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Studs Terkel
 May 16, 1912,
marks the birthday of a journalist
who made a name for himself in Carl Sandburg's favorite city, hog butcher
for the world, Chicago.
Studs Terkel was born Louis Terkel in the Bronx, New York. He
attended the University of Chicago and received a law degree in 1934,
although he soon decided not to pursue a career practicing law. After
a short stint with the
civil service in Washington D.C., he returned to Chicago and worked with the WPA Writers Project in the radio division.
When his producer asked him to read a script one day, Terkel soon found
himself in the unlikely position of soap opera actor, from which he was
graduated to other stage performances and to a WAIT
news show. After a year in the Air Force, he returned to writing radio
shows and ads. He was on a sports show on WBBM and then, in 1944, he
landed his own show on WENR. It was called the Wax Museum show, and it
allowed him to express his own personality and play recordings he liked
best--from
folk music and opera to jazz and the blues. A year later, he had his own
television show called Stud's Place and started asking people the kind of
questions that would mark his later work as an interviewer {LISTEN}.
 In the early 1960s, Terkel decided to start interviewing ordinary people for a
book called Division Street (1967), about the changing demographics
of Chicago. One of the first people he interviewed for the book was a mother
of four children, living in poverty. After the interview was over, the
woman's children wanted to hear their mother's voice, so Terkel played back the
tape. The mother was shocked to hear her own opinions expressed out
loud, and she said she'd never even known she felt that way until Terkel had
asked her. At that moment, Terkel decided to devote himself to interviewing
as many ordinary people as he could for the rest of his life.
 Terkel went on to publish a series of books in which he interviewed
everyday
people about different subjects. In 1974, he published Working
(1974), a collection of interviews of working class people, everyone from
steelworkers to prostitutes, talking about their jobs. His other books of
interviews include "The Good War": An Oral History of World War II
(1984), RACE: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession (1991), and Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith (2001).
His most recent book, Hope Dies Last, came out in 2003.
Terkel, who
is now in his nineties, has said that he wants his epitaph to read,
"Curiosity never killed this cat." The author continues to
work on his books and currently serves as a distinguished scholar-in-residence
at the Chicago Historical Society.
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