Noble, Gilbert Edward “Gil”

Impact on the world

Hired as a WABC-TV reporter in 1967 in the wake of the Kerner Commission’s call for greater minority representation in broadcast news, Noble became co-host, then sole host, of Like It Is in 1968, building it over more than four decades into what the National Newspaper Publishers Association and others have called the largest body of television programming and documentaries on African Americans produced in the United States. His subjects ranged from heads of state including Nelson Mandela to entertainers such as Harry Belafonte and Bill Cosby, and his willingness to air unfiltered Black nationalist and civil-rights perspectives — including extended interviews with Louis Farrakhan and a 1991 segment featuring scholar Leonard Jeffries that station executives ultimately shelved amid concerns about inflaming racial tensions — occasionally put him at odds with network management while cementing his reputation for independence. In 1977 he wrote, directed, and produced The Tallest Tree in Our Forest, among the first television documentaries on Paul Robeson, and he won seven Emmy Awards and more than 650 community honors over his career before a 2011 stroke ended his run on the program he had hosted since Lyndon Johnson’s presidency.

Life & background

Born February 22, 1932, in Harlem to Jamaican immigrant parents, Noble graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School, served as an Army medic during the Korean War, and attended the City College of New York while working at Union Carbide and playing piano in New York clubs before entering broadcasting at radio station WLIB in 1962. He joined WABC-TV as a reporter in 1967, hosted Like It Is from 1968 until his 2011 stroke, and died at a New Jersey hospital on April 5, 2012, at age 80, survived by his wife, Jean, and five children.

Sources

1. BlackPast.org; New York Amsterdam News; ABC7 New York