Join Us on Tuesday, February 13, 2024, at 7 PM, at the Greece Central School District’s Transportation & Support Services Building, 1790 Latta Road, for a program on the History of WDKX the first and only African-American-owned station in Rochester, New York. The station was founded by Andrew Langston. Andre Langston & Andria B. Langston are the current owners of the radio station. The reason they chose the call sign WDKX is an acronym for and keeping with its urban contemporary format used the call letters to honor African-American Heros and one of them was a Rochesterian at the time of their death;
Wstands for radio stations located east of the Mississippi River
Dstands for Frederick Douglass
Kstands for Martin Luther King, Jr.
Xstands for Malcolm X
WDKX uses an 800-watt transmitter to broadcast its radio station. The station went live on April 6, 1974, at 5:30 AM and has been broadcasting 24/7 ever since. WDKX is one of only two remaining Urban stations in New York State.
The Station received the first-ever Pioneer Award from the Rochester Radio Broadcasters Hall of Fame, Andrew A. Langston, founder, owner, and general manager of 103.9 WDKX FM, was among the inaugural inductees into the New York State Broadcasters Associations Hall of Fame in June 2014.
Andrew A. Langston, Founder, Owner, and General Manager of 103.9 WDKX
Andrew Langston died in 2010 at the age of 82. His son, Andre Langston, continues to operate the station as the current general manager and is our scheduled speaker.
Other Locations WDKX was featured or mentioned in:
mentioned on “Super Hoe” Boogie Down Productions Criminal Minded 1987
VH1 Hip Hop Honors 2005
Hart of the City in 2019 (Season 3, Episode 5) which was produced by Kevin Hart and Joey Wells in Episode 5 of Season 3 featured three African-American comedians from Rochester, New York, Joel Jones, Travis Blunt, and Zack Johnson, and was filmed at Photo City Improv & Comedy Club / Photo City Music Hall on the corner of Atlantic Ave and Culver Road.
The station has a wide-ranging playlist, from classic soul to current hip hop/R&B.
In November, 2023, Marie Poinan did a program at the Charlotte Library on the history of the Charlotte ferries and their operators. She caught my attention when she mentioned that one of the first ferry operators was Ralph Francis, a black man about whom little has been documented. I was intrigued – a person of color operating a boat at the port of Charlotte during the turbulent decade between the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the Civil War? Could he have been involved in the Underground Railroad? Since I was preparing a program on the UGRR(Underground Railroad), I started researching Ralph Francis.
For every well-known conductor and stationmaster such as Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, there were dozens more men and women who remain unknown or about whom there is little information. Out of necessity, secrecy was the very essence of the UGRR. Those who helped enslaved people on the run faced serious consequences if they were caught; they could be fined thousands of dollars and/or imprisoned for many years. Therefore, very few kept written records or any kind of documentation, making it difficult for historians to verify with any certainty the people involved in the network.
Between 1850 and the beginning of the Civil War, almost 150 enslaved people passed through the Rochester area each year on their way to Canada. Two of the “Railroad” lines led to Greece, either at Kelsey’s Landing near the lower falls or the port at the mouth of the Genesee River in Charlotte; at that time both were located in the Town of Greece. Ralph Francis had a hotel at Kelsey’s Landing and then a tavern at Charlotte during that time. Coincidence? Perhaps. However, Francis had a history of activism.
Born in New Jersey circa 1811, Francis was living in Rochester by 1840 and according to the 1850 census he lived on Greig Street (or Greig Ally) in the Third Ward, where the majority of free people of color resided. He was a barber and with Benjamin Cleggett operated Francis & Cleggett Barber Shop, one of several shops owned by abolitionists, both black and white, in the Reynolds Arcade. Frederick Douglass’ North Star office was across the street to the south and the Eagle Hotel, where people could get the stagecoach to Charlotte, across the street on the west.
