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Joe Madison, the award-winning radio legend and social activist also called “The Black Eagle” whose eponymous dwell morning present helped deliver consideration to urgent human and civil rights points, died Tuesday following a yearslong battle with prostate most cancers. He was 74.
Madison’s household confirmed the demise in an announcement on Wednesday.
“It’s with a heavy coronary heart that we announce the passing of our beloved husband and father, Joe Madison. He handed away peacefully at house surrounded by household,” the household assertion stated in a social media publish shared by Sirius XM City View, the place Madison labored for the final 15 years.
Madison’s household urged his followers to proceed “to be proactive within the combat in opposition to injustice.”
Madison was identified with prostate most cancers in 2009. It went into remission following remedy. However he introduced in December that the most cancers had returned final 12 months.
Individuals like Vice President Kamala Harris and fellow media veteran Roland Martin had been amongst notable people fondly recalling Madison’s life and providing condolences in a collection of tributes on social media.
“We misplaced a real good friend yesterday,” fellow radio veteran Donnie Simpson stated on X, previously Twitter. “Joe Madison, ‘The Black Eagle’, was a radio legend and freedom fighter. He was as dedicated to points that affected Black America as anybody I’ve ever recognized.”
The radio host had taken to the digital airwaves Monday by way of Friday from 6 to 10 a.m. since 2008 up till the months earlier than his demise.
He was recognized for asking his listeners one eight-word query: “What are you going to do about it?”
Throughout his radio profession spanning greater than 40 years, Madison collected a collection of spectacular accolades and awards together with being inducted into the Radio Corridor of Fame in 2019.
Madison can be a Guinness World Report holder stemming from him staying on the air for 52 straight hours to lift cash for the Smithsonian African American Historical past and Tradition Museum. As such, Madison holds the report for the Longest Marathon Internet hosting a Radio Discuss Present.
Earlier than his radio profession, Madison climbed the ranks of the NAACP, rising from being Detroit’s youngest chapter chief at age 24 to finally changing into the Nationwide Political Director and eventually serving on the nation’s oldest civil rights group’s Nationwide Board of Administrators for 14 years.
When Madison made the transition to radio, he introduced with him that very same spirit of activism he embodied on the NAACP.
As an example, Madison was entrance and middle when then-Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi signed the Emmett Until Anti-lynching Act on the U.S. Capitol in 2022. The laws was in the end signed into regulation by President Joe Biden and made lynching a federal hate crime.
Madison additionally supplied up his present as a automobile by way of which high-profile Black officers may ship their messages to his loyal viewers, like when California Rep. Maxine Waters visited Joe Madison’s present” to name out Black voters who solid ballots for Donald Trump’s failed reelection marketing campaign in 2020.
It was additionally on Madison’s present that former President Barack Obama instructed listeners he would take a COVID-19 vaccine authorised by Dr. Anthony Fauci – a transfer that prompted Obama’s predecessors, former Presidents Invoice Clinton and George W. Bush, to say they might even be prepared to publicly take the vaccine with Obama to encourage public belief and help amid stories of vaccine hesitancy, notably within the Black group.
Madison additionally scored an unique interview with Omarosa Manigault-Newman because the radio legend grilled the previous actuality TV present contestant-turned-Trump White Home adviser about her previous interactions with the forty fifth president.
“Has Donald Trump ever hit on you?” Madison requested Manigault-Newman within the 2018 interview, to which she responded: “Uh, Donald Trump hits on all girls — ”
Madison interjected, “Yeah, properly, you’re a girl. Has Donald Trump ever hit on you?”
Manigault-Newman answered, “Sure, I’m included in that variety of girls who Donald Trump has stated inappropriate issues, has checked out inappropriately.”
Though Madison had no drawback reserving high-profile friends just like the aforementioned, there have been loads of situations during which he took it upon himself to put a brighter highlight on points he felt wanted solutions.
Working example: In 1996, Madison started a weekslong on-air marketing campaign in opposition to the Central Intelligence Company and accusing it of flooding Black neighborhoods with crack cocaine within the Eighties.
The Washington Submit reported on the time:
Madison has based mostly his on-air marketing campaign on a collection of articles that appeared final month within the San Jose Mercury Information. The newspaper reported that cocaine was smuggled into the US and offered to minorities in Los Angeles to lift cash for the Nicaraguan contras, then preventing to overthrow their nation’s leftist authorities.
When he began speaking about it in late August, Madison stated, “I’m not giving up on this factor. Day-after-day on my present, I’ll talk about some side of this story and demand my listeners take motion.”
Madison additionally wielded his broad affect to have an effect on change exterior of the U.S., together with calling on the Chinese language authorities to assist stress Sudan into stopping the genocide in Darfur in 2007.
In late 2021, Madison launched a 74-day starvation strike as a part of a broader demand for voting rights laws that has nonetheless confirmed elusive greater than two years later.
BET Information reported on the time:
“I noticed, do I proceed the starvation strike or do I finish the starvation strike? And I made a be aware to myself that I’m ending the starvation strike,” Madison stated on his radio program on Thursday. “That’s the announcement – as of at this time.”
He added: “Individuals will ask, ‘Was the 70+ days of my starvation strike well worth the effort?’ The reply is, sure. In the present day a complete era now is aware of extra in regards to the Senate filibuster. They now know extra about how their vote or their votes are. They now know the main variations between Republicans and Democrats.
“They now know that our democracy is fragile,” Madison continued. “In addition they now know that simply as how meals is crucial to sustaining life, the proper to vote is crucial to sustaining our democracy.”
Born in Dayton, Ohio, on June 16, 1949, Madison went on to turn into a star soccer participant at Washington College in St. Louis, the place he was a operating again. Washington College can be the place Madison received his first official style of the radio life whereas working as a DJ for his campus station earlier than changing into the primary individual in his household to graduate from faculty, in response to a biography on his web site.
Following his tenure on the NAACP, Madison started working on the WXYZ radio station in Detroit earlier than subsequent stops in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., the place his program was syndicated on Radio One, which is now often known as City One. NewsOne is a part of iOne Digital, an internet division owned and operated by City One.
Madison is survived by his spouse, Sharon, of greater than 45 years, 4 grownup kids, 5 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
SEE ALSO:
Dexter Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Youngest Son, Dies At 62
Sekou Odinga, Motion Elder And Former Political Prisoner Who Freed Assata Shakur, Dies At 79
The publish RIP Joe Madison: Tributes Pour In After ‘The Black Eagle’ Radio Legend And Activist Dies At 74 appeared first on NewsOne.
RIP Joe Madison: Tributes Pour In After ‘The Black Eagle’ Radio Legend And Activist Dies At 74
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