Roundup

Dispatches from the War Room: In the Trenches with Five Extraordinary Leaders [Video 59 min 50 sec]

[Stan Greenberg discusses his book"Dispatches from the War Room: In the Trenches with Five Extraordinary Leaders" with Mary Matalin.] Stanley Greenberg is the author of"Middle Class Dreams" and currently the CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a public opinion and strategic research firm. He has advised politicians such as former President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and Prime Minister Nelson Mandela, among others.

Obama in France to Honor D-Day Fallen [podcast 3 min 10 sec]

This is the 65th anniversary of the Allied landings on the beaches of Normandy, which ultimately led to the liberation of Europe during World War II. President Obama is in France and will take part in ceremonies marking D-Day. With row after row of white crosses and stars of David, the American Cemetery at Normandy sits atop a cliff overlooking Omaha Beach. In June of 1944, Nazi bunkers, mines, machine guns and heavy artillery defended the French coastline. Soldiers in landing craft

Segments 1 and 3: "John Hope Franklin on Writing Black History." (1969) [two podcasts 28 min 28 sec and 19 min 13 sec]

John Hope Franklin, then chair of the University of Chicago History Department, delivered this speech titled "The Future of Negro American History," at The New School in New York City on April 3, 1969. It was recorded by Pacifica Radio affiliate WBAI and first aired on October 18, 1969. In memory of Prof. Franklin, who died of congestive heart failure on March 25th, 2009, we are re-airing this important address by him. Franklin played a seminal role in helping incorporate African Ameri

At Buchenwald, Obama Blasts Holocaust Deniers [podcast 4 min 4 sec]

President Obama was in Germany Friday where he met with Chancellor Angela Merkel, before visiting the site of Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp. Later, Obama met with injured American soldiers evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan at a U.S. military hospital in western Germany. President Obama is using his trip to Germany and the Middle East to push for help in resettling Guantanamo Bay detainees, discussing the issue with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a private meeting Fri

Living History in Colonial Williamsburg [podcast]

Step back in time to the eve of the American Revolution, following a woman whose job it is to play an 18th slave character in Colonial Williamsburg; a woman who must learn, in 2004, to interpret and recreate 1770 slave culture for a tourist audience. The story is told through this character's own narration and reflection, her interaction with other historical characters and with the tourist public in Williamsburg, and through documentation of her daily tasks. As she steps in and out of character

If no for D-Day, It Would Have Been Doomsday [podcast 3 min 17 sec]

President Obama reminds us today that when U.S., British and Canadian forces trudged into bullets and mortar shells on the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago, their success was not assured. We've seen the movie and know the ending: John Wayne and Tom Hanks won the war, along with our plucky allies, David Niven and Michael Caine. Several years ago, we asked John Keegan, the British military historian, what he thought might have happened if the D-Day invasion had failed. &q

LCRM Common Room

Videos/lectures titled: Race, Memory, and Reconciliation From Black Power to Barack Obama Blacks, Latinos, and the Politics of Work Gender, Race, and Rights Contests over Health, Poverty, and the Environment Backlash and Accommodation From the Margins Global Dimensions

Andrew Mar on BBC's Radio 4 "Start of the Week" [podcast 45 min]

Andrew Marr sets the cultural agenda for the week. His guests include historian Antony Beevor on his new book, D Day; creator of the hit TV series The Wire, David Simon; and leading physicist Michio Kaku on 'The Physics of the Impossible'. The historian Antony Beevor argues that his new book is the first major history of the battle for Normandy in 20 years to take a ‘bottom up’ perspective on the conflict. He emphasises the high toll on civilians of the Normandy landings and questio

Tiananmen: Shouts That Turned To Silence [podcast 5 min 27 sec]

Two decades ago, the world watched as thousands of Chinese students and their supporters occupied Tiananmen Square for weeks demanding democracy — and then were violently removed on June 4, 1989, by the Chinese military. NPR's western bureau chief, Alisa Joyce Barba, was a TV producer in Beijing at that time.

