Big "Boomshakalaka!" to Waterloo Facebook show hosts
Community honors "North End Update" hosts; show debuted in 2017
WATERLOO – They’re the Divas of Discussion. The Countesses of Conversation. The Babes of BOOMSHAKALAKA!
Joshalyn “Rocki” Hickey Johnson and “Chaveevah” Cheryl Banks Ferguson are known collectively as “Rocki ‘n’ Chaveevah,” hosts of “North End Update,” an engaging talk show of local news and entertainment “straight outta Waterloo” they’ve hosted over their own Facebook page for almost seven years.
Each show begins with hosts and guests shouting the “Boomshakalaka!” tag line made famous by the musical group Sly & the Family Stone in the late 1960s. And the viewers can interact with them via comments on Facebook.
They’ve created a fun outlet for information and communication that makes a ribbon in the sky across the internet to unify and define those far and wide who claim as home the Cedar Valley area of Waterloo-Cedar Falls and Waverly.
They’re not only elevating the community’s profile, they are filling a need in an era when there’s a dearth of local news and news outlets in many parts of the country, and those organizations still fighting that good fight are struggling.
Their efforts were recently acknowledged when the duo was surprised with a Community Service Award at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. banquet in Waterloo, held the weekend of the national MLK birthday holiday. The event was hosted and awards were presented by Social Action Inc. with sponsorships by Hawkeye Community College, Veridian Credit Union and TruStage, formerly CUNA Mutual, which has an operation in Waverly.
“The reason they received the award is, first of all, they’re phenomenal,” said Black Hawk County NAACP president LaTanya Graves, who recommended the duo for the award. “There had been so many negative things posted about Waterloo-Cedar Falls and the Cedar Valley, our community. They stared doing their show, and showing all the positive things people do in the Cedar Valley.”
“The niche that we fill is for people who are tired of hearing bad stuff and looking for something good. That’s the people who want to watch us,” Johnson said.
“People say they see us like to interact as friends,” she added of the by-play between the co-hosts. “I think this kind of celebrates friendship.”
“I think we change what some folks might consider as newsworthy,” Ferguson said. “It’s local. Yes, we focus on the good stuff. But we provide, culturally, a platform where people can feel free to come on and talk. There’s always stuff that falls through the cracks you don’t see. We have a lot of people that like to see those things that may have fallen through the cracks. They like to tune in and see local stuff.”
The program started as a conversation aired over a smartphone in Johnson’s picturesque, landscaped backyard. Now they broadcast at least weekly from the public access studio at Waterloo City Hall. Mayor Quentin Hart is a frequent guest.
They’ve developed quite a following of current and former Cedar Valley residents and others, with regular viewers posting greetings from in town, across the country and beyond.
“That’s amazing to me,” Ferguson said. “Somebody in Germany pops in.” Another is in the Philippines.
It’s fun with a purpose. The program’s name, “North End Update” refers to a section of Waterloo that has been a cultural melting pot through most of the city’s history, and where the bulk of Waterloo’s Black population settled in the 1910s during the Great Migration from the South.
While the phrase “north end” was once considered derogatory, “Rocki ‘n’ Chaveevah” aim to uplift that part of town and the entire Cedar Valley area of Waterloo-Cedar Falls and Waverly in a fun way with news and information on organizations, events and individual achievements — with a plug for local businesses. North End Update, as the duo says, tells the ”Cedar Valley's good news from a North End perspective.”
It gives current and former residents a connection to many events in town like the Waterloo Homecoming celebration, a large reunion of sorts for many of Waterloo’s Black families generally held every three years; church-affiliated drill team competitions and community milestones like the opening of All-In Grocers, a Black-owned grocery and the first grocery of any kind in its predominantly Black neighborhood in more than 50 years.
"People are glad to see that," Ferguson said, that "there's something good going on in Waterloo." The program, and student interns helping produce the show, are supported by the Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa, the Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, the Bakari Project and the Grout Museum District.
The program’s hosts, former sisters in law but lifetime friends, also have individual accomplishments of note.
Johnson was one of the first women to work in the foundry at Viking Pump in Cedar Falls, where she worked 30 years and retired in 2007. She has published a children’s book “Susie Clark: The Bravest Girl You’ve Ever Seen,” about how a school-age girl and her attorney father, Alexander Clark, won a school desegregation case in Muscatine in 1868 – 86 years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s federal desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
Ferguson, a Chicago native and Waterloo resident since the mid-1980s is an award-winning former Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier staff writer, accomplished artist and book illustrator. She completed a large mural on local Black history as part of a permanent “Black Stories Collective” exhibit at the Grout Museum District, for which she also has conducted oral history interviews of prominent local Black residents.
Both women are the daughters of World War II veterans and make a point of having recurring veteran-themed programs.
“North End Update” airs live 4 p.m. Fridays on the North End Update Facebook page, where a recorded version may also be viewed. A “pre-boom” teaser airs at 4:45 p.m. It’s also available on the program’s YouTube channel. More information is available at https://northendupdate.org/
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. Click on their links below to sample their work.
The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative
Thank you for this wonderful essay. These two women are truly grassroots community builders. I’m planning on tuning in to their program. All of us need to have good news in our lives.