Jump to content
 







Main menu
   


Navigation  



Main page
Contents
Current events
Random article
About Wikipedia
Contact us
Donate
 




Contribute  



Help
Learn to edit
Community portal
Recent changes
Upload file
 








Search  

































Create account

Log in
 









Create account
 Log in
 




Pages for logged out editors learn more  



Contributions
Talk
 



















Contents

   



(Top)
 


1 See also  





2 References  





3 Further reading  














Martha Jean Steinberg







Add links
 









Article
Talk
 

















Read
Edit
View history
 








Tools
   


Actions  



Read
Edit
View history
 




General  



What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Cite this page
Get shortened URL
Download QR code
Wikidata item
 




Print/export  



Download as PDF
Printable version
 
















Appearance
   

 






From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 


Martha Jean "The Queen" Steinberg (September 9, 1930 – January 29, 2000) was an influential African-American radio broadcaster and later was also the pastor of her own church.

She was born Martha Jean Jones in Memphis, Tennessee. Her first radio job was on Memphis's WDIA starting in 1954 after winning a contest.[1] There, she was one of the first female disc jockeys in the United States, with a program that included the latest R&B hits along with the typical "household hints" programming that was de rigueur at the time for female radio personalities. She was given the nickname "The Queen" while working there.[1]

In 1963 she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she was heard on WCHB and then throughout the late 1960s and 1970s on WJLB. On July 23, 1967, Steinberg convinced WJLB to cancel its normal evening programming and she did an on-air program calling for people to calm down and stop rioting. It has been suggested that this prevented the 1967 Detroit Riot from being worse than it was.[2] During her time at WJLB, she led the station's on-air staff in protest of the fact that the station at the time had no African-American employees outside of the air staff.

She became an ordained minister in the 1970s and began using the sign-off "God loves you and I love you".[1] In 1980, WJLB converted from AM to the FM dial (where it remains to this day), and Steinberg's show was dropped in the process. The former WJLB-AM became WMZK with an ethnic format. In 1982, Steinberg purchased WMZK-AM and changed the call letters to WQBH in order to offer more gospel music-oriented programming. Steinberg remained on the air at WQBH (1400 on the AM dial) until her death. WQBH is now WDTK.

She had a cameo role as a television show host in the 1973 film Detroit 9000. In 2017 she was inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1998.[3]

Steinberg died in 2000 and is buried in Detroit's Elmwood Cemetery.[1]

She is featured in an episode of Little America on AppleTV.

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c d "Steinberg, Martha Jean "The Queen"". Detroit Historical Society. Retrieved January 18, 2024.
  • ^ Fine, Sidney (1989). Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. p. 184.
  • ^ "Martha Jean Steinberg" (PDF). Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 27, 2018. Retrieved January 18, 2024.
  • Further reading

    [edit]
    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Martha_Jean_Steinberg&oldid=1231030462"

    Categories: 
    1930 births
    2000 deaths
    Burials at Elmwood Cemetery (Detroit)
    Radio personalities from Detroit
    Radio personalities from Memphis, Tennessee
    American women radio personalities
    20th-century African-American women
    African-American radio personalities
    Hidden categories: 
    Articles with VIAF identifiers
    Articles with WorldCat Entities identifiers
    Articles with LCCN identifiers
    Articles with MusicBrainz identifiers
     



    This page was last edited on 26 June 2024, at 02:01 (UTC).

    Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.



    Privacy policy

    About Wikipedia

    Disclaimers

    Contact Wikipedia

    Code of Conduct

    Developers

    Statistics

    Cookie statement

    Mobile view



    Wikimedia Foundation
    Powered by MediaWiki