Studs Terkel, one of the inventors of oral history, died yesterday at the age of 96. The Pulitzer Prize winner journalist is known for doing interviews with ordinary people and was the host of a popular Chicago radio show.

There’s a excellent obituary in the New York Times today by William Grimes. Here’s an excerpt from a blog post by Tom McNamee in the Chicago Sun Times:

Hey, Tom," says an editor in the newsroom. "Studs Terkel died."

I stop, turn around.

 

"He did?"

There is a small pain in my voice. I can’t hide it. Studs Terkel died.

Because I am a Chicagoan, Studs Terkel was my teacher.

Because you are a Chicagoan, Studs was your teacher.

I knew him, a bit. One of the glories of working for a newspaper — sometimes you get to meet your heroes.

But it doesn’t matter if you never met him. Studs was your teacher, too.

If you ever read a story or a column by me or by a hundred other
reporters and columnists in this town that made you stop and think,
that made you bigger in the heart, more open, more tolerant, more
accepting, more loving, chances are you were getting a dose of Studs,
the spirit that says give people a break.

I once wanted to write a story about racial tensions in Marquette
Park. I picked up my notebook and walked around the neighborhood and
found two families — one white and one black — and tried to tell their
stories right and fair, like I had learned from Studs in books like
Division Street and Working.

It wasn’t necessary, I had learned from Studs, to pass judgment, to
declare right and wrong, to pick sides, to feel superior, to sneer. It
was enough to find two families, one white and one black, and try to
see. To listen. To understand.

Where did the rage come from in Marquette Park, the stones through
the windows, the hate? And was it hate or was it really fear? And where
was that one thing these two families share, whether they could see it
or not, that one thing that mattered more than skin color or home
values or fear, that lovely shared humanity?

Studs could see it, always — that river that flows through all of us
and makes us more alike than not. He insisted on seeing it. And I
wanted to see it, too.

People read Shakespeare — "If you prick us, do we not not bleed?" —
and learn to see. I read Studs and listened to him on the radio.

If I have learned to see at all — and I can’t say for sure that I have — it has much to do with Studs.