Cathy Hughes (1947- )

December 13, 2011 
/ Contributed By: Malik Simba

Cathy Hughes|

Cathy Hughes

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Cathy Hughes is the founder and chairperson of Urban One, Inc. (previously known as Radio One), the largest African-American-owned and operated broadcast company in the nation. In 2011, the corporation owned 53 broadcast stations in 16 urban markets across the United States.ย  Urban One is the parent corporation of TV One, a partnership with Comcast, and Syndication One.ย ย  It is the media home of a number of radio personalities and programs popular in the African-American consumer market, including Rev. Al Sharpton, Yolanda Adams, Russ Parr, Rickey Smiley, Lonnie Hunter, and CoCo Brother. Urban One is the parent company of Reach Media, which is the home of the Tom Joyner Morning Show; Music One, which hosts Harpist Jeff Majors, and Interactive One, an online network that hosts Black Planet, NewsOne, and Hello Beautiful. Urban One, Inc. also markets and distributes CDs and DVDs. Urban One shares other firsts as well. It is the first African-American company in radio history to dominate several major markets simultaneously. It is also the first woman-owned radio station to rank #1 in any major market.

Catherine Elizabeth Woods was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on April 22, 1947, to Helen Jones Woods and William Alfred Woods, who was the first African-American to earn an accounting degree at Creighton University. Hughes moved to Washington, D.C., in 1971 and became a lecturer in the newly established School of Communications at Howard University. She entered radio in 1973 as the General Sales Manager at WHUR, the radio station of Howard University. ย While there, she increased the station’s revenue from $250,000 to $3 million in her first year.

In 1975, Hughes became the first woman vice president and general manager of a station in the nationโ€™s capital and created the format known as the โ€œQuiet Storm,โ€ which revolutionized urban radio and was aired on over 480 stations nationwide. Five years later, she purchased her first station, WOL-AM, in Washington, D.C.

After becoming the owner of WOL-AM, Hughes pioneered yet another innovative formatโ€”โ€œ24-hour Talk from a Black Perspective.โ€ With the theme, โ€œInformation is Power,โ€ Hughes served as the station’s morning show host for 11 years. WOL is still the most listened to talk radio station in the nationโ€™s capital.

Urban One is a publicly owned company trading under the stock ticker symbol, UONE. When Radio One became publicly traded in 1999, Hughes earned another first, the first African-American woman to chair a publicly held corporation.

Hughesโ€™ dedication to minority communities, entrepreneurial spirit, and mentoring of women are manifested in every aspect of her work and life. As such, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Washington Area Broadcasters Association and The Seventh Congressional District Humanitarian Award.

About the Author

Author Profile

Malik Simba received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Minnesota. He has held professorships in the departments of history at State University of New York at Binghamton and Clarion University in Pennsylvania. Presently, he is a senior professor and past chair of the History Department (2000-2003) at California State University-Fresno in California. Dr. Simba was awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1979, 1987, and 1990. He serves on the Board of the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program at California State University-Fresno.

Dr. Simba is the author of Black Marxism and American Constitutionalism: From the Colonial Background through the Ascendancy of Barack Obama and the Dilemma of Black Lives Matter (4th edition, 2019). He has contributed numerous entries in the Encyclopedia of African History, Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, W. E. B. Du Bois Encyclopedia, Malcolm X Encyclopedia, African American Encyclopedia, and the Historical Dictionary of Civil Rights. Additionally, Dr. Simba has published the definitive analysis of race and law using critical legal theory in his โ€œGong Lum v. Rice: The Convergence of Law, Race, and Ethnicityโ€ in American Mosaic. His essay, โ€œJoel Augustus Rogers: Negro Historians in History, Time, and Space,โ€ appeared in Afro-American in New York Life and History 30:2 (July 2006) as part of a Special Issue: โ€œStreet Scholars and Stepladder Radicals-A Harlem Tradition,โ€ Guest Editor, Ralph L. Crowder. The essays on Rogers contributes to our knowledge of street scholars or historians without portfolios. Dr. Simbaโ€™s other published works include book reviews in the Chicago Tribune, Focus on Law Studies, and the Journal of Southwest Georgia History.

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Simba, M. (2011, December 13). Cathy Hughes (1947- ). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/hughes-cathy/

Source of the Author's Information:

Laurence C. Jones, “Owning the Airwaves–Cathy Hughes Buys Radio
Stations for African-American Programming,” Essence (October 1998);
Radio One official website, http://www.radio-one.com, TV One official
website, http://tvoneonline.com/.

Further Reading