Introduction
Armed with his microphone and recorder, Studs Terkel was a determined activist for civil rights in his city and his nation.
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Armed with his microphone and recorder, Studs Terkel was a determined activist for civil rights in his city and his nation. Terkel was a passionate chronicler of the Civil Rights movement and produced major documentaries on various aspects of struggles for a more just society. His award-winning program This Train, for example, is a remarkable audio portrait of the civil rights march in Washington D.C. in 1963. His sequence of in-the-field audio reports during the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 are remarkably raw accounts of those involved in the march and those who opposed it. The archive also features historic interviews with leaders from African-American, Latino, Native American and other civil rights struggles such as Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Roger Buffalohead, Stokely Carmichael, Cesar Chavez, Henry Louis Gates, Dick Gregory, Alex Haley, Dolores Huerta, C.L.R. James, Alex Murray, Cornell West as well as many other leaders and front-line participants. The Civil Rights programs also explore the many ways in which arts such as music, theater, literature, and visual art captured the spirit of social movements.
