One hundred years ago, in 1921, a man named Harry Pace started the first major Black-owned record company in the United States. He called it Black Swan Records.

In an era when few Black musicians were recorded, the company was revolutionary. It launched the careers of Ethel Waters, Fletcher Henderson, William Grant Still, Alberta Hunter and other influential artists who transformed American music.

But Black Swan?s success would be short-lived. Just a couple years after Pace founded the company, larger, wealthier, white competitors started to take an interest in the artists whose careers Pace had propelled. Then, Pace?s own life took a mysterious turn.

****

This episode of Radio Diaries has support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and The Lily Auchincloss Foundation.

We are a proud member of Radiotopia, a network of creators who are able to follow their curiosity and tell the stories they care about the most. Show your support for Radiotopia during our Spring Fundraiser. Donate today at https://on.prx.org/3wl9pWn.

Twenty-five years ago, Josh Cutler was a 16-year old living with Tourette?s Syndrome, a brain disorder that often causes physical and verbal tics. For several months, he recorded cassette tapes of everything from conversations with his parents and classmates, to prank calls. This is his diary, which chronicles his attempts to live a normal teenage life with a brain that often betrays him.

Josh?s diary first aired as part of the Teenage Diaries series on NPR in 1996.

****

Radio Diaries is a proud member of Radiotopia, a network of creators who are able to follow their curiosity and tell the stories they care about the most. Show your support for Radiotopia during our Spring Fundraiser. Donate today at https://on.prx.org/3wl9pWn.

On May 31, 1921, white mobs attacked a prosperous Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as ?Black Wall Street.? As many as three hundred people were killed, and more than a thousand homes and businesses were destroyed.

Olivia Hooker was six years old at the time. She remembers watching white men with torches come through her family?s backyard, and hiding under a table with her siblings.

Radio Diaries interviewed Olivia Hooker about the massacre in 2018. Six months later, she passed away at age 103.

Today, to mark the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, we revisit our interview with Olivia Hooker and speak with Kavin Ross about why the story of the massacre was buried for decades.

****

Radio Diaries is a proud member of Radiotopia, a network of creators who are able to follow their curiosity and tell the stories they care about the most. Show your support for Radiotopia during our Spring Fundraiser. Donate today at https://on.prx.org/3wl9pWn.

This week we continue celebrating Radio Diaries? 25th anniversary by catching up with Juan from the Teenage Diaries series, which first aired on NPR in 1996.

Juan was 17 when we first gave him a tape recorder and asked him to record his life for a few months. He and his family had recently come to the U.S. from Mexico, and they were living in a trailer home just half a block from the Rio Grande in Texas.

Now, 25 years later, Juan lives in Colorado, where he owns his own company and has three kids. On this episode we air his original diary and more recent conversations where he reflects on life as an undocumented person, and the complexities of the American Dream.

CW: Juan?s original diary contains a description of a dead body.

****

Radio Diaries is a small non-profit organization. We make this show with support from listeners like you. You can hear all our stories, sign up for our newsletter, and donate on our website www.radiodiaries.org. Thank you for a quarter century of support.

This week marks a very special anniversary for Radio Diaries. It?s been 25 years since we first started giving people tape recorders to report on their own lives.

To celebrate, we recently checked in with our very first diarist, Amanda. Amanda was 17 when we first gave her a clunky cassette recorder and asked her to record her life for a few months. Her story about coming out of the closet as gay and clashing with her Catholic parents was part of a series called Teenage Diaries that aired on NPR in 1996.

Now, 25 years later, Amanda is married with kids, and her relationship with her parents has evolved. On this episode we air her original diary and more recent conversations with her parents and her new family.

****

Radio Diaries is a small non-profit organization. We make this show with support from listeners like you. You can hear all our stories, sign up for our newsletter, and donate on our website www.radiodiaries.org. Thank you for a quarter century of support.

One day in 1947, NYC bus driver William Cimillo showed up to his daily bus route, but instead of turning left, he turned right. Over the next week, he traveled 1,300 miles in his municipal bus, ending up in Hollywood, Florida. The bus had broken down, he?d run out of money, and had no way of getting home. Plus, he was now the most wanted bus driver in the country.

This story originally aired on This American Life. Go to www.radiodiaries.org to find more stories and sign up for our monthly newsletter.

***

We have music this week from Podington Bear and ?Detour? by Patti Page.
Radio Diaries has support this week from AcornTV. Use code ?diaries? to get your first 30 days free.

