December 12, 2014
Fearn-Banks’ African-American TV dictionary gets second edition
Kathleen Fearn-Banks, UW associate professor of communication, drew upon her 21 years of experience as a publicist in network television to write her 2005 “Historical Dictionary of African American Television.” This fall, an expanded second edition of the book was published.
Banks was NBC’s first African-American publicist and second-ever female publicist when hired there in 1969 after working in journalism. She spent two years researching the book, ranging from the 1939 broadcast of the “Ethel Waters Show” to current television programs and stars.
“My generation is the youngest that will remember all, or almost all, of this history,” she told UW News in 2005. “I felt that this information needed to be out there for future researchers.”
Fearn-Banks wrote the book with Anne Burford-Johnson. The second edition has more than 2,000 entries on black shows, actors, audiences, writers, producers, hosts, reporters and issues and conflicts in the television industry.
The first edition was also published in paperback in 2009 under the title “The A to Z of African-American Television.”
An online reviewer for the American Library Association said the book “enables both the researcher and fan to find information on the struggles of black performers or on favorite and little-known vehicles. Patrons in both public and academic libraries would find this volume interesting and helpful.”
