ELSA KNIGHT THOMPSON : A REMEMBRANCE / produced by Moira Rankin| edited by Gary Covino| technical direction by Linda Mack. - Retrospective of her career in radio produced following her death on February 11, 1983. Includes excerpts from her documentaries and from her interviews with James Baldwin, Elizabeth Gurly Flynn, Reyes Lopez Tijerina, Paul Allen, and Denny Smithson. Features recollections by Chris Koch. - BROADCAST: KPFA, Mar. 1983. From the Late fifties until the early seventies Elsa Knight Thompson was the director of news and public affairs at KPFA, the pacifica station in Berkeley, California. Her style of radio influenced not only generations of radio producers and the other Pacifica stations, but all of public broadcasting. She was deeply committed to the priciples of free speech, world understanding, and high culture. Those preinciples can be traced in her hundreds of interviews and notable documentaries. This program includes excerpts from some of those interviews (Hames Baldwin, Elizaeth Gurly Flynn, Reyes Lopez Tijerina) and docuemtnaries (Black Friday, the account of the 1960 House Un-American Activities Committee hearing at S.F. City Hall, and "A Night in Chicago" the report on the 1968 democratic conventionin Chicago. Elsa Knight Thompson: A Rememberence also includes excerpts from an interview she did with Paul Allen and Denny Smithson at KPFA on the 30th Anniversary of Pacifica. Finally, the program features Chris Koch's great stories about Pacifica and Elsa. chirs is now a public television producer, but he started out in may, 1960 with Elsa. He remembers the HUAC demonstrations, his first voice lessons, Elsa, the Jack Levine fight, and the fight that shook the foundation: over the deal that the Senate sub-committee offered to Pacifica to withdraw the challenges it was making to the foundation's lecenses. Elsa Knight Thompson died on February 11, 1983. She was seventy-six years old. This rememberance was prepared in March of that year.
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