Wood For Trees ... a simple question [JS, CS3]

I've done all the hard work, got the information I'm looking for and now I wish to place it as an overlay on top of an image. The text frame is there, it has the text in it, but when I attempt to make the frame fill a transparent black, the text also becomes transparent black and vanishes into the frame. If I make the text white it is transparent white. How do I separate the transparency of the text from the transparency of the frame? I'ved done this successfully in AS, but JS is proving a trickier proposition...