John R. Hodge

General John Reed Hodge (June 12, 1893 – November 12, 1963) was a general in the United States Army.

Early life and Career

Born in Golconda, Illinois, Hodge attended Southern Illinois Teachers College and the University of Illinois. After completing U.S. Army Officer Candidate School at Fort Sheridan, he entered military service as a Second Lieutenant of Infantry in 1917. He served in World War I in France and Luxembourg.

Between the Wars

Remaining in the Army following the end of the war, he taught military science at Mississippi State University from 1921–1925 and graduated from the Infantry School in 1926. After a posting to Hawaii, he graduated from the Command and General Staff School, the Army War College, and the Air Corps Tactical School.

World War II

At the beginning of World War II, Hodge was part of the staff of VII Corps. Being appointed Brigadier General, he started his combat career as part of the staff of General Joseph Lawton Collins in the Guadalcanal campaign. He then participated in the Bougainville campaign in 1943–1944. He was promoted to Major General during the Philippines Campaign in 1944. In 1945 he served on Okinawa, and he was promoted to Lieutenant General in August, becoming the commander of the XXIV Corps of the U.S. Tenth Army.

John R.

John R. (born John Richbourg, August 20, 1910, Manning, South Carolina; died February 15, 1986, Nashville, Tennessee) was an American radio disc jockey who attained fame in the 1950s and 1960s for playing rhythm and blues music on Nashville radio station WLAC. He was also a notable record producer and artist manager.

Richbourg was arguably the most popular and charismatic of the four announcers at WLAC who showcased popular African-American music in nightly programs from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. (The other three were Gene Nobles, Herman Grizzard, and Bill "Hoss" Allen.) Later rock music disc jockeys such as Alan Freed, Wolfman Jack, and others mimicked Richbourg's practice of using speech that simulated African-American street language of the mid-twentieth century.

Richbourg's highly stylized approach to on-air presentation of both music and advertising earned him popularity, but it also created identity confusion. Because Richbourg and fellow disc jockey Allen used African-American speech patterns, many listeners thought that both announcers were actually African-Americans. The disc jockeys used the mystique to their commercial and personal advantages until the mid-1960s, when their racial identities as Euro-Americans became public knowledge.