By Sophie Girard
The dawn of broadcasting coincided with the First World War, creating a desperate need for radio communicators and opening up radio training programs to African Americans and women, says Derek Vaillant, a University of Michigan media historian.
“I have come to see the war as an opportunity space in which skills training in radio communication - the new medium of the time - became available in unexpected ways,” Vaillant said at a recent talk at UC Santa Barbara hosted by the university's Center for Information Technology and Society.
The Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS) is a network of scholars that is committed to innovative multi-disciplinary research across the humanities, social sciences, and engineering.
Derek Vaillant is a University of Michigan media historian and visiting researcher at UCSB’s Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS). He recently gave a talk about radio’s rise during World War I.
Vaillant is a visiting researcher at the Center and the author of the books Sounds of Reform: Progressivism and Music in Chicago, 1873-1935 and Across the Waves: How the United States and France Shaped the International Age of Radio. He has spent decades working on archival research and investigating the evolution of radio communication.
Vaillant is currently examining the ways in which World War I expanded opportunities in radio, with a focus on African Americans and other marginalized groups who gained access to radio communication skills through the war effort.
Prior to the 1920s, when radios became common in American homes, radio skills were mainly acquired through the U.S. Navy, which excluded African Americans. “I’ve yet to find anyone in the African American community who got skills training through the Navy,” Vaillant said.
In 1912, Congress passed the Act to Regulate Radio Communication, which offered anyone an amateur radio license from the Navy’s Bureau of Navigation. The legislation raised hopes of making the field of radio communication more inclusive. But the license itself could only be acquired through extensive skills training. “By creating a licensing requirement, it significantly upped the difficulty of obtaining a license, said Vaillant. “You had to pass a pretty stringent set of tests in order to be a commercial operator.”
Communications scholar Derek Vaillant’s book Across the Waves: How the United States and France Shaped the International Age of Radio.
When World War I began, the US Army found itself with a shortage of radio communicators. The licensing requirements attracted those who already had status and skills, making it difficult for any new workers to enter the industry. “There was a sense that recruiters were scraping the bottle of the barrel,” said Vaillant.
The Army began recruiting radio operators and radio schools were established to usher in a new wave of workers with radio skills. Still, the limitations on who could be a commercial radio operator remained, reducing the pool size. “There were insufficient numbers of trainees,” said Vaillant. “The bar needed to be changed.”
To address the lack of radio operators, the War Department established the Student Army Training Corps (SATC) on college campuses. The radio section focused on coding and communicating and more than 500 school campuses participated. “They were training people in the conventional way a radio school would train people,” said Vaillant.
Derek Vaillant discussed his research into radio history at the Center for Information Technology and Society at UC Santa Barbara.
The Training Corps did not have the same enrollment limitations as previous radio institutions, and female students had access to the same radio training as men. The gender barrier in radio communication lessened as the program called for more women to become involved in the war effort through radio. “These colleges were not your usual suspects training men, they were also drawing on female expertise in radio,” Vaillant said.
Emmet J. Scott, an African American government official and journalist, spoke for African American students to be included in the Student Army Training Corps, which led the program to expand to 13 historically Black universities. African American men were given access to radio training, and African American women had access to other skills, such as nursing training. “Suddenly you have a sense of possibility,” said Vaillant.
But a rise in diversity in radio communication during World War I was short-lived as the Corp’s funding ended with the war. As a result, many African American trainees were unable to continue in the career path known as ‘radioman.’ “We’ll never know what the impact might have been on the postwar economy generally, but also in the shape of the radio industry,” Vaillant said.
While the program never got the chance to reach its full potential, commercial radio’s inclusivity during World War also helped shape the course of the movement for equal rights. “It shows you the potential and the vision that was there, despite a very unresponsive American political system,” Vaillant said.
Sophie Girard is a second-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Communications and pursuing a minor in Professional Writing and Earth Science. She is a Web and Social Media intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.