A Voice of Black Radio Speaks Out

×

Expand

Photo Credit: Tom Jenz

At 43, Keyon Jackson-Malone is a jack of all trades in Milwaukee radio. Talk show host and engineer, he dedicates himself to WNOV Radio, a favorite of the Black community. Keyon is also a Black activist and firmly committed to helping neighborhoods improve and live in harmony.  One gray afternoon, I met him at the WNOV Radio station where we talked off-mike in between commercial breaks.  He exudes a warm personality through a strong but soothing voice. 

What are you up to currently?

I am a radio personality, and I host “The Man Show” on WNOV Radio, 860AM and 106.5 FM.  I am also Executive Director of the Village Group, Inc. Us For You, You For All.  The Village Group focuses on neighborhood resident reengagement—getting to know your neighbors, encouraging dependence, trying to make current neighborhoods more connected like they were when I was younger.

You told me you’re a family man. Tell me about your family.

Actually, I’m a single guy, but I’ve grown to become the patriarch of my father’s family, the large Malone family.  I am the second oldest male. Right now, I’m lookin’ after a 4-year-old boy, my first cousin’s grandchild. He acts different with men than with women, with me versus his mother. She’s single. With me around, he likes to fight and roustabout and jump. With his mom, he turns opposite, always needing help. Young boys need positive male role models to show them how to act as men. A boy needs to see a man working on something, going to work everyday, being firm and strong. 

How about your parents? Are they still around? 

Mother is still alive and in the old neighborhood. Dad died when I was only 22. He died in a freak household accident in the garage.  My dad was a big influence in my life. After he died, I went into man-mode, jumped into manhood, working hard, taking care of family, my mother and sisters.    

Did you grow up in the inner city?

Yes. My grandparents came from Mississippi, bought their first house on 11th Street. In 1979, my parents moved to 41st and North Avenue. I saw a major change in that neighborhood growing up. I witnessed white flight firsthand. About 80% of whites left my neighborhood. It had been primarily a white neighborhood. Only two houses had Blacks. North Avenue was thriving back then, good stores, meat markets, restaurants, glass fronts, a bowling alley. After the jobs went away, then the drugs came in. Business activities went underground. Today, that old neighborhood is a shell of what it once was.

What schools did you go to?

In the 3rd grade, I got into the Golda Meir School for the Gifted and Talented. Later, I got interested in radio and television, and I went to John Marshall High School where they had a media program. But I got into trouble and got expelled my junior year. I’d been into the gang culture, gun play, drugs, and I even shot photos of risqué behavior at a park. Then I got caught selling marijuana in the school. I was sent to Lapham Park where I met the teacher Anthony Courtney who was a mentor to me to this day. I ended up graduating from Custer High School.

What was happening in your neighborhood? Why did you get into trouble?

I call it the old neighborhood. We kids still had respect for the community as our parents did.  But we were rough boys in high school, around 1991, it was. The world was changing, rap music, violence in cinema. I’m a product of the Iran-Contra issue where drugs got filtered into the Black communities from South America, and the renegades and hustlers started running things. 

I had a good home, caring parents and grandparents, but my parents worked. I was a latchkey kid. Like a lot of other boys, I was attracted to the gang culture. I got caught up in the violence of the day, the crack cocaine drug culture.  I often tell today’s youth that what you saw us older guys doing back then wasn’t right. Sex, money, drug selling, guns, fighting, all wasn’t right. My generation was the last of the weekend gang fights generation. We had our own code, a culture that didn’t apply to civilians. My neighborhood got a reputation for the players and the hustlers. Take the music. It went from a lot of good love music to hardcore gangsta and west coast rap.  From my personal observations and from what I’ve read, back in the 1990s, Milwaukee’s inner city turned into a 3rd world economy based on law-breaking, and it still exists today. Back then, gangs fought with their fists. Currently, they fight with guns.

After you graduated from Custer High School, what did you do next?

I went to college at the Art Institute of Atlanta in entertainment management. But I ended up hustling, doing the same thing I was doing at home. I was selling marijuana and other drugs, making money, same bad habits. That scared me, so I came back to Milwaukee after only a year in Atlanta. Got a job at Red Lobster as a dishwasher, and then second line cook. I worked at a liquor store.  I did factory work, Air Gas Supply, other factory jobs.  I always kept a job, had money. Finally, I ended up at ER Wagner manufacturing for eight years before I quit to straighten my life out.

When did you get into radio?

I started out in radio courses at John Marshall when I was 16, but 20 years went by before I went back into radio. Meantime, I was a playboy, got my heart broke, did drugs, felt bad a lot, and I started to feel like life ain’t what I thought it was. For about 10 years, I went through a spell of depression and unhappiness. Call it a transition. But I still had that strong character my father instilled in me.  

