By Odeisel
When I was a child, Harlem, NY was a very different place. The streets were colored with urban decay, accented by abandoned buildings and squalor. Crack had not yet taken hold on the streets of New York and King Heroin still ruled. The streets were littered with zombies on that anti-gravity lean; perpetually slanted but amazingly never hitting the ground. It was so surreal that even had you walked your children through it as a precautionary tale, it would be almost fantasy in its innate craziness. With one episode of Like It Is, Gil Noble made heroin both real and horrifying for Black America.
Every Sunday, after the early cartoons went off, Like It Is was telecast on the NY local ABC affiliate in an attempt to add some Black programming. Gil Noble went on to host that show and do a fantastic service to Black people for over 40 years. The show was about things that were relevant in the Black community, something that was rare because it had nothing to do with shining, consumption or fronting; just real Black talk.
There was no over the top preaching or any of the pulpit aesthetic that often derails necessary messages that need to be consumed by our youth. Nobel was dignified and serious, but not in a caricatured, Furious Styles kind of way, but one that projected a keen devotion towards educating and servicing Black people.
Noble tackled issues that others wouldn’t touch, such as the CIA’s attack on Black America under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover. When you normally hear stories like this, the messenger is often relegated to societal periphery; crazy talk by crazy, ostracized people. Noble managed to get these things on the air and communicated by a steely objective approach that couldn’t be confused with anything below the board. Documentaries were pieced together with precision and facts with as little glitz and supposition as possible, as if Noble strove for unimpeachability.
I saw that heroin episode as a child and many years later as an adult. Noble and his cameras went to the source, with interviews with addicts themselves, depicting the desperation and the sorry chase for each hit, showcasing junkies who had shot up so much that their veins collapsed which forced them to find veins on their feet and genitals. When I tell you that this was the realest thing I’d ever seen to this day, it’s the gospel truth.
As a Black person who seeks truth in writing or at least the chronicling of our Black advancement and our general progression, I take my hat off to Mr. Noble. I’ve never seen another journalist that navigated truth with the same stewardship with which he ran Like It Is. With a decreasing presence of Black faces on television and in movies and the proliferation of Black ignorance, Gil’s loss is a tragedy whose magnitude will only be felt once people realize how very few sources we have left to tell it like it truly is. May he rest in peace.
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