For the past year, most nursing homes and assisted living facilities have been in lockdown. Residents have been kept apart?not just from their families, but from each other. They ate meals alone in their rooms, met new grandchildren on Zoom, and some were alone when they died.

Today many retirement homes are starting to open up again. But the fact is, many people grow more isolated as they age. Even in normal times. Friends and partners pass away, family members and kids get distracted by their own lives. To many of us, nursing homes are a place where we too might end up?they?re a bit of mystery that we visit from time to time, a world apart.

Years ago, I got to know residents at Presbyterian Homes in Evanston, Illinois. And I gave a few of them tape recorders to keep audio diaries of their lives in retirement. Today on the show, The Last Place, diary of a retirement home.

***

Sponsored by Warby Parker. Try 5 pairs of glasses at home for free. Go to www.warbyparker.com/diaries

Music this week from Blue Dot Sessions and ?When I Grow Too Old to Dream? by Nat King Cole.

Soon after he entered office, President Biden issued an executive order allowing transgender people to serve in the military. It was the latest in a long series of shifts in who can serve and who can't. Women only recently were able to serve in certain ranks. And it wasn?t until 1993, that congress lifted a ban against women flying in combat. But women actually started flying military aircraft much earlier than that, 5 decades earlier. During World War II. They were known as the Women Airforce Service Pilots? the WASPs.

Music this week from Blue Dot Sessions, ?Flying? by the Beatles, and ?Come Josephine in My Flying Machine,? performed by Blanche Ring in 1910.

***

Sponsors:
Warby Parker - Try 5 pairs of glasses at home for free. www.warbyparker.com/diaries\
GreenChef - Get $90 off meal kits plus free shipping www.greenchef.com/90diaries

On August 8, 1988 ? a date chosen for its numerological power ? university students in Burma sparked an uprising against the military dictatorship. They?d been living under military rule their entires lives. And they had had enough. The uprising ultimately failed, but it planted the seeds of democracy. It was the moment Aung San Suu Kyi first appeared on the political scene, and became the icon of the democracy movement. Today on the podcast: we take you back to the summer of  1988, a moment in Burma when change seemed possible.

Music this week from Bang on a Can, Kyaw, Kyaw Naing, and Blue Dot Sessions.

One year ago, on Valentine?s Day 2020, Peter Fodera?s heart broke. It stopped working. He collapsed in the middle of teaching a dance class. Someone performed CPR, someone called an ambulance. EMT?s showed up and he lay motionless. He technically died that day. But later at the hospital, Peter?s heart started beating again. On the anniversary of Peter?s brief death, he sat down with his daughter Juliana who has Noonan Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. While Peter?s experience of dying and coming back to life may seem miraculous to some of us, it doesn?t to Juliana. By her count, she?s died 21 times.

Music this week from Podington Bear, Blue Dot Sessions, Man Man, and Gotan Project.

In 2012, Claressa Shields was a 16-year-old boxer in Flint, Michigan. She had an audacious dream: to be the Muhammad Ali of womens boxing. We gave her tape recorder to keep an audio diary as she fought to make it onto the first ever women?s Olympic boxing team.

Claressa is now 25 and fights professionally. With two gold medals and four world championships, she?s achieved her boxing dreams. But with boxing shut down during COVID, she has turned her attention to a different kind of dream. She bought a house. Today on the podcast, we hear Claressa?s original audio diary and bring you an update.

Teen Contender won a Peabody Award in 2012. The follow up story aired on This American Life as part of their 25th anniversary special.

After the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, we've all been trying to grapple with an event that feels so different from anything we?ve experienced before in this country. But this attack wasn?t the first time the Capitol has been violently breached. History books mention 1814 ? when the British army set fire to the Capitol. Less well known is what happened on March 1st, 1954. That?s when four young Puerto Rican New Yorkers launched an attack in the chamber of the House of Representatives.

****
Support this week from GreenChef, the first USDA-certified organic meal kit company. Use code diaries90 for $90 off and free shipping.

Robert and Wendy Jackson have been socially distancing under the same roof for 8 months. Robert is 71 and had a kidney transplant four years ago. His immune system is severely compromised. His wife, Wendy, is a pediatric emergency room doctor. When the pandemic hit in March, the couple made the difficult decision to live together?six feet apart. We also revisit the audio diary of 11-year-old Francesca Montanaro, who was going to school at her dad?s pizza shop in the Bronx.

