Studs Terkel

Author and broadcaster Louis “Studs” Terkel was born in New York on May 16, 1912, to a tailor and a seamstress. In 1922, the family moved to Chicago and opened a rooming house where Terkel learned to interact with tenants of various backgrounds. After graduating from high school, Terkel attended the University of Chicago and received his law degree in 1934. He began working as a radio producer for the Federal Writers’ Project but soon found work performing in radio soap operas and other radio shows. After a year in the Air Force, Terkel returned to his work in radio and had his own show on WENR. From 1949 to 1950, he starred in his own television show, “Stud’s Place,” a comedy about a restaurant owner in Chicago. In 1950 the show was cancelled and Terkel was blacklisted after being investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. He returned to radio with the “Studs Terkel Almanac” and later the “Studs Terkel Show” on WFMT, where he conducted his famous interviews. He also began publishing oral histories that included interviews with Americans about the Depression, World War II, the American dream, and their everyday lives. His books include “Giants of Jazz” (1956), “Division Street: America” (1967), “Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression” (1970), “Working” (1974), “The Good War” (1984), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, “Chicago” (1986), “The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream” (1988), “Race: What Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession” (1992), “Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who’ve Lived It” (1995), “Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times” (1995), “My American Century” (1997), “Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth and Hunger for a Faith” (2001), and “And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey” (2005).