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15 Years of Stories


Thu, Dec 22, 2011

Fifteen years ago, we began giving people tape recorders and helping them tell their own stories for NPR. To mark our anniversary, today's podcast takes a look back at some of our favorites stories from the last fifteen years. It's hosted by Ira Glass, and there's a video version available on our website at www.radiodiaries.org. Thanks for listening.

November 23, 1936 was a good day for recorded music. Two men – an ocean apart – sat before a microphone and began to play. One was a cello prodigy who had performed for the Queen of Spain; the other played guitar and was a regular in the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta.

But on that day, Pablo Casals and Robert Johnson both made recordings that would change music history.

In the summer of 1932, a group of World War I veterans in Portland, Oregon hopped a freight train and started riding the rails to Washington DC. They were demanding immediate payment of a cash bonus the government had promised them after the war – but delayed until 1945. Desperate for relief in the worst year of the Depression, the vets wanted their bonuses now. They called themselves the Bonus Army.

By July, more than 20,000 veterans and their families had arrived in the nation’s capital. They established a tent city and vowed to stay until their demands were met. But finally, in a historic confrontation, General Douglas MacArthur’s Army troops routed the Bonus Army and burned their camp to the ground.

Retired miner Jimmy Weekley has lived in Pigeonroost Holler, West Virginia for 70 years. Like most West Virginians, Weekley saw coal as the economic lifeblood of his community. But in the 1990s, Arch Coal moved into his area and began work on one of the largest mountaintop removal mining sites ever proposed: virtually in Weekley's backyard. Weekley sued to stop the mine and won a temporary restraining order.

Over the last decade, Weekley has watched his family and neighbors take buyouts from Arch Coal and leave the area. But Weekley refuses to sell.

Today is Nelson Mandela's birthday.

In 1964, facing a possible death sentence for treason, Nelson Mandela stood up in front of a packed courtroom in South Africa and delivered what would later be called his "I am prepared to die" speech. In many ways, that speech turned Mandela into the leader he was to become. These were the last words the world would hear from Mandela for 27 years:

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison before being released in 1990. Four years later he was President of a new South Africa.

Happy birthday, Nelson Mandela.

Last month, renowned cellist Bernard Greenhouse died at the age of 95. Greenhouse spent almost his entire life playing and teaching the cello.  Radio Diaries profiled him in 2008.

Today, we remember Greenhouse's life, and his music.

One of the last songs Johnny Cash recorded before he died was called Ain't No Grave (Gonna Hold My Body Down). But the song isn't a Johnny Cash original. Ain't No Grave was actually written in 1934, by a twelve year old boy named Claude Ely. Ely went on to become an itinerant Pentecostal preacher known to his followers as Brother Claude, the Gospel Ranger. Brother Claude was a fiery speaker and an electrifying singer. Outside the Appalachian mountains, his name was barely known. But his music helped influence some of the pioneers of rock and roll.

Today, June 16th, is the 35th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising, when a group of schoolchildren changed South Africa forever. What started as a student demonstration exploded across the country, helping to galvanize the struggle to dismantle apartheid.

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