An appreciation of Gil Noble

African-American television journalist Gil Noble leaves behind a tremendous, inspiring legacy that should continue to be deeply explored and respected. Host of the award-winning, Black-oriented show “Like It Is,” based in New York, Noble died at the age of 80 on April 5 in a New Jersey hospital. He had suffered a massive stroke last summer.

Gil Noble interviews Consuela Lee, 1988.

Hundreds of people, including cultural and political figures such as City Councilperson Charles Barron, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, Minister Louis Farrakhan and former editor of Essence magazine Susan Taylor, paid tribute to Noble at his funeral and memorial. It was held April 13 at the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

Noble became the host of “Like It Is” at New York’s ABC affiliate in 1975. Over a period of 36 years, until his stroke, he interviewed hundreds of guests. Every Sunday his shows focused primarily on the struggle of African peoples for self-determination and liberation in the diaspora.

He won seven Emmy awards for the following documentaries: “El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X),” “Paul Robeson,” “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” “Adam Clayton Powell Jr.,” “Decade of Struggle,” “Essay on Drugs” and “Outstanding Series.” Not only was Noble the host of “Like It Is,” but he produced it as well — meaning that he had the authority to pick and choose who to have on his show, no matter whether the studio heads liked it or not.

Gil Noble

Many of his interviewees were both well-known and lesser-known artists, activists, politicians and historians, both in the U.S. and around the world. This writer had the honor of knowing Noble on two different occasions. The late great actor Ossie Davis and I had the honor of appearing on “Like It Is” to promote a Madison Square Garden Theater rally for death-row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal in May 2000. Noble hosted a number of shows on Abu-Jamal’s case and clearly expressed his hope that Mumia would have a new, fair trial to help overturn a murder conviction. In 2011 Abu-Jamal was freed from death row, but is now serving a life sentence without parole. Besides Davis, others who came to the Garden to show support for Mumia were Mos Def, Ed Asner, Johnnie Cochran, David Dinkins and many more. The interview, taped a month before the rally, helped fill the theater to its capacity of 6,000 seats.

Support for an Alabama school

Consuela Lee

The other distinct chance meeting that I had with Noble was of a more personal nature. On Aug. 6, 1988, Noble traveled to Snow Hill, Ala., to speak at a rally in support of Snow Hill Institute for the Performing Arts, founded in 1980 by my mother, jazz pianist Consuela Lee. The Institute promoted the teaching of jazz in all its art forms to poor, rural African-American children in Alabama’s Black Belt.

Months later, Noble sent a film crew to Snow Hill to take footage of my mother’s efforts to revitalize Snow Hill Institute, which had been founded in 1893 by her grandfather, William James Edwards, to help educate former slaves. In December 1988, Noble had my mother’s students perform on his “Like It Is” program while they were on tour in New York. While showing the Snow Hill footage, Noble explained the difficult campaign to save an isolated school like Snow Hill Institute within the overall historic framework of the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s, especially in Alabama.

Noble also wrote a moving piece about Snow Hill and my mother’s CD, “Piano Voices,” when it was released in 2001. Being an accomplished jazz pianist himself, Noble wrote on the CD’s jacket, “Consuela Lee … even her very name swings like the end of a jazz chorus. Years ago, this magnificent artist invited me to come down to Alabama to speak to the students at her Snow Hill school. What I saw and heard at Snow Hill brought tears to my eyes. Here were grade school children playing on almost makeshift instruments the arrangements of geniuses like Milt Jackson and Charlie Parker.

“On top of this, Consuela Lee sat down to the piano. I was transfixed. Then and there I decided to find a way to have Consuela and those kids on my TV show in New York. I did.

“Now, many years later, this glorious CD has been recorded — a chance to hear this stunning pianist do her own compositions and her own absorbing reading of Duke Ellington. Steady now … you ‘bout to be wiped out.’” Go to tinyurl.com/6tdd6t6 to hear parts one and two of Noble’s interview with Consuela Lee.

Gil Noble exemplified tremendous integrity, dedication and fortitude. He used his journalistic skills to not only showcase great cultural and political contributions of Black people, but to help further the struggle for social equality. He was a great anti-racist fighter and humanitarian who also showed solidarity with other oppressed peoples, such as the Palestinians.

In his autobiography, “Black Is the Color of My TV Tube,” he writes, “Many in this business say I am too serious. I believe I am not serious. The condition of Black people today is serious to me, and that condition requires serious action. I will be preoccupied with the question of race until racism is dead.” Gil Noble presente! For more information go to gilnoblearchive.com.