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.
Indian-born author Salman Rushdie was building a solid literary reputation in the 1980s. His novels won several prestigious awards.
But it was his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, that earned him not accolades, but I death sentence, pronounced by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
Rushdie spent the next several years essentially in hiding, with constant death threats hanging over him.
Gradually, however, he re-emerged in public, and by 2002 was again going on author tours. That’s when I first met him, as we talked about his non-fiction book Step Across This Line.
So here now from 2002 Salman Rushdie.
Salman Rushdie is 76 now/.
One year ago this weekend Rushdie was attacked on stage at a lecture in New York. He was seriously injured. His attacker was arrested and charged with attempted murder. The government of Iran has denied any involvement.
To this day, no woman has ever done what Tracy Austin did at the US Open.
Austin won the US Open women’s singles title in 1979, when she was just 16, making her the youngest ever to win that title.
During her professional career, Austin won 30 tennis titles.
But by age 21, her career was all but ended by a series of injuries. That led to speculationand rumor about what was really going on with Tracy Austin.
In 1992 she set out to put those rumors to rest, and tell her story in her own words. Her book was called Beyond Center Court. And that’s when I met her.
So here now, from 1992, Tracy Austin.
Tracy Austin is 60 now. She works as a metwork TV tennis commentator.
Stand-up comedy has become such a staple of American entertainment that we may forget that it was not that long ago that it was a more rarefied profession.
And we may also forget just how hard that profession is.
In the late 1980s, just a few years into the start of the stand up explosion, a young writer producer named Betsy Borns put together a book about stand up comedians and how they work.
Borns called her book Comic Lives.
So here now, from 1987, Betsy Borns.
After Comic Lives Betsy Borns went on to work in TV on Roseanne, Friends, and All of Us, among many other projects.
The US supreme Court has been under intense scrutiny the last couple of years, and perhaps no member has been in a harsher spotlight than Clarence Thomas.
But Thomas is no stranger to controversy and criticism.
The political opposition began virtually as soon as he was nominated to the high court by President George H. W. Bush in 1991, to succeed the retiring Thurgood Marshall.
About this time, Thomas coined the phrase “high-tech lynching” to describe his experience.
Helping shepherd the Thomas nomination through the US Senate was Missouri Republican John Danforth. He was a long time friend, colleague, and even mentor to Thomas, and was eager to see him win confirmation.
That opposition reached a crescendo when a former co-worker of Thomas’s, a woman named Anita Hill, came forth to testify about alleged sexual harassment by Thomas.
Thomas did, of course, ultimately when confirmation. And in 1994 Danforth wrote a book describing the Clarence Thomas episode.
And that’s when I met the Senator. So here now, from 1994, Senator John Danforth.
John Danforth will be 87 next month.
Clarence Thomas is the oldest member of the current Supreme Court, and is its longest-serving current associate justice.
She was born into a prominent show business family in 1943, so it was perhaps her destiny to become a successful, award-winning and acclaimed actress.
Lynn Redgrave made her theatrical debut when she was still a teenager, and by the early 1960s had appeared in several movies.
It was her title role in the 1966 film Georgy Girl that catapulted her to startdom.
But a side effect of that newfound attention was what we would now call body shaming. Critics felt license to comment mercilessly on Red Graves weight and figure.
She struggled with bulimia. Finally, in the 1980s, she joined Weight Watchers, ultimately starring in TV commercials for them.
In 1991 she told her story in a book called this is living. And that’s whem I met her .
So here now, from 1991, Lynn Redgrave.
Lynn Redgrave died in 2010 after a long fight against breast cancer. She was 67.
Tom Keneally has written dozens of books in his career, spanning from the 1960s.
But the one book with which you may be most familiar is his prize-winning 1982 book called Schindler’s Ark. It was later renamed Schindler’s List, and that’s what the movie was based on.
Keneally is one of Australia’s most prolific, and most honored, authors.
He has also been a playwright, lecturer, and even actor.
I’ve had the privilege of interviewing him half a dozen times over the years, including our talk in 1995 about his novel A River Town.
So here now, from 1995, Thomas Keneally.
Thomas Keneally will be 88 this fall. His last book was published in 2019.
