Mable Haddock, the founding president and first CEO of Black Public Media, passed away on July 23, 2022 at the age of 74. She made her mark as a trailblazer for the Black community– and the black female community–, producing authentic content about the Black experience.
In 1979, Haddock co-founded the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC), now known as Black Public Media, giving Black storytellers a platform to pave their own paths in film and television. Under her leadership at Black Public Media, more than $6 million was distributed to film and television producers to bring dozens of documentaries and programs to air, namely Matters of Race, Mandela, and The State of Black America (Parts I and II). She then went on to become a founding director of the Firelight Media Documentary Lab, an intensive fellowship program for up-and-coming producers of color. She has won a myriad of awards in her career, including a Muse Award from New York Women in Film & Television.
She was beloved by those in her field and in her many circles, as NYWIFT Board Member Leslie Fields-Cruz, Executive Director of Black Public Media, told Deadline: “Mable exemplified what it meant to be authentically Black and female in a professional space. She wasn’t afraid to speak truth to power, both verbally and in her writing. She was a warrior in the fight for equity in public media and a friend to all.”
Mable Haddock will be greatly missed by her family, friends, and those of us in the public media community.
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