For her pioneering spirit as one of the first, and few, African American female broadcast station owners and a servant in her community, the Alabama Broadcasters Association is honored to induct Mildred Porter into its Hall of Fame.

“I’ve never been real big on the first black to do this or the first African American female to do that,” says Porter. “But I was told I was the first African American woman to own an FM station. I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, but I guess that was an accomplishment.”

Porter got her start in radio simply because she needed a job.

“I was reading the local paper one day and WALT had posted an opening for a midday announcer,” says Porter. “I’d never done radio, but I went in and applied for it. They didn’t give any qualifications for the job so when I got there and talked to Tim Craddock, the operations manager, I could read so I got the job.”

“She wanted to work and we needed someone,” says Tim Craddock. “We had gone through some other candidates – even some that had experience – but they just were not a good fit for us. Mildred was. She was a local person, and she just had the kind of personality that was warming to people. I felt like that personality would go over well on the radio and people responded.”

“It was quite an interesting job,” Porter says. “You actually talk to a lot of interesting people.  I was there for about four or five years, and then they had to fire me!”

“We were in a contractual agreement with another radio station out of Meridian and they started demanding more time,” explains Craddock. “But we knew that Jim Lawson needed someone to come and help him. We talked with Jim and got him to hire Mildred. So, she was basically hired before she was fired.”

While working with Lawson, Porter transitioned into operations and then sales.

“A client called the station, and he was livid and was going to cancel,” says Porter. “I talked him off the ledge and persuaded him to stay on and that’s how I got into sales.”

“Mildred was a good negotiator,” smiles Craddock. “One time I’d really lost my patience with this guy, and I was about ready to throw him out the door. She calmed me down, made him leave, and then she and I sat and talked. She helped me from probably doing something that I would have regretted.”

One of the things about which Porter is most proud is the impact her and Lawson’s stations had on a local high school.

There was a school here in Tuscaloosa for the black kids and they needed a new one,” Porter explains. “A wealthy developer wanted the property, but the community wanted to keep the school where it was because they made a lot of money when Alabama fans used it for parking.”

“Jim did a morning talk show, and that show was instrumental in uniting the community. It was a hard-fought battle for about three years, but we won. If it had not been for our stations keeping the fight going, we never would have accomplished that, and the community is much better off from it.”

Porter and Lawson sold the stations a couple of years ago, but the community remembers their contributions.

“If I had a just a penny for every time we’d be out somewhere and people will come up and tell us they miss that station … the station didn’t belong to us. It belonged to the community.”