Gil Noble Changed My Life. The Long Time Host of WABC TV's Like It Is Dead At 80

Gil Noble spoke at the Freshman Orientation Meeting organized by the Black Student Union, at Hunter College, City University of New York, in September of 1971, my first day in college. He was introduced by the renowned late historian John Henrik Clarke. He changed my life that day. He spoke about the struggles of peoples of African decent in global terms and urged us as incoming students to take up the mantle of struggle.

What struck me that day, more than anything else was that this mild mannered man, the second African American to host a nightly news show on network television in New York City was speaking the language of Pan Africanism and revolutionary struggle. He spoke about the legacy of Malcolm X and the Black Nationalist movement and the Civil Rights Movement as part of a global struggle against colonialism and imperialism. He linked the anti-colonial wars in Rhodesia, Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau with the struggle against police brutality in New York City. He compared Soweto, in apartheid South Africa, to Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn New York . I was enthralled. I had watched him on television many times but I had no idea until that day who he really was.

My mother had always stressed to me that assimilation into the dominate, white culture, was a prerequisite for success. His speech, that day, illustrated to me, in living color, that she was not necessarily correct. It was possible to be both successful and true to yourself. This was a lesson I never forgot.

John H. Armwood