Terkel Studs - Studs Terkel: politics, culture, but mostly conversation

STUDS TERKEL

Politics, Culture, but Mostly Conversation

ALAN WIEDER

Copyright 2016 by Alan Wieder

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the publisher

ISBN: 978-1-58367-593-9 paper

ISBN: 978-1-58367-594-6 cloth

MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS, NEW YORK

www.monthlyreview.org

Typeset in Bulmer 11/14

5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to Craig Kridel
whose work with African American teachers in
the South mirrors Studs lifelong belief
in conversation and democracy.

THIS PROJECT BEGAN IN MY HEAD over twenty years ago. As a university oral historian, it was Studs Terkels books that made my work possible, credible in the academic setting that swept further and further into the world of empirical data. Peoples stories were not to be trusted, but Studs made them legitimate. Studs radio interviews, available through the generosity of Tony Macaluso, Angela Schein, and their colleagues at WFMT, as well as Studs numerous books, have been instrumental to my work. Tom Weinbergs videos of Studs at Media Burn and Transoms interviews were also invaluable. I am deeply indebted to the Chicago History Museum. Russell Lewis and Lesley Martin facilitated my access to the many boxes of Studs yet to be catalogued public papers. In addition, I would be remiss if I didnt mention Tony Parkers book of interviews, Studs Terkel: A Life in Words, and the many articles that Chicago journalist Rick Kogan has scribed about Studs.

But since this book is more collage/oral history than biography, I want to express my gratitude to the people who kindly had conversations with me about their memories of Studs. Each persons name is listed in the bibliography and their words are cited throughout the book. Studs worked at WFMT Radio for forty-five years, and his colleagues at the station, Lois Baum, Sydney Lewis, and Tony Judge, were always available for my many additional questions. Two other colleagues at the station, George Drury and Donald Tait, through the kindness of their hearts, sent me artifacts that brought greater understanding of Studs. Other individuals I interviewed, Pearl Hirshfield, Katrina vanden Huevel, Mark Larson, David Schwimmer, Prexy Nesbit, Victor Navasky, Peter Kuttner, Bernardine Dohrn, and Bill Ayers, introduced me to individuals who were part of Studs life.

Some of the same people kindly read chapter drafts and others the entire manuscript. As with my prior book, Joanie Krug was with me through all thirty-plus drafts. Craig Kridel, Bill Ayers, Mark Larson, Tony Macaluso, and Paul Buhle provided feedback; and oral historian Ronald Grele judiciously reviewed the entire manuscript. At Monthly Review Press, Erica Biddle, Erin Clermont, and Michael Yates thoroughly and critically edited the entire manuscript. All of these readers have made Studs Terkel: Politics, Culture, but Mostly Conversation a better book.

As was the case with my previous Monthly Review book, the support of the people at the press was incomparable. Besides Michael Yates, appreciative thanks go to Susie Day and Martin Paddio. Tony Macaluso must again be acknowledged as it was he who provided the WFMT photographs that appear on the cover. And, of course, I am particularly thankful to Kevin Coval, whose poetry brings me both rage and smiles, and who is every bit as Chicago as Studs. I am also grateful that the books afterword, a poem on Studs, was generously gifted by Haki Madhubuti. There are two others who must be again noted: Bill Ayers, who brought Chicago to me; and Joanie Krug, whose support and love was all-in throughout the project and beyond.

STUDS TERKEL WAS AMERICAS GREATEST LISTENER. he changed the way we listen & to who. he sat with thousands of people across the spectrum of existence & garnered a broader & broader notion of who the population was & what they dreamed of & feared. a true & radical democrat, not of the party, but of the social experiment, he celebrated the uncelebrated. a champion of the underdog. he would go to the story, the person, to the history, around us now & listen. he made oral history the new journalism, a peoples journalism.

Studs was a Chicago centrist, who put on for theater groups & artists & writers & musicians from here. a megaphone for the raw talent & urban realists around him. a documenter of Chicagos Janus-head & broken heart. a white ally before the term. more than an ally, which connotes a static position of undoing or of not doing, an idleness. Studs was constant & constantly active & moving & speaking against the monolith. Studs was aligned with equity & racial justice & aware of his privilege, I am furious at myself. they have suffered these humiliations, not I.

i have tears in my eyes after reading the conclusion to Alan Wieders book Studs Terkel: Politics, Culture, but Mostly Conversation. Chicago misses Studs so much. so much right now. we are a city at war. a city that dehumanizes & criminalizes its young. that shoots them dead in the street and holds the evidence for 400 days to win a mayoral election. a city that pushes its poor to the fringes & cow tows to the millionaires. Studs would be pissed right now. hed be raging on a stage or behind a microphone demanding justice. hed be at the homes of the families who lost someone, comforting & hearing them, like he did with Mamie Till. hed be in the streets along side the young Black & queer activists in organizations like BYP 100 & We Charge Genocide & Assatas Daughters, organizers who are making Chicago inhabitable for all bodies. Studs Terkel put his body where his politic was. in a moment of turmoil & twitter activism, Wieders revelatory & beautiful biography of a Chicago/american hero is an essential reminder that our life is a collection of actions, of showing up & knowing people & knowing which side we fight on.

here is a blueprint of how to work in the world. a rigorous portrait of a rigorous life of intentionality & un-compromise. how refreshing & lovely to come to know the man behind the microphone. someone who spent years & years hearing & tributing the unheard, now has an appropriate & stunning tribute of his own in Wieders prose.

this is not the portrait of the grandfather mascot the city can defang, which happens when some in city hall or mainstream cultural institutions utter the name Studs beneath glass chandeliers & neo-liberalism. nope. this is a portrait of the life of the firebrand, of Studs the radical, the red, the never no snitch, the radio man who loved Ida like he did the city, who loved the city like he did the people who made it great. Studs social life & circle is a whos who of counter cultural makers, from Richard Wright to Mahalia Jackson to James Baldwin. his cipher, a stunning account of the american organic intellectual fabric of the last century. all in one man, one little jew, who i miss so much, who i shared a stage with at Steppenwolf speaking against endless war, who Rick Kogan introduced my work to & came back with a handwritten note that continues to be the apex of my literary accomplishments. i miss seeing & hearing Studs around the city, in his red socks, cracking a joke & coming back with a jab & upper cut at some threat to the dignity of a life.

i miss Studs so much. & yet here he is, in the mouths of the masses, he listens in the wind, at the water, in the streets to the people who demand this city/country be more & more just. Studs has influenced & given rise to the renegade journalist, the poets of portraiture & resistance. his ears open & giant but not a big as his heart, not as lovely as his ability to make so many feel seen & heard. Wieders book makes the man flesh & bone. This is a tribute to one of the greatest men in the history of the greatest & most horrible of cities. Studs the mayor of the eternal saloon! Studs the great comrade & convener of the counter culture. Studs to save us all, to make us all more whole & human & holy. a mensch, a tzadik. Chicagos secular saint. read & listen & listen & listen & go forth & make the totality of the city/country seen. the whole & holy horror & hilarity. the whole Studs accounted for, wanted to account for, wanted the whispers from the margin to be as grand & grander than the pork-bellied bellows of the oligarch in the downtown hold. the masses are coming. Studs is listening, ready for the rumble.