In 1843 Francis helped Douglass organize a four-day conference on black suffrage in New York State and in 1846 he was a main speaker at a second conference. There were two letters to the editor published in the Daily Democrat in which he advocated for the right to vote for all black men. At that time free black men who owned $250 worth of property could vote in New York State; Ralph Francis easily qualified with holdings worth $2,000. In the early 1850s he worked to get Rochester’s city schools desegregated.
To my mind it makes sense that he was engaged in getting enslaved people to Canada. Canadian vessels had a major commercial presence at both Kelsey’s Landing and the Port of Charlotte. When his former business partner Cleggett died in 1917, his obituary in the Democrat & Chronicle stated that he was likely involved in the UGRR.
Port of Charlotte 1856
Notice in the Daily Democrat, June 14, 1854
Francis disappeared from the Rochester landscape circa 1855. He was gone from Charlotte less than a year after opening his saloon there. Both of his parents and his nine-year-old nephew, all who resided with him, died in 1854. A bathhouse that he erected at the beach in July of 1854 was burned down by an arsonist in August. Marie Poinan used her genealogy expertise and found him living in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. Was that arson a warning? Was someone about to turn him into the authorities for violating the Fugitive Slave Act, causing him to flee to Canada? We may never know, but I’ll keep looking, hoping to find out more about him.
Join Us on Tuesday, February 13, 2024, at 7 PM, at the Greece Central School District’s Transportation & Support Services Building, 1790 Latta Road, for a program on the History of WDKX the first and only African-American-owned station in Rochester, New York. The station was founded by Andrew Langston. Andre Langston & Andria B. Langston are the current owners of the radio station. The reason they chose the call sign WDKX is an acronym for and keeping with its urban contemporary format used the call letters to honor African-American Heros and one of them was a Rochesterian at the time of their death;
Wstands for radio stations located east of the Mississippi River
Dstands for Frederick Douglass
Kstands for Martin Luther King, Jr.
Xstands for Malcolm X
WDKX uses an 800-watt transmitter to broadcast its radio station. The station went live on April 6, 1974, at 5:30 AM and has been broadcasting 24/7 ever since. WDKX is one of only two remaining Urban stations in New York State.
The Station received the first-ever Pioneer Award from the Rochester Radio Broadcasters Hall of Fame, Andrew A. Langston, founder, owner, and general manager of 103.9 WDKX FM, was among the inaugural inductees into the New York State Broadcasters Associations Hall of Fame in June 2014.
Andrew A. Langston, Founder, Owner, and General Manager of 103.9 WDKX
Andrew Langston died in 2010 at the age of 82. His son, Andre Langston, continues to operate the station as the current general manager and is our scheduled speaker.
Other Locations WDKX was featured or mentioned in:
mentioned on “Super Hoe” Boogie Down Productions Criminal Minded 1987
VH1 Hip Hop Honors 2005
Hart of the City in 2019 (Season 3, Episode 5) which was produced by Kevin Hart and Joey Wells in Episode 5 of Season 3 featured three African-American comedians from Rochester, New York, Joel Jones, Travis Blunt, and Zack Johnson, and was filmed at Photo City Improv & Comedy Club / Photo City Music Hall on the corner of Atlantic Ave and Culver Road.
The station has a wide-ranging playlist, from classic soul to current hip hop/R&B.
Rochester’s monument to Frederick Douglass was the first in the country to honor an African American. Reverend Jackson will introduce a locally produced short film that tells the story of the monument and his vision to honor Douglass by relocating and illuminating the monument in its new location at Highland Park, and his efforts to rename the Rochester International Airport after Douglass. Additional discussion, along with a question-and-answer session, will follow.
The Reverend Julius David Jackson, Jr. (known as JD) is the pastor of the United Church of Pittsford. Besides his numerous awards for his fraternal and civic work, he has served on boards of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Greater Rochester Commission, Big Brother Big Sisters, the School of the Arts (SOTA), and AIDs Community Health Center. He is a graduate of RIT and holds a master’s degree in Divinity from Colgate Rochester Crozier Divinity School.
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