'People living on the edge of history and trying to figure it out as they go along. The professor emeritus of history at University at Buffalo has written about the book, and sees it now as a powerful reminder of how Americans in the past confronted their country crumbling. Hauntingly, she added, 'Then of course, the war came.' She pauses. Schoolteacher Elsa Ponsell discussed how the threat of communism and socialism was used to generate fear. The wife of a World War I veteran, Mary Owlsey, remembered street protests in the 1930s by WW I veterans. 'All kind of propaganda has been going on, making people hate each other,' observed Peggy Terry, a migrant farm worker during the Depression. Many of the voices in Hard Times feel oddly prescient. 'But it would behoove the federal government not to let it come.'ĪP Studs Terkel stands outside his home in Chicago on July, 8, 1997. 'I think it could,' Langston answered mildly. 'You think a Depression of that intensity could come again?' Terkel wondered.

He told Terkel about his father, a restaurant owner in Arkansas, who fed hungry families and lent money to the town's White sheriff - even in their brutally segregated southern community. Robin Langston was an African-American social worker and jazz musician who was born during the Depression. He spoke with college dropouts, hoboes, erotic dancers, teachers, activists and more. Terkel spent years researching Hard Times. 'The first time I became conscious of it was when our bank closed and I lost everything in it.' 'Well, I think of the bank failures,' Terrell replies quietly. It's one of many interviews archived online by WFMT, the station where Terkel held the job title 'Free Spirit' for more than 45 years.

'I say to you, the Great American Depression, what's the first thought comes to your mind?' Terkel inquired of Iowa farmer Harry Terrell for Hard Times. Hard Times was Terkel's second bestseller (preceded by another oral history, Division Street: America) and he'd already begun using a portable tape recorder to capture interviews with everyday people beyond his Chicago studio. But Terkel's stature was national his book The Good War: An Oral History of World War II won a 1985 Pulitzer Prize and his 1974 bestseller Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day And How They Feel About What They Do was adapted into a popular Broadway musical. Before his death in 2008, Terkel brought both working class boosterism and intellectual rigor to his shows, broadcast on local stations for more than half a century.

Hard times terkel