Remembrances

Songwriter Clegg On Mandela, South Africans' 'Bridge'

10:49am December 06, 2013

Renee Montagne talks to South African musician Johnny Clegg about his relationship with Nelson Mandela, who died Thursday at age 95. Clegg says his banned 1980s song that named Mandela and became an anthem came to him one day when he woke to gunshots and wondered "who can bridge you and me, every South African."

Queue Listen Now

World News

Near Mandela's Soweto Home, A Gathering Of Mourners

10:49am December 06, 2013

NPR's Gregory Warner speaks with Renee Montagne about the scene near the family home of Nelson Mandela in Soweto, South Africa, where people are gathered to mourn the former president's life.

Queue Listen Now

Televangelist Paul Crouch, Who Started Trinity Network, Dies

6:39pm December 03, 2013

by John Burnett

Televangelist Paul Crouch, co-founder of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, died Saturday at the age of 79. The Pentecostal minister's broadcasting network came to be the world's largest Christian television system with Praise-a-Thon fundraising efforts that brought in as much as $90 million a year in mostly small donations.

Queue Listen Now

Music & Culture

Drummer Chico Hamilton, West Coast Jazz Pioneer, Dies

7:17pm November 26, 2013

by Mandalit del Barco

A linchpin of "cool" jazz in the 1950s and '60s, he assembled bands that came to be described as chamber jazz, full of unusual textures and future star talent. Hamilton, who continued performing into his ninth decade, was 92.

Queue Listen Now

The Rev. T.J. Jemison escorts Mary Briscoe (left) and Sandra Ann Jones from jail in Baton Rouge, La., on April 4, 1960. The two had been in jail as a result of lunch counter sit-ins.

National

Rev. T.J. Jemison Remembered As Civil Rights Movement Pioneer

7:21pm November 22, 2013

by Debbie Elliott

Louisiana is paying tribute Friday to the Rev. T.J. Jemison, a strong and steady voice against unequal treatment for blacks in the Jim Crow South. Jemison helped organize a bus boycott in Baton Rouge in 1953 and later advised Martin Luther King Jr. and others on how to orchestrate the Montgomery boycott.

Queue Listen Now

Winner Of 2 Nobel Prizes, Fred Sanger Dies At 95

6:55am November 21, 2013

Nobel Prize winning biochemist Fred Sanger has died. He was 95. Sanger, who won two Nobel Prizes, pioneered research into the human genome. Steve Inskeep and Renee Montagne have this remembrance.

Queue Listen Now

Books
Arts

Fresh Air Remembers 'Golden Notebook' Author Doris Lessing

1:24pm November 19, 2013

Lessing's 1962 book was regarded as among the most important feminist novels of its time. She died Sunday. Fresh Air's Terry Gross interviewed Lessing in 1988 and 1992.

Queue Listen Now

Author Doris Lessing died Sunday at the age of 94. Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature for a life's work which included around 40 books and collections of essays and memoirs.

How Writer Doris Lessing Didn't Want To Be Remembered

10:42am November 18, 2013

by Vicki Barker

Author Doris Lessing died Sunday at the age of 94. Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature for a life's work which included around 40 books and collections of essays and memoirs. Her book, The Golden Notebook, has been called the first feminist novel — a characterization Lessing rejected as "stupid."

Queue Listen Now

A Conversation With Country Superstar George Jones

12:07pm November 11, 2013

The country singer, known for "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and many other hits, died Friday at age 81. Fresh Air remembers Jones with excerpts from a 1996 conversation with Terry Gross about his autobiography, his addictions and his perspective on his celebrated but troubled marriage to Tammy Wynette.

Queue Listen Now

Celebrity photographer Editta Sherman photographs actor Don Ameche in her studio circa 1950.

Arts

Photographer Editta Sherman, 'Duchess Of Carnegie Hall,' Dies At 101

8:16pm November 07, 2013

For six decades, in her light-filled studio on top of New York's Carnegie Hall, Sherman photographed celebrities from Leonard Bernstein to Yul Brynner to Joe DiMaggio. She was a legend as a portrait photographer — and she'd tell you that herself.

Queue Listen Now