Long before it belonged to the whole country, Soul Train belonged to Chicago. In the summer of 1970, a former radio newsman named Don Cornelius set up shop in a modest studio at local station WCIU, armed with a shoestring budget, a baritone that could smooth out sandpaper, and a conviction that Black music and the young people who danced to it deserved an hour of television all their own. Teenagers from the South and West Sides lined up for a chance to get on camera. Within a year, the show had moved to Los Angeles and gone national, and for the next 35 years, Saturday mornings across America moved to the rhythm of the Soul Train line.
This fall, the train rolls back to the city where it first left the station, and Anthony Anderson will call out the stops.
BET has tapped the Black-ish star to emcee Soul Train Awards 2026, set to broadcast Friday, Nov. 27, at 8 p.m. ET/PT. The ceremony will air on both BET and CBS, a simulcast that puts the night in front of a broadcast-sized audience on the evening after Thanksgiving, when families are still crowded around the television and the leftovers haven’t run out yet…