Hattie Massey Leeper

Hattie Massey Leeper died on Tuesday 13 October 2026 in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the age of 98. Her family announced her death the same day. No cause of death was made public.

In a statement, her granddaughter Hatiya Dunlap said: "Our grandmother was a trailblazer who believed in the power of her voice to connect people, celebrate music, and create opportunities for others. While generations of listeners knew her as 'Chatty Hatty,' to our family she was a woman of extraordinary determination, creativity, and faith. We are immensely proud of her contributions to broadcasting and the lasting legacy she leaves behind."

Her death was reported by WCNC, WSOC TV, The Charlotte Post and other outlets in the region, and Charlotte broadcasters and music figures shared tributes on social media. The family said funeral and memorial arrangements were being finalised and would be announced at a later date.

Hattie Massey Leeper was born on 4 September 1928 in Edgemoor, South Carolina, according to The Charlotte Post's obituary. (A 2025 Charlotte Ledger profile gave her birth year as 1930, but the 1928 date matches her reported age of 98 at death.) Her family moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, when she was young and settled in the Third Ward, near the site of today's Bank of America Stadium. Her father worked as head custodian at the school that later became Central Piedmont Community College, and her parents hoped she would become a teacher.

She attended Black schools in uptown Charlotte during segregation. By her early teens she and her mother had moved to Brookhill Village, a short walk from the WGIV studios at Toomey Avenue and Remount Road. At 14, while a student at Second Ward High School, she asked her mother whether she could spend time at the station. She began running errands, organising records, answering phones and helping with bookkeeping, and the station soon took her on as a studio assistant. At her 2025 North Carolina Music Hall of Fame induction she described those years as laying the foundation, or "building her rock," for everything that followed.

Radio. Leeper's broadcasting career began by chance at WGIV, the first Charlotte station programmed for a Black audience. When the announcer in one time slot could not continue his show, she sat down at the board, segued his records and kept the programme going. "I was at the right place at the right time," she told UNC Charlotte in 2006. "And I continued from then on having that show." In 1951, at 17, she had her own show, and after finishing high school she was hired as a full time disc jockey at WGIV, then the city's top station. She was the first Black woman radio announcer in North Carolina and one of very few Black women on the air anywhere in the South.

She was the only woman in a WGIV line up that included "Genial Gene" Potts, "Rocking Ray" Gooding and "Hound Dog" Pete Toomey. As "Chatty Hatty" she rhymed on the air in the style of the era's personality DJs, read news and opinion segments, played birthday and anniversary dedications, voiced advertising spots for local merchants that could run as long as 15 minutes, and invited community organisations such as the YMCA, the Boys and Girls Club, Big Brothers, the Girl Scouts and 4-H clubs to promote their work. In all she spent 18 years on the air at WGIV, WRPL and WAYS before leaving radio in 1973.

Music business. Leeper played, promoted and booked many of the leading rhythm and blues and gospel acts of the day, including James Brown, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Patti LaBelle, Smokey Robinson and the Jackson 5. She emceed for James Brown, whom she called "my main man," and became friends with Motown founder Berry Gordy. She wrote liner notes for Aretha Franklin and Patti LaBelle, wrote and produced music, managed several groups and opened two record stores. Her own label, AwarE, focused on promising regional talent; she wrote and produced regional hits for it and travelled to Chicago and New York for sessions, including at the invitation of Atlantic Records president Jerry Wexler. The North Carolina Music Hall of Fame credits her label work with Cashbox and Billboard number one records.

Teaching. From 1973 Leeper moved fully into academia. She taught communications at Johnson C. Smith University, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Central Piedmont Community College and Gaston College. At Gaston College she led the communications and broadcasting department for 11 years and retired as its chair in 1998. She then founded Chatty's School of Communication, which trained aspiring broadcasters and helped young artists into the industry through her contacts. She also wrote plays and a self published autobiography, Chatty Hatty: The Legend. In 2024 she said the one thing she still wanted to do was open a movie studio.

Leeper spent almost her entire life in Charlotte and spoke often of her love for the city. "I'm so glad I had the sense to stay where I love, and that's right here at home," she told WSOC TV in 2024. "This is home. Charlotte. I love it, I love it."

During segregation, touring performers who could not check into downtown hotels or eat in white owned restaurants often came first to her family's home. "My mother would have soul food cooked," she recalled. "They could come in, wash their hands, and my mother would feed them until they dropped." Singers including Tina Turner, Mary Wells, Gladys Knight and LaVern Baker treated the house as a home away from home.

