"These were not men who would necessarily raise a Black Power fist or quote Stokely Carmichael or Angela Davis, but were activists nonetheless, who doubled down..."

"... on the ideas of Black respectability and Black excellence as counters to the racial stereotypes that circulated widely in American media and popular culture. Cornielius himself was hypersensitive to negative racial stereotypes; in the program’s popular word-scramble segment, he wanted to make sure participants actually knew how to spell—even sharing the word beforehand—to guarantee that they wouldn’t show up on national television reinforcing ideas of Black illiteracy."

From "Soul Train and the Desire for Black Power/Don Cornelius’s faith that Black culture would attract a mass audience—and his devout belief that Black culture should be in the hands of Black people—make the program he created a radical touchstone 50 years after its debut" (The Nation).