Talk to Me - John Erck's Reflections...
The film Talk to Me was a film largely focused on bring attention to what “the majority� wanted to ignore. The film’s main character was Petey Greene, the historically racy radio disc-jockey. The movie shows Petey “spittin’ it how it was�, which is exactly what he’s remembered for and what people of that time period were looking for.
The preceding decades showed massive improvement with regard to the law, but not socially. In specific as stated in Gary Gerstle’s Civil Rights, White Resistence, and Black Nationalism: 1960-1968, “The American legal foundation of racial nationalism had been overturned. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation in civil society while the Immigration Act of 1964 dismantled the national origins system that had been in place since 1924.� Even with all the progress within the legal system, the times were still plagued with underlying tones of racism.
Petey Greene’s style, as stated earlier, was to “spit it how it was�. The reception to this style of talk, on the radio in particular, was spectacular! People knew that racism was still a huge problem socially even though it had been addressed in law. It took individuals like Petey to continually shine the lime-light on the subject in order to keep it in the public eye and eventually cause real social change.