Mable Haddock, the founding president and first CEO of the National Black Programming Consortium, known as Black Public Media (BPM) today, died of kidney disease at 74.
Black Public Media is a Harlem-based national media arts nonprofit dedicated to creating and producing media content about the Black experience.
Deadline reports Haddock passed away on July 23 following a brief hospitalization. She helped found the consortium in 1979 in Columbus, Ohio, to support Black stories and storytellers in film and television. Haddock led the nonprofit for more than two decades and captained its transition to Harlem.
Under Haddock’s leadership at BPM, more than $6 million was dispersed to film and television producers, dozens of documentaries and programs aired on public television through series she produced including Matters of Race, Mandela and The State of Black America (Parts I and II). Haddock was also instrumental in BPM joining forces with other like-minded organizations to form the National Minority Consortia, now the National Multicultural Alliance, which has the same mission as BPM.
“Mable exemplified what it meant to be authentically Black and female in a professional space,” BPM Executive Director Leslie Fields-Cruz told Deadline. “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.”
The Mercy College graduate also worked behind the scenes as a television programmer and producer and was also a founding director of the Firelight Media Documentary Lab, an intensive fellowship program for emerging producers of color.
The awards Haddock has received in her career include the Founders Awards from the Black Women’s Preservation Project, the Leo Award from the Flaherty International Film Seminars, a New York Women in Film & Television Award, Women of Achievement Award from the Columbus YWCA, and a leadership award from the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC), now known as The Alliance.