Ben Franklin, Oral History (part 04)
Title
Ben Franklin, Oral History (part 04)
Description
Engineer Ben Franklin continues in this November 4th, 1993 interview recounting his stories of early Birmingham radio.
Creator
Ben Franklin
Bob Friedman
Publisher
Birmingham Black Radio Museum
Date
November 04, 1993
Contributor
Hannah Moore
Emily Bibb
Format
JPG
MP3
PDF
Language
English
Interviewer
Bob Friedman
Interviewee
Ben Franklin
Transcription
Transcript from audio snippet:
Bob- To me he was like a working class hero.
Ben- He was. Yeah he was, I was going to tell… and mischievous, bad mischievious.
Bob- And obviously not afraid of hardly anything. Since he was a Pullman and he worked, he went up against Pullman, he was a union organizer, boxer..
Ben- Oh he fussed them all, yeah yeah, oh listen and he was in with the city commission in Bessemer, Jesse Lanier was the Mayor then. And he handled things for the mayor and vice versa, it was one of those things.
Bob- He was on BCO wasn’t he. He was on BCO before JLD.
Ben- Yeah and then he was on EDR after that. Um, what I was going to tell you , he use to do in the morning, what we use to do on Saturday Morning he… He said you know that there’s a widow woman who had a Cadillac she did need and she would give it to Willie (McKinstry) and uh Willie wants to give his car away, if you jut call Willie he’d give you his car. Give his home telephone number
Bob- To me he was like a working class hero.
Ben- He was. Yeah he was, I was going to tell… and mischievous, bad mischievious.
Bob- And obviously not afraid of hardly anything. Since he was a Pullman and he worked, he went up against Pullman, he was a union organizer, boxer..
Ben- Oh he fussed them all, yeah yeah, oh listen and he was in with the city commission in Bessemer, Jesse Lanier was the Mayor then. And he handled things for the mayor and vice versa, it was one of those things.
Bob- He was on BCO wasn’t he. He was on BCO before JLD.
Ben- Yeah and then he was on EDR after that. Um, what I was going to tell you , he use to do in the morning, what we use to do on Saturday Morning he… He said you know that there’s a widow woman who had a Cadillac she did need and she would give it to Willie (McKinstry) and uh Willie wants to give his car away, if you jut call Willie he’d give you his car. Give his home telephone number
Duration
Full Interview: 31 minutes
Audio snippet: 2 minutes
Audio snippet: 2 minutes
Files
Collection
Citation
Ben Franklin and Bob Friedman, “Ben Franklin, Oral History (part 04),” The Birmingham Black Radio Museum, accessed September 7, 2026, https://www.thebbrm.org/item/97.
Item Relations
| This Item | dcterms:relation | Item: Ben Franklin, Oral History (part 01) |
| This Item | dcterms:relation | Item: Ben Franklin, Oral History (part 02) |
| This Item | dcterms:relation | Item: Ben Franklin, Oral History (part 03) |
| Item: Ben Franklin, Oral History (part 05) | dcterms:relation | This Item |
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