History

Merchant Seaman Captain Rudolph Patzert. In 1947 he captained a ship that was part of a clandestine effort by the Jewish underground to smuggle Holocaust survivors into Palestine. Palestine at that time was under British rule, and a British air and sea blockade prevented immigration to the country. Patzert's ship, the Paducah, was a 45 year-old rundown converted gunboat, his crew inexperienced; and they were thwarted every step of the way: British intelligence hounded them, preventing them from refueling and re-watering.

Retired Astronaut and former test pilot Alan Shepard. He was America's first man in space in 1961; the voyage covered 302 miles and lasted 15 minutes. Ten years later with Apollo 14, he made it to the moon, playing golf on the moon's surface. (In 1969, the Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon). Early in his space career, Shepard was diagnosed with an inner ear syndrome which could have ended his career. Shepard grounded himself in 1963 and became Chief of the Astronaut Office.

Film director Bernando Bertolucci. He broke new ground with his 1972 film "Last Tango in Paris." Pauline Kael called it "a landmark in movie history." In the 80's, he became dismayed by the pervasive materialism he saw in the West. His focus turned to the East. He made "The Last Emperor" set in China and "The Sheltering Sky" set in the Sahara Desert. His new movie is "Little Buddha." It's a fable. A Tibetan monk travels from the Kingdom of Bhutan to Seattle to visit a young American boy.

Author Melba Beals. Forty years ago today the United States Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional in "Brown v. Board of Education." Three years later, Beals and eight other black teenagers chose to attend the all white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. In the process Beals suffered a school year marked by unremitting violence and hatred. Danny, the soldier assigned to protect her, warned her that she too would have to become a soldier.

Writer for the Village Voice and The Nation Pagan Kennedy. Kennedy ("Pagan" is not her real first name) has staked out a niche for herself as a "1970's survivor and devotee." Kennedy has written an investigation of that decade, seen through its artifacts and social upheaval, "Platforms: A Microwaved Cultural Chronicle of the 1970's" (St. Martins). In the 70's she says, "we inherited this idea of recycling culture.

Alison Des Forges. She's a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where her specialty concerns the central African countries of Rwanda and Burundi. She's also the Co-Chair of the International Commission on Human Rights Abuse in Rwanda, and a consultant to Human Rights Watch Africa on Rwanda and Burundi. Rwanda has descended into civil strife since April 6th, when the Rwanda and the Burundi presidents were both killed in a plane crash.

South African journalist John Matisonn. Matisonn is white and grew up in the suburbs in Johannesburg. (His grandparents emigrated to South Africa at the turn of the century). To NPR listeners he's best known for his coverage from South Africa from 1986 to 1991. Matisonn also worked in Washington, D.C. He's now the head of elections for the South Africa Broadcasting Company, SABC, (which before the end of apartheid, broadcast purely government propaganda).

Excerpt from an interview with Desmond Tutu. (Rebroadcast of 05/15/1984).

History professor and author R. Laurence Moore. His new book is "Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture." (Oxford) Moore explores the relationship between spiritualism and consumerism in this country over a two-century span. He develops his theses with examples from the lives as such American personalities as P. T. Barnum, Cecil B. DeMille and Sylvester Graham, inventor of the Graham cracker.

Journalist and author Allister Sparks. Sparks is a fifth- generation South African. He heads the Johannesburg Institute for the Advancement of Journalism. In 1990, he published his historical study of South Africa called "The Mind of South Africa" (Knopf). His recent piece in "The New Yorker," called "The Secret Revolution" (April 11, 1994, p.56), reveals the little known, behind the scenes drama that started unfolding within South Africa almost 10 years ago.

Dumisani Kumalo grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, and fled the country in the 1970s. Kumal is back in the country to act as a monitor for South Africa's upcoming elections.
Jennifer Irish is a human rights activist who is not optimistic about the elections. Irish is coordinator for the Network of Independent Monitors which is tracking election related violence.

Kemal Kurspahic. He was editor-in-chief of Sarajevo's only surviving daily newspaper, "Oslobodenje." ("Oslobodenje" means liberation in Serbo-Croatian.) Now he is Washington correspondent for the paper. It has been a trial to get out the paper each day. The staff braved sniper fire just to get to work. After the paper's high rise offices were gutted by mortar fire, publication was transferred to an underground bunker. Three staffers were killed covering the war and Kurspahic himself was wounded.

We pay tribute to Professor and filmmaker Marlon Riggs, who died Tuesday. His film about gay black sexuality, "Tongues Untied," unleashed a storm of controversy for its graphic content; it was used by Senator Jesse Helms (Republican, North Carolina), to argue against government grants to the arts. Another RIGGS film was "Color Adjustment," a critique of prime time TV's myths and messages on American race relations. RIGGS was on the faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. (Rebroadcast of 7/11/1991)

Mexican author Carlos Fuentes. Mexico is in flux. On New Years Day, a violent peasant uprising broke out in Chiapas, and thru negotiations, the Zapitistas (as they call themselves) reached a tentative agreement with the government. Then frontrunner presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was assassinated as he campaigned in Tijuana. The Mexican government says at least seven people conspired in the killing. Fuentes will discuss recent events in Mexico and the history that shaped them.

Film director Milos Forman. Originally from Czechoslovakia, Forman is the director of such American films as "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Amadeus," "Hair," and "Ragtime." Forman began his film career in his native country, apprenticing with some of the country's best film makers for the Communist state-controlled film industry.

Dr. Ira Rutkow is a surgeon and the author of the new book, "Surgery: An Illustrated History," (Mosby). The book has 386 illustrations including documents, photographs, cartoons, drawings and paintings related to surgery, taken from museums throughout the world. Rutkow has also written a two-volume history of surgery in the U.S. and has written studies on Civil War surgery. He's also consulting editor for surgical history for the Archives of Surgery. Rutkow is founder and surgical director of The Hernia Center in Freehold, N.J.

Australian writer Thomas Keneally. His 1982 novel "Schindler's List" (Simon & Schuster) was turned into a film by Steven Spielberg; this year the film won an Oscar for Best Picture. He often uses historical events for his fiction: The Eritrean independence movement for "To Asmara"; the American Civil War for "Confederates"; the 18th century Australian convict camps for "The Playmaker". His newest novel is "Woman of the Inner Sea" (out in paperback this spring from Dutton).

Zlata Filipovic is a thirteen year-old Sarajevan, whose diaries of the war in Bosnia have been published this month as "Zlata's Diary" (Viking). The book begins in August of 1991, with a new school year --fifth grade-- and the trappings of girlhood: piano lessons and tennis. By that spring, Sarajevo was under siege and Zlata's schoolmates were being killed, her family hiding in the basement and abandoned purebred dogs wandered the streets.

Holding immigrants responsible for various health epidemics has been an American pastime for two centuries argues Alan Kraut, Professor of History at American University. Just as the Irish were wrongly blamed for the cholera epidemic in the 1830's so too were Haitians in Miami branded as AIDS carriers in the 1980's. His new book "Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, & the "Immigrant Menace"" (Basic Books) traces how immigration policy and health care have been affected by xenophobia and public fears of contamination. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Journalist Nguyen Qui Duc. He works for KALW-FM in San Francisco, supplies commentaries to NPR and received the Overseas Press Club's 1989 Award of Excellence for his public radio series about returning to Viet Nam. Nguyen has written a new memoir about his family's struggle during and after the war. NGUYEN's father was an official in the South Vietnamese government who was captured by the Viet Cong and imprisoned for 12 years. In 1975, Nguyen gained passage to the U.S. on a cargo ship, and moved about from relative to relative until he settled in California.