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 1945 Lewis Hill resigns from his job as a correspondent in Washington D.C., and moves to the San Francisco Bay Area. 1946 Hill and a group of fellow peace and justice workers begin to create an alternative radio station. 1949 KPFA goes on the air on April 15, at 94.1 on the FM dial in Berkeley, California. 1950 Opponents to the Korean War are among the many minority viewpoints given freedom of speech on KPFA during the McCarthy era. 1951 The Pacifica Foundation, the nonprofit parent organization of KPFA, receives the first major foundation grant for the support of a noncommercial broadcast operation. 1953 Philosopher/author Alan Watts begins a regular program on KPFA that continues until his death in 1973. 1954 An on-air discussion of the effects of marijuana results in the impounding of the program tape by California's Attorney General. 1955 Poets Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti bring the Beat Generation to the airwaves. A few years later the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) questions the broadcast, referring to some of the works as "vulgar, obscene and in bad taste." 1957 Exhausted by financial and ideological struggles at KPFA and suffering from years of pain from spinal arthritis, founder Lew Hill commits suicide at age 38. KPFA wins its first George Foster Peabody Award for "distinguished service and meritorious public service" for programming that takes strong issue with McCarthyism. 1958 The FCC requests a tape of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's reading that it finds "in bad taste" with "strong implications against religion, government, the president, law-enforcement and racial groups." The FCC also demands full information on Pacifica's finances and governance. Pacifica becomes a network with the addition of KPFK in Los Angeles and WBAI in New York City. KPFA covers the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings in San Francisco with the latest technology - tape recorders. 1962 The FCC withholds the license renewals of Pacifica stations KPFA, KPFB and KPFK pending its investigation into "Communist affiliations." Pacifica was never cited in this or any subsequent investigations. 1964 Following a three-year delay, the FCC renews the licenses of the three Pacifica stations. More |