Music from Blue Dot Sessions and ?Nunca Es Suficiente? by Natalia Lafourcade and Los Ángeles Azules.

***
Support from AcornTV which is now streaming ?A Suitable Boy? from the BBC. Use code ?DIARIES? to get a free 30-day trial.

When the pandemic hit back in March, Gali Beeri and Joshua Boliver decided to quarantine together, after their very first date. Today on the show, we check back in with them ? eight months later ? to see how a new relationship weathers a pandemic. Their story is part of our series Hunker Down Diaries, stories of people in unexpected situations during the pandemic. You can listen to the whole series on past episodes of the Radio Diaries Podcast.

Music from Blue Dot Sessions, Yo La Tengo, and ?Blaze & Sybil's Lullaby? by Alia Shawkat & Ben Dickey.

****

Support this week from Imagined Life, a podcast from Wondery.

It?s been 9 months since Joe Newman (107) and Anita Sampson (100) recorded their story about surviving the 1918 pandemic, getting older, and staying in love during lockdown. We?re thrilled to announce they just won a Third Coast Award! We share their story and check in with them in Sarasota, Florida where COVID cases are surging.

****

Support this week from AcornTV and their new series ?A Suitable Boy? from the BBC.

Presidential campaigns are essentially dramas, and we?re in the final act of this one. The curtain is about to come down.For the past century, the moment of closure has come in the form of one simple act: the public concession. From William Jennings Bryan to Adlai Stevenson to John McCain to Al Gore and Hillary Clinton?. A History of How To Lose An Election.

****

We have support from Imagined Life, a podcast from Wondery.
https://wondery.com/shows/imagined-life/

And Source Material, a new show from Vice.
https://video.vice.com/en_us/show/source-material

In an election season when the words "Will you condemn white supremacy" are considered a gotcha question at a presidential debate, it seems like a good time to look back at another moment in American history when race and ethnic division took center stage.

On February 20th, 1939, 20,000 people streamed into Madison Square Garden in New York City. Outside, the marquee was lit up with the evening's main event: a "Pro-American rally." Inside, on the stage, there was a 30-foot tall banner of George Washington, sandwiched between American flags...and two huge swastikas.

Today?s episode is a special collaboration with The Memory Palace and producer Nate DiMeo. Special thanks to Marshall Curry, whose film ?A Night To Remember? inspired this story.

Music from Blue Dot Sessions.

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. More than 20,000 veterans and their families arrived in the nation?s capital. They established a tent city and vowed to stay until their demands were met. But, in a historic confrontation, General Douglas MacArthur?s Army troops routed the veterans and burned their camp to the ground. This is the story of the Bonus Army.

See photos of the Bonus Army on our website. http://www.radiodiaries.org/march-of-the-bonus-army/

This summer, videos of Black people killed by police officers have sparked outrage and protests across the country. 65 years ago, it was a photograph that shocked the nation. The image of 14-year-old Emmett Till.

Till had traveled from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta to visit family, when he was kidnapped, horribly beaten and killed by white men after allegedly flirting with a white woman. His body was later found in the Tallahatchie river. Today, Emmett Till?s death is considered the spark that ignited the burgeoning Civil Rights movement.

But few people know there was another brazen murder of a Black man that happened just three months later, in a neighboring town in the Delta.  Today on the Radio Diaries Podcast, we tell the forgotten story of Clinton Melton.

***

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

A law and order politician who rails against anarchists protesting in the streets and the lying mainstream media? It may sound familiar, but we?re actually going back more than five decades on the show today, when Alabama Governor and four time presidential candidate George Wallace was perfecting the politics of resentment and race baiting. A lot of people have commented on the similarities between that time and now. Congressman John Lewis was one of them.

The Kearns family funeral business was founded in New York City in the year 1900. Over 120 years, the family has seen a lot of history. Patrick Kearns and Paul Kearns-Stanley are the owners. After 4 months, they finally had a chance to reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic, and how it's looked from their corner of New York. They sat down together on a recent evening ? at the end of a long work day ? in their funeral home in Queens.

This is our final installment of Hunker Down Diaries, at least for now. If you?ve enjoyed the series, tell a friend! And tag us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Music this week from Blue Dot Sessions and ?Hunker Down? by Big Dudee Roo.