The Unabomber's Brother Tells His Story [podcast 7 min 27 sec]

From 1978 to 1995, Theodore Kaczynski mailed 16 bombs that killed three people and injured 23. He was identified and arrested largely because his brother had begun to suspect that he was the Unabomber and contacted authorities. For the first time, David Kaczynski has written about his relationship with the brother he grew up with and admired. Kaczynski talks with host Scott Simon about his essay, which appears in a new collection called Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and

Kansas Abortion Doctor Shot And Killed In Church [podcast 2 min 55 sec)

George Tiller, the prominent and polarizing abortion provider, was killed Sunday, gunned down during morning services at his church in Wichita, Kan. Tiller ran one of the few clinics in the country that performs late-term abortions, and for decades, he was a key figure in the battle over abortion in Kansas and on the national stage. Tiller's clinic in Wichita was bombed in 1986, and in the early '90s, he was shot in both arms. Just a few months ago, he was acquitted in

The Brothers Booth [podcast 5 min 17 sec]

Edwin Booth is the brother of John Wilkes Booth, and they are members of the acclaimed Booth acting family. Their father is regarded as one of the best Shakespearean actors in the world. Therefore, the night in which President Lincoln and his wife go to see a play a Ford’s Theater, John Wilkes Booth can roam the halls freely without being questioned. After all, everyone recognizes him as the actor. Edwin Booth made his acting debut at the age of sixteen in Boston as a supporting

The Bonus Army Match

In 1932, in the depths of the Depression, thousands of hungry and disgruntled veterans of WW I marched on Washington, D.C. demanding that Congress pay them the bonus for their military service that had been promised years before. Banding together, unemployed Oregon cannery workers marched with Pennsylvania coal miners and Alabama cotton pickers, as more than 20 thousand "bonus marchers" participated in the biggest rally to date in the nation's capital. And they stayed for weeks, settin

A Hiroshima Story

On a sunny August morning in 1945, Keijiro Matsushima sat in his math class in Hiroshima. He looked out the window, saw two American bombers in the clear blue sky, and suddenly his world was torn apart. Now a retired English teacher, he fears young people today are no longer interested in his story. On a sunny June morning in 2005, Amsterdam English teacher Kevin Hogan’s 11th grade class are reading a novel about Hiroshima. They are the same age Mr. Matsushima was sixty years ago. How will they

Thurgood Marshall as a Litigator in Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 (Segment 2) [video 2 min 48 sec]

In a series of press conferences conducted in 1954 (before and after the original Brown v. Board of Education civil rights decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 17) and 1955 (before and after "Brown II" -- the Supreme Court's May 1955 implementation order to proceed "with all deliberate speed"), Thurgood Marshall, chief counsel for the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, explained some of what was at stake in the cases that helped eliminate segregation in American schools. This i

"Thurgood Marshall's African Journey: An Interview With Mary Dudziak" (Segments 1 and 4) [video 33 min 49 sec and 13 min 9 sec]

Historian Carl Bon Tempo of the University at Albany, SUNY interviewed Mary L. Dudziak, Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law, History and Political Science at the University of Southern California Law School about her research on Thurgood Marshall’s work with Kenya nationalists in the 1960s. Her work on Marshall was published last year as Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey (Oxford University Press, 2008). Dudziak's interview was conducted at the Univ.

Calif. High Court Upholds Gay Marriage Ban [video 4 min 6 sec]

The California Supreme Court upheld a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage Tuesday, but it also decided that the estimated 18,000 gay couples who tied the knot before the law took effect may stay wed. The court said the people have a right, through the ballot box, to change their constitution. The court's decision set off an outcry among a sea of demonstrators who had gathered in front of the San Francisco courthouse awaiting the ruling. Holding signs and many wavi

Obama Picks Sotomayor For High Court [video 6 min 6 sec]

President Obama on Tuesday nominated U.S. Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Supreme Court, tapping the daughter of Puerto Rican parents to succeed retiring Justice David Souter and become the first Hispanic to serve on the high court. If confirmed by the Senate, the 54-year-old judge will bring nearly 17 years of experience on the federal bench and a history of bipartisan appeal to the high court. She was first appointed to federal bench in the Southern District of New Y

In Civil War, Woman Fought Like A Man For Freedom [video 10 min 37 sec]

Albert D.J. Cashier was the shortest soldier in the 95th Illinois Infantry. In one of the few existing photographs of Cashier during the Civil War, you can faintly detect the outline of breasts under his uniform. But that's if you're looking for it. And the military apparently was not. "They didn't conduct physical exams in those days, the way the military does now," says Rodney Davis, a retired professor of history at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. "What they were

Memorial Day Miracle At 'The Wall' [video 3 min 17 sec]

Allen Hoe, 62, served as a combat medic in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. His son, Nainoa K. Hoe, served as a first lieutenant infantry officer with the Army's 3rd Battalion in Mosul, Iraq. He died there on Jan. 22, 2005, at the age of 27. On Memorial Day that year, Allen traveled to Washington, D.C., from his home in Honolulu for services being held at the Vietnam Memorial, often referred to as "the wall." [He] recounts a chance meeting with a nurse