How Wendell King Found His Frequency in Erie African American radio engineer met and obliterated the color line by Jonathan Burdick
Union College
It was June of 1917 and the United States was at war. The first American infantry troops had arrived in Europe that month and stateside manufacturers were working around the clock to keep up with wartime demand. In Schenectady, N.Y., the sprawling General Electric plant, which employed 20,000 workers, hired a few dozen students from nearby Union College for the summer. This included Wendell Wilford King, a brilliant 20-year-old North Troy local who had just finished his freshman year studying electrical engineering. Instead of having him work in the yard like most college hires, he was put on a drill press.
As kids growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, our new best friend became the family television.
Like todayâs youths with cellphones and computer tablets, weâd spend hours glued to this device. When our family first got a television in 1950, it had a small screen, it was broadcast in black and white and it had no remote control, as we received only one channel.
Our TV was connected to an aluminum antenna on our roof. Other folks had an indoor antenna made of two thin tubes, called rabbit ears, that sat on the TV and could be adjusted for better reception.