Studs Terkel

Through his radio interviews and books, Louis "Studs" Terkel has been called "the Walt Whitman of the radio waves" and referred to himself as "a guerrilla journalist with a tape recorder." Although Terkel was associated with Chicago, he was born in New York City on May 16, 1912, the third son of Russian-Jewish parents. His family later moved to Chicago, where his father worked as a tailor and then ran a boarding house for immigrants. After finishing high school, Terkel attended the University of Chicago, where he received a law degree in 1934. Instead of practicing law, howeve...