Up Next
Sue Booker: A Place for Under-Served Communities to Display Their Humanity
Sue Booker was a producer at KCET from 1970 to 1973, during which time she helmed "Doin' It," KCET's first public affairs series on L.A.'s African American community. During its ten episode run, the series introduced dance, theater, dramas, documentaries, news, public affairs, and other programming that represented the various communities throughout Los Angeles. In order to be more in touch with what was going on in the community, the "Doin' It" production crew moved to The Storefront on South Broadway, tapping directly into South Central Los Angeles.
"We interviewed politicians, we interviewed celebrities, we did man on the street interviews. We wanted to get a sense of what was actually happening behind the scenes that allowed South Central Los Angeles to have a sense of itself as more than suffering but rather to have a sense of its humanity and the way in which it was struggling and winning victory after victory in order to become part of a really magnificent nation of people who believed that they could achieve their dreams." -Sue Booker
At the time, public television was becoming a platform for under-served communities to display their humanity:
"KCET was unique in what it was doing. Not only in the black community, but in Los Angeles in general. This was the end of the Golden Age of Television. There was still permission to experiment, to talk to people in the street, to look for the heart of the story...The function of public television is to determine how much of our humanity is being displayed for the sake of the common good."
Support Provided By