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Norman E. Jones
Norman E. Jones was born in Lawrence, Kansas and moved to Kansas City (Missouri) as a young child. Following high school, he attended Lincoln Junior College, studied photography, and attended Henderson Business College in Memphis. He became a photographer, publicist, and journalist, and Florida editor for the Pittsburgh Courier, a major black newspaper.
In 1950 he moved to Tampa and eventually settled in St. Petersburg a few years later. He published the Tampa Star from 1952 to 1955, edited the African American pages of the St. Petersburg Times and St. Petersburg Evening Independent, and wrote the column "Let's Talk Politics" for various black newspapers across the state for almost twenty years, beginning in 1956.
Jones’ radio program, “Down On Central” on Tampa’s WEBK AM-1590, ran from 1952 to 1956 and helped introduce jazz to the Tampa Bay area. The popular program also delivered news and views for and about African Americans locally and nationally. In addition, he hosted his own television show, “The Norman E. Jones Show,” on WTOG-TV Channel 44.
Until his health failed in the 1970s, he ran an advertising and public relations business in St. Petersburg. Active in politics for over fifty years, he supported George Wallace's presidential campaign, and served as Chairman of the National Black Citizens Committee for Wallace in 1972.
Jones still resided in St. Petersburg at the time of his passing in 1990. The Norman E. Jones Papers, consisting of three boxes of manuscript copies of his newspaper columns, miscellaneous projects and proposals, correspondence, newspaper articles, and forty audio tapes, were donated to the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library at USF-St. Petersburg in 2001 by his son, Norman E. Jones II.
Station History
1952 - 1956 Other Tampa Bay Area Stations (On Air Personality)
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