The Soul Train Line Was an Audition for Joy

Here's some tea with history on it: the dance line at every cookout, wedding and family reunion you've ever attended, two rows of people, one dancer strutting down the middle, was beamed into America's living rooms by one impossibly smooth man from Chicago.

Don Cornelius launched Soul Train in 1970 as a local Chicago show, reportedly bankrolled with about $400 of his own money. A year later it went into national syndication out of Los Angeles, created by, hosted by, and OWNED by a Black man, which in 1971 television was nearly unheard of. It ran for thirty-five years.

Saturday mornings, the coolest hour on earth: the afros, the fashion risks that always landed, the artists everyone needed to see, and that voice, the deepest sign-off in broadcasting.

The Soul Train line worked because it was an invitation with stakes. Everybody claps for you, and everybody is also judging you, lovingly, at full volume. It was an audition for joy, and everyone who ever danced down one, on the show or at your auntie's birthday, passed.

“As always in parting, we wish you love, peace... and SOUL.”

The line outlived the show, which is the highest thing you can say about any piece of culture. Somebody will form one this weekend. Somebody's uncle is stretching for it right now.