COVID-19 has forced many families to improvise childcare. For some, it's been like a four month long 'bring your child to work' day. Paul Montanaro runs a pizza shop in the Bronx. That's where his 11-year-old daughter Francesca has been spending her days since her school shut down in March. Both of Francesca's parents are essential workers - her mom is an ICU nurse at a hospital in Manhattan.

For our Hunker Down Diaries series, we asked Francesca to keep an audio diary as she finished up 5th grade in the pizzeria.

Music this week from Blue Dot Sessions and ?Nunca Es Suficiente? by Los Angeles Azules and Natalia Lafourcade.

Coronavirus cases are on the rise across the country and the five largest clusters of the virus are in correctional institutions. This isn?t a surprise. Prisons are often overcrowded, social distancing is difficult, bathrooms and public spaces are shared by hundreds of inmates. Guards are constantly going in and out. In a pandemic, prison is probably the worst place a person could be.

Robbie Pollock spent 8 years in New York state prisons. Recently, he spoke with his friend Moe Monsuri, who has been incarcerated since 2007. Monsuri is currently serving his time at Sing Sing, a maximum security prison in upstate New York, where four inmates have died of COVID-19.

This story was produced by reporter Daniel Gross as part of our new series Hunker Down Diaries. You can find more of Daniel?s work at The New Yorker. Image by Acroterion. Music from Blue Dot Sessions.

Back in March, as the pandemic hit, many people across the country found themselves without a safety net. Naida Lavon was one of them. Naida is 67 and a former school bus driver. She was recently furloughed from her part time job at a rental car company. For the past few months, Naida?s been living in her car on the streets of Portland, Oregon. As part of our Hunker Down Diaries series, we bring you her story.

Music this week from Blue Dot Sessions and ?Home Again? by Michael Kiwanuka.

Renault Robinson was one of Chicago's few black police officers in the 1970s. He was a founder of the Afro-American Patrolmen's League.

We first learned about Robinson from Studs Terkel's book Working. Studs went around the country in the 1970s interviewing people about their jobs. Robinson's interview is one of the most powerful parts of the book. He is incredibly honest and blunt about what it was like to be a black police officer, and about the tensions between the police and the black community.

A few years ago, we interviewed Robinson for our series "Working, Then and Now." When you listen to his words from the 1970s, and from 50 years later, what's most striking is how much things haven't changed.

Gali Beeri and Joshua Boliver both live in New York City and they were both single back in March when the city was preparing to lock down. Then they decided to quarantine together, after their very first date. Their story is part of our series Hunker Down Diaries, a collaboration with NPR, bringing you stories of people in unexpected situations during the pandemic. If you have an idea for the series, write to [email protected] or find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Music this week from Blue Dot Sessions, Yo La Tengo, and ?Blaze & Sybil's Lullaby? by Alia Shawkat & Ben Dickey.

Most of the country is social distancing in public, but some people are doing it under the same roof. Robert Jackson is 71 and had a kidney transplant four years ago. His immune system is severely compromised. His wife, Wendy Jackson, is a pediatric emergency room physician. She runs the risk of being exposed to the coronavirus at work. So the couple made the difficult decision to live together... six feet apart. Their story is part of our series Hunker Down Diaries, a collaboration with NPR, bringing you stories of people in unexpected situations during the pandemic. If you have an idea for the series, write to [email protected] or find us on Facebook and Twitter.

This episode also features the series ?Our Show,? produced by Erica Heilman of the Rumble Strip Podcast, in collaboration with Transom.org.

Joe Newman is 107 years old. He was 5 during the flu pandemic of 1918. Today, he lives in a senior apartment complex in Sarasota, Florida with his fiancé, Anita Sampson. The complex is on lockdown, so we sent them a recorder and they interviewed each other on Anita's 100th birthday.

This story is the first in a new series called Hunker Down Diaries, surprising stories from people thrown together by the pandemic. Produced in collaboration with NPR. In the coming weeks we?ll be bringing you more stories about a teenager in foster care, the daily life of hospital workers, and a couple who decided to quarantine together after their first date. If you have an idea for the series we?d love to hear from you. You can send your quarantine stories to info@radiodiaries. Or find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Series art by 13milliseconds.

There?s a long history in America of white people imagining black people?s lives - in novels, in movies, and sometimes in journalism.  In 1969, Grace Halsell, a white journalist, published a book called Soul Sister.

It was her account of living as a ?black woman? in the United States. Lyndon Johnson provided a blurb for the book, and it sold over a million copies.

