Podcast revisits Studs Terkel's "Division Street: America"

Axios

29-01-2025

Veteran Chicago journalists Melissa Harris and Mary Schmich are revisiting Studs Terkel's seminal 1967 collection of Chicago interviews in "Division Street: America" in a new podcast launching tonight.
Why it matters: These updated interviews with descendants, paired with the original book, offer a fascinating narrative of Chicago history from multiple perspectives.
The basics: The original book featured 71 interviews but the podcast focuses on seven.
"They include an actor terrified his family would discover he was gay; a Native American leader determined to preserve his culture in the big city; and a Lithuanian tavern owner dedicated to street protest," Pulitzer-winning former Tribune columnist Schmich tells Axios.
"I saw a unique opportunity to revive those people — those voices — and connect the 1960s to the 2020s."
Biggest surprise: "How important music was in all these lives. One of our subjects is a packinghouse worker who loved playing boogie-woogie on the piano. There's a wealthy woman who founded the jazz archive at the University of Chicago."
"We tracked down the great-grandson of a Chicago school janitor — and he turned out to be a fiddler who plays hip-hop, classical and bluegrass. It makes a great playlist," Schmich says.
Hopes for the listener:"That they'll learn some history. How many people know that Chicago's Uptown neighborhood was once nicknamed Hillbilly Heaven? Or that Halsted Street in the Bridgeport neighborhood was once known as the Lithuanian Downtown?" Schmich asked.
"I also hope it will remind people that we're not the first Americans fearful of the social turmoil we're living in."
Harris hopes it will "inspire people to go out and interview their oldest living relatives … set their phones down in front of them, hit record and ask them questions about their lives."
Listen up at the Division Street Revisited site or sign up for virtual and in-person listening club events starting in February