Alice Travis might not be a familiar name now, but in the late 1970s she became the first Black woman to host a nationally syndicated talk show.
Alice Travis was a seasoned reporter when she auditioned in 1975 for the ABC show that would become “Good Morning America.”
Travis, who was then 32, had already co-hosted two major-market news shows: “Panorama” (alongside Maury Povich), in Washington D.C., and “AM New York.” The Black-owned weekly newspaper New York Amsterdam News once described her as “one of the brightest and brainiest of the undiscovered teevee personalities.”
So she was unprepared for what she said a network executive told her after the audition. “‘Quite frankly your color is not to your advantage,’” Travis recounted over lunch in Manhattan this past summer. “Shocking statements, but after a while they no longer shocked.”
Travis was among the first wave of Black television newswomen hired nationwide, part of an early effort to diversify American newsrooms in the wake of the protests and racial conflicts of the 1960s. While her rejection by the ABC morning show was painful, what she did next was groundbreaking: She became the first Black woman to host her own national talk show.
The syndicated “For You … Black Woman” premiered in June 1977, the first national talk show created for, as the title suggested, a Black female audience. From a set in a New York studio designed to look like a comfortable living room, Travis discussed topics like self-fulfillment, relationships, beauty, politics and parenting as they applied specifically to Black women, occasionally with notable figures. Her guests included Toni Morrison, the activist Florynce Kennedy and the actress Jayne Kennedy. Muhammad Ali, then the heavyweight champion, came on to discuss his relationships with women, and his occasionally benighted attitudes about them.
“He’s arrogant, chauvinistic and delightful,” Travis told The New York Times in a 1978 interview about the episode.
