Terkel’s bestselling oral history book Race: How Blacks & Whites Feel about the American Obsession from 1992 synthesized a topic that was central to him throughout his entire career and the conversations in this topic are among the most meaningful contributions in the archive in helping understand both the great flaws and potential in American society.

Studs Terkel played the role of the gleeful Luddite, never learning to drive a car, operate a computer or even reliably run a tape recorder despite many decades of radio and oral history making.

While radio was Studs Terkel’s main media home, he himself spent time on the small screen as a star of one of the milestone programs of the short-lived Chicago School of Television, Studs Place.

We in Chicago are very proud of our hometown star, Gwendolyn Brooks.  She was poet laureate in Illinois and the first African-American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Quality of life for working men and women was so important to Studs.  Many people are familiar with his book Working that brought their lives and struggles into the light, but Studs also interviewed dozens (hundreds?) of people about their jobs for his regular radio show. 

We’ve partnered with the Chicago Public Library's YOUmedia department and the Great Books Foundation to develop a series of curricula using audio from the archive to teach critical listening skills for students in grades 9–12.