Halsell was inspired by John Howard Griffin?s Black Like Me, which came out in 1961. That was inspired by an even earlier book in the 1940?s.

It?s hard to imagine any of these projects happening now. It seems like a kind of journalistic blackface. But Halsell?s book raises a lot of questions that are still relevant today - about race, and the limits of empathy.

This episode is a collaboration with NPR?s Code Switch.

Busman?s Holiday: When William Cimillo, a NYC bus driver went on a 1,300 mile detour to Florida.

This story originally aired on This American Life.

Our episode is part of a network-wide project to welcome Over the Road, Radiotopia?s newest show, into the family.

***

This episode is sponsored by LightStream. To get a discount on a credit card consolidation loan, go to lightstream.com/diaries.

You know the story of Rosa Parks. But have you heard of Claudette Colvin?

Claudette grew up in the segregated city of Montgomery, Alabama. On March 2, 1955, when she was 15 years old, she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger.

Nine months later, Rosa Parks did the exact same thing. Parks, of course, became a powerful symbol of the civil rights movement. But Claudette Colvin has largely been left out of the history books.

In 1956, about a year after Colvin refused to give up her seat, her attorney Fred Gray filed the landmark federal lawsuit Browder v. Gayle. This case ended segregation on public transportation in Alabama. Claudette Colvin was a star witness.

This is her story.

Nowadays we?re very accustomed to recording and hearing the sound of our own voices. But in the 1930s many people were doing it for the first time. And a surprising trend began. People started sending their voices to each other, through the postal service. It was literally: voice-mail.

We combed through a large collection of early voicemail at the Phono Post Archive, and we discovered that many of these audio letters have the same subject matter: love.

You can see photographs of the voice-o-graphs on our website: http://www.radiodiaries.org/a-voicemail-valentine/

Laura Rothenberg spent most of her life knowing she was going to die young.

She had cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs. When she was born, the life expectancy for people with CF was around 18 years. (It's more than double that now.) Laura liked to say she went through her mid-life crisis when she was a teenager.

Joe met Laura when she was 19 and gave her a tape recorder. And for two years, she kept an audio diary of her battle with cystic fibrosis and her attempts to live a normal life - with lungs that often betrayed her.

Back in the 1990s, Joe Richman gave tape recorders to a bunch of teenagers and asked them to report on their own lives. These stories became the series ?Teenage Diaries.? 16 years later, in ?Teenage Diaries Revisited,? we check back in with this group to see what?s happened in their lives.

****

Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today.

#RadiotopiaForever

We first met Thembi when she was 19 and living in one of the largest townships in South Africa. We were struck by her candor, sense of humor and her courage. She was willing to speak out about having AIDS at a time when very few South Africans did. Thembi carried a tape recorder from 2004 to 2005 to document her life. In this episode, we revisit Thembi?s diary, and we introduce listeners to Thembi?s daughter, Onwabo.

****

Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today.

#RadiotopiaForever

For this episode, Radiotopia gave all of us in the network a prompt: if we were to create another show, any show, what would it be? Well, we?d make an obituary show.

Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today.

#RadiotopiaForever

Fifty years ago, on November 13, 1969, Spiro Agnew delivered the most famous speech ever given by a vice president. His message: the media is biased.

President Nixon was getting beaten up by the press, and in response, his administration had been trying to undercut the credibility of the media, especially television news.

The war between politicians and the media has a long history. Today on the podcast, the story of Agnew?s speech. Also, the story of Adlai Stevenson, a presidential candidate doomed to fail on this new-fangled thing called television.

On July 28, 1945 an Army bomber pilot on a routine ferry mission found himself lost in the fog over Manhattan. A dictation machine in a nearby office happened to capture the sound of the plane as it hit the Empire State Building at the 79th floor.

Fourteen people were killed. Debris from the plane severed the cables of an elevator, which fell 79 stories with a young woman inside. She survived. The crash prompted new legislation that ? for the first time ? gave citizens the right to sue the federal government.

Every day, we go about our lives doing thousands of routine, mundane tasks. And sometimes, we make mistakes. Human error. It happens all the time.

It just doesn?t always happen in a nuclear missile silo.

This story was produced in collaboration with This American Life.

***

If you enjoy this podcast, please consider making a donation to support our work! www.radiodiaries.org/donate

Thank you!

During the war in Vietnam, there was a notorious American military prison on the outskirts of Saigon, called Long Binh Jail. But LBJ wasn?t for captured enemy fighters, it was for American soldiers.

