Charles Scruggs, known to Memphis children as “Mr. Chuck” on WKNO Public Television for more than a decade, died Jan. 18, reports the Commercial-Appeal. He was 80 years old.
Beginning in the 1990s, Scruggs hosted Number 10 Friends Circle and Hello Mr. Chuck. “He wasn’t looking for anything or trying to sell any product,” Michael LaBonia, WKNO president, told the local CBS affiliate. “He had genuine interest in trying to help make kids better.”
Scruggs also was the first black g.m. of WDIA, the first all-black programming radio station in the nation. And he co-founded the National Civil Rights Museum, securing a personal loan to help purchase the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968.