EPTMr. Chuck
The man was Jesus sent to earth for early childhood literacy. He and WKNO, but mostly him, changed how early childhood was percieved in the minds of a LOT of middle class and lower class families. He was a change to television, replacing the regular white dominated set, or cartoon dominated show with a well spoken, warm African American man. He changed lives, this guy was pure good, I can't think of one thing, at least that I knew of when I watched his show, that made him a bad guy. Unlike many of the public figures I see get a eulogy on TL, this guy had no hamartia. His show entered the lives of many low class, black families, and changed the way education was percieved; this was especially true in communities that had previously rejected the Booker T. Washington style of black liberation and accepted the W.E.B. Dubois method (Washington favored education and assimilation into multi-culutralism, Dubois favored trade learning and isolation from U.S. culture). What makes Mr. Chuck's death so difficult is that this marks the second childhood figure that I loved dying, after Mr. Rogers, who also did enormous amounts to change the way childhood literacy was looked at. Even more than that, this man was a down-home hero, there was no lackluster side to him, he did everything I could think of to better my city. This man was a hero, a black man among white mice.
Mr. Chuck's death announcement
Mr. Chuck, RIP
Further than his TV show, he was a peaceful civil rights activist in a city known for violent civil rights protests. He was good, too damn good for his own good. He was the head of different committees for black advancement and the head of just about anything you can imagine that didn't require him to be a corrupt politician. He was able to touch the lives of people who live in a mutilated, gerrymandered district of Tennessee, a place where extreemism on the subject of race is considered a good and normal, rather than bad and dispicable. This man was a light of moderate change, a person who had the ideals in his heart, and his heart in the right place. He made my public television station what it is today, he, as education manager, changed what our domestic public television meant to children. He created the public broadcasting that I know today, right before I was born. This man should be revered.
