WLOK Radio Station

The call letters on this station are older than its owners. The license dates to July 29, 1946, when it signed on as WHHM under auto dealer Herbert Herff. Black-oriented WLOK had broadcast from 1480 on the dial since 1956; in 1964 its operators, the OK Group, bought the silent WHHM license and moved the name and format to 1340. Starr Broadcasting owned it from 1968 to 1976, and Art Gilliam bought it in 1977 for $725,000. Gospel became the format in 1985. The Stone Soul Picnic, first organized around 1975, is still produced by the station.

What the plaque says

WLOK Radio Station In 1977 WLOK became Memphis' first African-American owned radio station. Established on this site, Gilliam Communications' WLOK is a family-oriented format on which many of the nation's top African-American leaders have appeared. Several of the nation's leading disc jockeys starred here. WLOK's community involvement includes college scholarships and the renowned WLOK Stone Soul Picnic. The station's call letters, WLOK-AM, are "A Family Tradition."

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Civil Rights Museum — steps away
  The Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, kept as a museum of the civil rights movement from the nineteenth century to today.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — steps away
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.
• Beale Street — 0.4 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.
• Sun Studio — 1.1 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.

More markers nearby

• Hooks Brothers Photography Established in 1907 — 0.3 mi
• John James Audubon — 0.4 mi
• Danny Thomas — 0.4 mi
• Ida B. Wells — 0.4 mi