BURBANK: Disney Channel, Disney XD and Disney Junior are commemorating Black History Month with the “Be Inspired” interstitial series focused on African-American heroes.<\/p>\n
The initiative starts today with the story of Charles Alfred “Chief” Anderson Sr., an African-American pilot known as the “Father of Black Aviation.” This Disney Channel and Disney XD interstitial,\u00a0hosted\u00a0by Nathaniel Potvin (MECH-X4<\/em>), is <\/em>meant for children between the ages of 6 and 14.\u00a0On February 8, Doc McStuffins will introduce 2- to 7-year-old Disney Junior and Disney Channel viewers to a number of notable men and women, including Stephanie R. Grant, a pilot who led the first all-female African-American flight crew to operate a commercial airliner.<\/p>\n Also throughout the month, Disney Channel will broadcast interstitials that pay tribute to such African Americans as Martin Luther King Jr., former President Barack Obama, Jackie Robinson, Maya Angelou, Ella Fitzgerald, Lee Daniels and Viola Davis, among others. One of the segments sees Descendants<\/em> star Cameron Boyce talk about how his grandmother, Jo Ann Allen Boyce, was part of “The Clinton 12,” the historical African-American teens who were the first to integrate a public school in the South during the 1950s.<\/p>\n Paul DeBenedittis, the senior\u00a0VP of programming strategy for Disney Channels Worldwide, commented: “As television programmers, we work every day to better serve our kid viewers by reflecting the diverse and varied world they live in, and our ‘Be Inspired’ programming is designed to give them access to stories that can spark their deeper exploration into the rich and celebrated history of African Americans.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BURBANK: Disney Channel, Disney XD and Disney Junior are commemorating Black History Month with the “Be Inspired” interstitial series focused on African-American heroes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":479,"featured_media":11683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[2288,2289,111,112,169],"class_list":["post-11682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-be-inspired","tag-black-history-month","tag-disney-channel","tag-disney-junior","tag-disney-xd","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\n