, revealing, and often funny interviews. In spite of egos, personalities, and enormous risk, the people in these films intrepidly created companies like Apple, Cisco Systems, Atari, Genentech and other icons of our day. This film is fascinating and fast paced – and one of the reasons I love the documentary form. Can hardly wait to see more of their films.
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