In later life she lived in west Charlotte in a home filled with plaques, trophies and mementos from stars such as Diana Ross, Jackie Wilson and Otis Redding. She served as an usher at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church and enjoyed entertaining family and friends. She was survived by family including her granddaughter Hatiya Dunlap, who spoke for the family after her death and described her as a woman of extraordinary determination, creativity and faith. Other details of her private life were not widely reported.

Leeper opened the door for Black women in North Carolina broadcasting at a time when Southern radio was segregated and almost entirely male. As the first Black woman radio announcer in the state, and one of the first in the South, she showed that a woman could not only hold her own in a star DJ line up but also shape the regional music business as a promoter, producer, manager and label owner.

Her influence continued through the classroom. Over a quarter of a century at Johnson C. Smith University, UNC Charlotte, Central Piedmont Community College, Gaston College and her own Chatty's School of Communication, she trained broadcasters who went on to careers in radio. Former students, including a 1998 graduate of her school, have credited her with opening doors for them in the industry.

Her story has been preserved by several institutions. She recorded oral histories with UNC Charlotte and, in 2023, with the Library of Congress Radio Preservation Task Force's Black Women in Radio project. Her career is featured in a radio history exhibit at the Levine Museum of the New South, and the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture honoured her as one of its Carolina Trailblazers, saying she "helped create a new lane for women of color in media, beyond Charlotte and into the national pathway." Charlotte broadcasters and music figures paid tribute on her death, recalling her as a legend of the city's airwaves.

Leeper was educated in Charlotte's segregated public schools and graduated from Second Ward High School, the city's historic high school for Black students, reportedly at 17 in 1951. She was already working at WGIV while still a pupil there.

Years later, after leaving full time radio, she returned to study and earned a master's degree in education administration, fulfilling her parents' long held hope that she would become an educator. That qualification opened the door to her second career teaching communications and broadcasting at colleges and universities in the Charlotte region. Between 2006 and 2007 she also recorded a series of oral history interviews with UNC Charlotte, which preserve her own account of her life and career.

Leeper saw broadcasting as a calling rather than a job. "It's in your blood," she told The Charlotte Post in 2023. "You don't ever get it out if you're sincere, if you like what you're doing, and you didn't feel that it was tiring. It wasn't work." The greatest joy of radio, she said, was making listeners happy on their birthdays and anniversaries with a dedicated song.

She believed that being a pioneer carried obligations. "You got to be sincere about this business of being a trailblazer," she told WCCB Charlotte. "You got to be humble, you got to be thankful. You got to help somebody." That belief shaped her decades of teaching and the school of communication she founded.

She spoke frankly about the segregation she grew up with, describing how Black customers in Charlotte had to order food at a back window beside the trash cans. She was also proud of the rhyming style of early Black radio and saw it as a forerunner of hip hop. "People think rap now is so extraordinary," she said. "They better not give me a chance. I already know how to do that with my eyes closed." Her family said faith was central to her life, and she remained active in her church into her nineties.

National Black Radio Hall of Fame. The North Carolina Music Hall of Fame and The Charlotte Ledger date her induction to 2022, the year of a Hall of Fame parade in St. Louis she attended; some obituaries give 1989.

North Carolina Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

Charlotte Broadcasting Hall of Fame, inaugural class of 2015.

Carolina Beach Music Hall of Fame recognition, among the trophies displayed in her home.

Black Women in Radio award and a lifetime achievement award.

Carolina Trailblazer, Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture.

Featured participant, Library of Congress Radio Preservation Task Force Black Women in Radio Historic Collection and Oral History Project (April 2023).

North Carolina Music Hall of Fame, announced as a 2025 inductee on 5 May 2025 and inducted on 16 October 2025 at the Mooresville Performing Arts Center.

Leeper told her own story in a self published autobiography, Chatty Hatty: The Legend. She also wrote plays.

Her life has been documented in oral history interviews with UNC Charlotte (2006 to 2007) and with the Library of Congress Radio Preservation Task Force (2023). She was a frequent subject of Charlotte media, including a 2015 WCCB Charlotte interview about her Charlotte Broadcasting Hall of Fame induction, a 2019 Black History Month spotlight by Brigida Mack, a City of Charlotte video on her inspiration and legacy, a June 2023 Charlotte Post profile titled "It's in your blood," a February 2024 WSOC TV Black History Month interview with Erica Bryant, WCNC features, an appearance at the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Forum in Charlotte, and a March 2025 Charlotte Ledger series piece on figures who shaped the city.

At her 2025 North Carolina Music Hall of Fame induction, her acceptance speech was followed by a short video showing her on the air during her WGIV years.