R.I.P.: 'Ralph From Ben Hill', Former Atlanta Talk Show Host

Calvin Smith (1950-2024)

Former Atlanta radio host Ralph from Ben Hill has died at age 74.  Calvin Miles Smith Jr. — Ralph’s real name — died Tuesday from cardiac arrest, reports ajc.com.

He started calling into radio shows in the late 1970s and 1980s expressing his opinion on the news of the day. He said he was tired of hearing whites complain about Black people. “So I called to talk about white folks,” he said. He was so entertaining that news/talk WGST 640 AM gave him a radio show in 1989.

“He was delightful. He was engaging. He was interesting,” said Neal Boortz, a longtime Atlanta radio host who took Smith’s calls on a regular basis in the 1980s when Boortz was on both Ring Radio and WGST. “We didn’t agree on stuff but he was engaging and polite.”

While on radio, Smith decided to call himself Ralph from Ben Hill. It’s a combination of his favorite TV show character, Ralph Kramden from the 1950s show “The Honeymooners,” and the Southwest Atlanta neighborhood he lived in.

Eric Seidel, who was station manager at WGST and hired Smith, found him hilarious, recalling him facetiously calling the afternoon traffic reports the “White Flight Report.”

On his WGST radio show, Smith espoused a controversial mix of Black nationalism and social conservatism, tweaking Atlanta officials and the white power structure.

“I’m torn between being an entertainer and liberator,” Smith told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1992. “My people want me to be Malcolm X, but the general audience wants me to be Arsenio [Hall], a good crossover Negro. I try to find myself a place somewhere between the two. It’s hard. I have to be real. If I ain’t real, it would be like a red flag. I ain’t trying to start no revolution or riot. I want folks to think. I want community-based action.”