You were in your 30s when you started working in radio, right?

It’s March 31, 2012. I’m in the house after this long spell of depression and drug abuse. I decided to finally end it, to overdose, commit suicide. I had some powerful cocaine.  So I snort an eighth ounce, an 8-ball, in two nostrils. I expected my brain to explode. But nothing happened. I was still alive. I sat there, looking up at the heavens, and I bust out laughing. “Aw right, God, I see the joke. The joke is me.” I had money, I had cars, had things, but I’m still unhappy. I said, “I’m gonna give you the steering wheel and you drive, Oh, Lord.” April 2, 2012 became my sobriety date.  On that day, I gave my life back to God. I trusted God. After a few months of traveling in Mississippi, I realized my life isn’t about myself but it’s about helping others.  

So you returned to Milwaukee to start your life over.

I did. When I got back to Milwaukee, I saw an ad for an intern job at WNOV Radio. I did the internship for no salary for nine months until I got hired as an engineer and producer.  I worked under some great talk show hosts, Sherwin Hughes and Eric Von, the talk show legend. Eric Von did “The Man Show.” When he died in 2016, I eventually took over as the host in 2017. On “The Man Show,” we have raw basement conversations, guy talk. We discuss community and neighborhood relations or almost anything. I feel like I’ve been able to give something back to the Black community.

I’ve read that you are one of a group of Violence Interrupters. Is that the right term?

414 Life is the project’s name, and it’s under the Milwaukee Office of Violence Prevention. Our mission was to mediate or interrupt the transmission of violent activities, gun violence. Older guys that had grown up in the gang life, many ex-felons, they were the ones who could mediate. They would keep their ears to the street to stay ahead of violent encounters. Call it community policing. My role was to find the mediators.

You also founded the Village Group to help improve neighborhoods. What is that about?

In 2016, God let me connect with a brother, Vaun Mayes. One day, a bunch of community leaders met to help troubled youth in Sherman Park. The kids had been using Facebook, and they’d meet up at the park and do flash fights. Must have been 200 of us there that day. Police and Sheriff officers surrounded us. One of our kids mouthed off, and there was a violent encounter with two white officers. From that day, we vowed to watch over the youth at the park so they’d stay out of trouble. You can’t be swearing at the police. This brought inter-generational communication they’d never had before. We got the toughest kids to change, even help stopping fights.

Then, you focused on your own neighborhood.

Right. I went back to my neighborhood and had a realization. My neighborhood was desolate, and I’d barely noticed the change over the years. Atkinson Avenue, the houses, the street, it was a nasty, dark dirty gray. I decided to focus on reestablishing my neighborhood, the families and the culture.  I think you have to reestablish your heritage. People have to know where they come from before they know where they are goin.’  You have to restructure your family, your block, your community. If your heart’s not happy, then your work ethic might be no good. 

I got the idea for a group to help this process, The Village Group, Us For You, You For All. In other words, I help you to help everybody else. We been helping bring back that old family concept into neighborhoods.

Not to pull any punches, but the Black politicians I’ve talked to often do not want to meet with the on the ground— leaders such as yourself, Vaun Mayes, Frank Nitty, Tory Lowe. You men are the hands-on leaders who understand what is happening every day on the streets.  

For the last few years, Vaun Mayes got active on Facebook and social media, and he threw a lot of tables and chairs. A lot of traditional political leaders didn’t want to get hit with tables and chairs. But I think that is changing. Black elected leaders are listening more now to Vaun and Tory and others. I been callin’ on the mayor’s office to provide Vaun’s programs with city tax money to help with his causes. He is doing the street work, making the sacrifices. This would be tax money well spent.

In these last many years, the inner city has gotten worse, the infrastructure. What I keep asking leaders is why aren’t the potholed streets fixed? Why aren’t the alleys and curbs cleaned of garbage? Why aren’t there public toilets? Like some Black residents I’ve witnessed, I sometimes piss behind dumpsters when I can’t hold it anymore. One night, I saw women form a circle so that another woman could urinate and be protected. I’ve seen what that collapse of infrastructure does to morale.

I don’t do much practical politics. I’m involved with the community, helpin’ and talkin.’ The things that really matter, competence, compassion, concern, commitment, understanding … they can’t fix the potholes, there is no budget for those ideas. Each inner city resident has to participate, invest in the community, take pride, restore the neighborhoods. Regardless of how much money the politicians bring, if the people of the community don’t have their traumas taken care of, if the people got somethin’ messed up in spirit. What I want to know. Where is the money for mental health?