Mable Haddock, the founder and first CEO of Black Public Media, a large nonprofit film and TV financing organization, has passed away. She was 74.
Haddock died on July 23 in New York City due to kidney disease after a short hospital stay, Black Public Media (BPM) announced on Wednesday.
In the 1970s, Haddock saw the need to diversify the storytelling on TV and began supporting black filmmakers and producers and their films and TV shows and series. In 1979, she founded BPM, then known as the National Black Programming Consortium, which under her leadership supported hundreds of black directors and producers with funding and distributed their work to public television.
Today, Harlem-based BPM is a national media arts nonprofit focused on creating and producing media content about the Black experience. “Mable illustrated what it meant to be authentically black and feminine in a professional space. She was not afraid to speak the truth to power, both verbally and in her writings,” BPM director Leslie Fields-Cruz said in a statement.
While running BPM, Haddock distributed more than $6 million in funding to black film and TV producers. Documentaries and other programs that used BPM funding to reach public television include programs such as: Issues of race, unnatural causes, Mandela, the story of Fannie Lou Hamer and The State of Black America (I and II).
BPM collaborated with other organizations such as National Minority Consortia, now the National Multicultural Alliance. Haddock was also a TV programmer, film curator, producer, and a founding member of the Firelight Media Documentary Lab, which supported emerging color producers.
A GoFundMe page set up for Haddock and a private funeral will be held in Clover, Virginia on Aug. 4, with public memorials in New York City and Columbus, Ohio to follow.