These were men who had broken military law. And there were a lot of them. As the unpopular war dragged on, discipline frayed and soldiers started to rebel.

By the summer of 1968, over half the men in Long Binh Jail were locked up on AWOL charges. Some were there for more serious crimes, others for small stuff, like refusing to get a haircut. The stockade had become extremely overcrowded. Originally built to house 400 inmates, it became crammed with over 700 men, more than half African American. On August 29th, 1968, the situation erupted. Fifty years later, we bring you the incredible story.

In 1974, oral historian Studs Terkel published a book with an unwieldy title: "Working: People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do." This collective portrait of America was based on more than a hundred interviews Studs did around the country.

Studs recorded all of his interviews on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, but after the book came out the tapes were packed away in boxes and forgotten for decades. A couple years ago, Radio Diaries and the organization Project& were given exclusive access to the tapes. On this episode of The Radio Diaries Podcast, we're bringing you eleven stories from Studs' Working tapes. There's the telephone switchboard operator, the Chicago police officer, the private eye, the hotel piano player and many more.

Today on the podcast, we pay a visit to Walter the Seltzer Man, and also remember Selma Koch, the iconic bra fitter in the Upper West Side's Town Shop.

Today?there?s ?The Squad.? But 50 years ago, there was only one woman of color in the U.S. Congress, and she was the first. Shirley Chisholm, of New York City, was elected to Congress in a historic victory in 1968. And like the squad...Chisholm made her voice heard.

In 1972, Chisholm launched a spirited campaign for the Democratic nomination. She was the first woman and first African American to run. Declaring herself ?unbought and unbossed,? she took on the political establishment, declaring herself ?the candidate of the people.?

100 years ago, George F. Johnson ran the biggest shoe factory in the world. The Endicott-Johnson Corporation in upstate New York produced 52 million pairs of shoes a year.

But Johnson wasn?t only known for his shoes. Johnson had an unusual theory at the time, about how workers should be treated. Some people called it ?Welfare Capitalism.? He called it ?The Square Deal.?

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, a turning point in the gay rights movement.
The anniversary is a reminder of how much has changed since 1969, when "homosexual acts" were illegal in all states but one - Illinois. Today, gay marriage is legal across the nation. Here at Radio Diaries we have our own small time capsule of how much has changed. The very first audio diary I ever did, with Amanda Brand. Amanda's story was about being a gay teenager, with parents who were having a really hard time with the idea. Today on our podcast, we're revisiting Amanda's diary, and we catch up on her life now.

On May 31, 1921, six-year-old Olivia Hooker was home with her family when a group of white men launched an attack on the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In less than 24 hours, the mobs destroyed more than 1000 homes and businesses. It?s estimated as many as 300 people were killed. The Tulsa Race Riot is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history. Olivia Hooker was the last surviving witness to the events of that day.

Know someone who?d make a good Last Witness? Get in touch. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook @RadioDiaries.

Back in the 1990s, Juan crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, and settled with his family next to the Rio Grande river in Texas. We gave him a cassette recorder to document his life there for NPR. Almost two decades later, we gave Juan another recorder to report on his life as an adult. In many ways, Juan has achieved the American Dream - he has a house, a good job, and three American kids. But...he's still undocumented.

In 1932, 20,000 WWI veterans set up a tent city in Washington. They called themselves the Bonus Army.

See photos of the Bonus Army here: http://www.radiodiaries.org/march-of-the-bonus-army/

In the early 1970?s, author Studs Terkel went around the country with a reel-to-reel tape recorder interviewing people about their jobs. He turned these interviews into a book called, ?Working.? After the book was released in 1974, the tapes were packed away in Studs home office. A few years ago, we at Radio Diaries, along with our collaborator Jane Saks of Project&, were offered the chance to make a radio and podcast series out of the recordings. In today?s episode, we bring you some of our favorite stories from The Working Tapes.

Before the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe vs. Wade, abortions were illegal in most of the United States. But that didn't mean women didn't have them.

Hundreds of women were dying every year in botched abortions. In 1965, an underground network formed in Chicago to help women who wanted to have abortions, in a medically safe way.  At first, they connected women with doctors willing to break the law to perform the procedure. Eventually, women in the collective trained to perform abortions themselves.

Today on the Radio Diaries Podcast...The Story of Jane.

And a heads up -  this story includes some graphic descriptions that may not be appropriate for all listeners.