Mable Haddock Dies: Black Public Media Founding President Was 74

deadline.com:

Mable Haddock, the founding president and first CEO of the National Black Programming Consortium — now Black Public Media — died of kidney disease in New York City on Saturday, July 23, following a brief hospitalization.

She was 74. Black Public Media is a Harlem-based national media arts nonprofit dedicated to creating and producing media content about the Black experience. “Mable exemplified what it meant to be authentically Black and female in a professional space,” said BPM Executive Director Leslie Fields-Cruz. “She wasn’t afraid to speak truth to power, both verbally and in her writings.

A true trailblazer, she was a warrior in the fight for equity in public media, and a friend to all.” Haddock helped found NBPC in 1979 in Columbus, Ohio, with a mission to support Black stories and storytellers in film and television.

She spearheaded the nonprofit for more than 25 years and oversaw its transition to its eventual home in Harlem. During her tenure, more than $6 million in funding was dispersed to hundreds of film and television producers, and scores of documentaries and programs were aired on public television through series she produced, including Matters of Race, Unnatural Causes, Mandela, The Fannie Lou Hamer Story, The State of Black America (I and II) and other programs.