A decades-long tradition continues this summer, with the 35th annual Black Family Reunion this month.
The event was started in 1989 by Dorothy Height, the longtime president of the National Council of Negro Women. It grew quickly, attracting millions across the country.
And from the reunions grew the Black Family Reunion Cookbook, first published in 1992.
But as you’ll hear in a moment, the cookbook was more than just a collection of recipes. It was an oral history of the African-American family.
The latter half of the 1960s was, to say the least, a turbulent time in America.
Anti war demonstrations were escalating, Civil rights and women’s rights movements were growing. As the government tried to control the chaos,it made many of its critics even more radical.
As the decade drew to a close violence and even bombings became It’s everyday occurrences .
One of those caught up in this maelstrom was the young Cathy Wilkerson. She joined the radical Weather Underground Organization sometimes known simply as Weatherman.
Wilkerson’s father owned a townhouse in New York’s Greenwich Village. She and other Weather underground members turned it into a bomb factory. On March 6, 1970, one of their bombs exploded in the basement, destroying the home and killing three people.
Wilkerson, and fellow Weatherman Kathy Boudin, escaped with their lives, and became fugitives from the FBI.
Wilkerson remained in hiding for a decade, before surrendering in 1980, and serving a few months in prison.
Ultimately she became a high school math teacher.
In 2007 she finally wrote her memoir, a book called Flying Close to The Sun. And that’s when I met her.
She was a middle-aged housewife from Alton, Illinois. But in the 1970s, Phyllis Schlafly launched an anti-feminist crusade that would make her a household name — lauded by many, revered by some, but hated and smeared by many others.
Schlafly positioned herself as the defender of traditional motherhood, becoming virulently anti-feminist, and the leading opponent of the then still-pending Equal Rights Amendment.
As the founder of the group Eagle Forum, Schlafly also had huge influence on the direction of the conservative movement in America.
She even had a syndicated column, and in 2003 she published a collection of those columns, a book she called Feminist Fantasies.
So this is one of the several times that I interviewed her over the years. So here now, from 2003, Phyllis Schlafly.
Since its founding in 2010, a conservative organization known as Project Veritas has stirred controversy, raised many ethical concerns, and has been sued, sometimes successfully, by its targets.
Those targets have included Planned Parenthood, ACORN, CNN, and the Washington Post.
Its founder was then-26-year-old James O’Keefe. His secretly recorded and heavily edited videos were embraced by many conservatives eager to expose what they saw as liberal or leftist misdeeds.
I got a few minutes with him in 2013 while he was promoting his book called Breakthrough: Our Guerilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy.
But just so we are clear, you should not infer from the nature of my questions in this interview that I endorsed Project Veritas or its methods.
So here now, from 2013, James O’Keefe.
James O’Keefe will be 39 next week. He sttepped down as chairman of Project Veritas last February admi controversy over finances and management style.
Today, June 12, is a somber anniversary. It was 60 years ago tonight that a white supremacist and Ku Klux Klan leader gun down a civil rights leader named Medgar Evers as he arrived home.
His killer remained at large for years to come. And Evers’s death was just the first of three high profile assassinations that decade, including Malcolm x and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
His widow was Myrlie Evers. Years later she remarried and has been known since as Myrlie Evers Williams.
But she was always a strong woman.
I met her in 1999 when she wrote a book about her lifetime of triumph over tragedy, a book called Watch Me Fly.
So here now, from 1999, Myrlie Evers Williams.
Myrlie Evers Williams is 90 now, and still an active civil rights activist andleader.
Let’s face it, most of us take our vision for granted. Even if we have to wear glasses or contacts, we just look at the world and see things.
But what if you were born without that ability? What would life be like as a blind person?
Poet and professor Stephen Kuusisto was born in 1955, and has essentially been blind since birth. And he has become one of the country’s leading advocates for the blind and visually disabled community.
I met him in 1998 when he wrote his memoir, a book called Planet of The Blind.
So here now, from 1998, Stephen Kuusisto.
Stephen Kuusisto is 68 now, and still a strong advocate for those with visual disabilities.
How did a Roman Catholic nun wind up befriending a convicted killer on death row?
The answer to that deceptively simple question is found in Sister Helen Prejean’s bestselling 1993 book Dead Man Walking. If you haven’t read the book, you’ve probably seen the movie starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.
Prejean is an outspoken and powerful voice against capital punishment. Her book has made millions of people reconsider their own positions on the death penalty.
I first met her shortly after her book was published. So here now, from 1993, Sister Helen Prejean.
Sister Helen Prejean celebrated her 84th birthday last week. And she is still working to eliminate the death penalty.
