Black History Month (Audio)

What It Takes is a podcast series featuring intimate, revealing conversations with towering figures in almost every field: music, science, sports, politics, film, technology, literature, the military and social justice. These rare interviews have been recorded over the past 25 years by The Academy of Achievement. They offer the life stories and reflections of people who have had a huge impact on the world, and insights you can apply to your own life. Subscribe to the What It Takes podcast series at iTunes.com/WhatItTakes

Andrew Young was the pastor of a small country church when he faced down the Ku Klux Klan to organize a voter registration drive in South Georgia. He became the leading negotiator for the national Civil Rights Movement, enduring death threats, beatings and jail time to win for African Americans the rights of full citizenship they were promised by the Constitution, rights they had been long denied. Alongside his friend, Martin Luther King, Jr., he marched through the most dramatic episodes of the great struggle: from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the streets of Birmingham and Selma, and finally to Memphis, where an assassin's bullet ended Dr King's life. Young fought on, winning election to the United States House of Representatives, as the first African American to be elected to Congress from the Deep South since Reconstruction. As a Congressman, he supported a little-known former Governor of Georgia in his long-shot bid for the Presidency, and when Jimmy Carter became President, he named Andrew Young to serve as his country's Ambassador to the United Nations. At the UN, Andrew Young maintained his commitment to universal human rights, plunging into the most challenging controversies of the day, including the liberation struggles of Southern Africa and the search for peace in the Middle East. He capped his career in public service with two terms as Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. Once again, he proved himself an able negotiator, balancing the interests of the business community with the needs of the city's poorest citizens, completing the city's transformation from a battleground of the Civil Rights era to the proud showplace of the modern South. Half a century after the battles of the 1960s, Andrew Young remains an outspoken champion for the rights of all mankind.

Audra McDonald is unparalleled in the breadth and versatility of her artistry as both singer and actress. With a record-setting six Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and a long list of other accolades to her name, she is among today's most highly regarded performers. Blessed with a luminous soprano voice and an incomparable gift for dramatic truth-telling, she is equally at home on Broadway and opera stages as in roles on film and television. In addition to her theatrical work, she maintains a major career as a concert and recording artist, regularly appearing on the great stages of the world. Audra McDonald was inducted into the Academy of Achievement in 2012. In this podcast, recorded on that occasion at the Academy's Washington, D.C. headquarters, she sings a few of her favorite songs, including 'Summertime' and 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.' The podcast also includes highlights of an exclusive interview with Audra McDonald.

Aretha Franklin is known the world over as the Queen of Soul Music. In the 1960s, her hit recording "Respect" became an anthem of the civil rights struggle and a theme song for the dawning women's movement. He musical career began in the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, where her father, Rev. C.L. Franklin was the pastor. Young Aretha sang and played piano, and the passion of Gospel music has remained with her through her subsequent triumphs in secular blues, rock and pop. Franklin began recording when she was only 14. At 19, had won a solos contract with Columbia Records. Columbia tried to promote her as a conventionally smooth pop singer, but Aretha's talent was too volcanic to be contained by the old formulas. In 1966, she moved to Atlantic Records, where she recorded the stirring performances that made her world-famous. Her rendition of songs like "Think," "Chain of Fools, and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" set the standard by which singing in the soul idiom will always be measured. Her breakthrough album was 1967's I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, a Top 40 smash. She continued to deliver hit albums decade after decade, including Amazing Grace (1972) and Who's Zoomin' Who? (1985) and her 1998 effort A Rose is Still a Rose. Since 1961, she has scored a total of 45 "Top 40" hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and 20 number one hits on the R&B charts. She has recorded 14 million-selling singles, the record for a female artist. Between 1967 and 1982 she had 10 number one albums on the R&B charts, another record for a female artist. She sang at the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King, and at the inaugurations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. She has won 18 Grammy Awards and was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Despite her international fame, she has always returned to her home town of Detroit. The legislature of Michigan has declared Aretha Franklin's voice to be one of the state's natural resources. All Americans can claim her as a national treasure. This podcast was recorded during a performance at the 2012 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. It includes a rendition of her signature song "Respect," as well as rare interview footage recorded during the Summit.

This autumn, Natasha Trethewey took up her duties as United States Poet Laureate, the 19th poet to serve since Congress created the position in 1985. Also known as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, the Laureate is responsible for all the public poetry programs of the Library, as well as an annual lecture and reading. With her appointment as Poet Laureate, Trethewey crowns a career steeped in the complexities of American history. The marriage of her white, Canadian-born father and her African American mother was still illegal in Mississippi, where she was born, on Confederate Memorial Day, in 1966, although the Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage the following year. Her parents divorced when she was young; she grew up with her mother in Georgia, spending summers with her grandmother in Mississippi and her father in New Orleans. When Natasha was 19, her mother was murdered by her second husband. In Trethewey’s words, “I turned to poetry to make sense of what had happened.” Trethewey’s poetry is unique for the manner in which she fuses historical materials and vernacular language with traditional verse forms. In Bellocq’s Ophelia, she imagines the inner life of an anonymous prostitute immortalized by the New Orleans photographer E.J. Bellocq. In 2007, she received the Pulitzer Prize for her book Native Guard, a verse narrative inspired by a black regiment of the Union Army during the Civil War.

One of the most distinguished musical artists of our time, the singer Jessye Norman was born in Augusta, Georgia. As a ten-year-old child, she was spellbound by a recording of the great contralto Marian Anderson. Inspired by Anderson's recordings and autobiography, she resolved to become a classical singer herself. At age 16, she won a full scholarship to study voice at Howard University. After graduate music studies at Peabody Conservatory, she went to Europe, where she was soon discovered by the Continent's leading conductors and impresarios. She made her operatic debut in Tannhauser at Berlin's Deutsche Oper. A dramatic soprano with a special affinity for the German repertoire, she has won acclaim in the operas of Wagner and Richard Strauss. Equally at home in French and Italian, she has enchanted audiences as Bizet's Carmen and as Mozart's Countess Almaviva. In addition to her concert roles. Her recitals and recordings have included American spirituals, French chansons and German lieder. From Haydn to Mahler to Schoenberg and Berg, from Satie and Poulenc to Gershwin and Bernstein, the range of Jessye Norman’s musical reach is breathtaking. She has conquered stages from Lincoln Center to Covent Garden, Carnegie Hall to the Musikverein, from La Scala to the Paris Opera and the Vienna State Opera, from Tokyo to San Francisco, Houston and Boston, from Granada to Graz and from Salzburg to Hong Kong. For the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera's centennial season, she made history by singing the roles of both Cassandra and Dido in Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz. In 1989, she was chosen to embody the spirit of liberty, equality and fraternity, singing "La Marseillaise" during the bicentennial celebration of the French Revolution at the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Jessye Norman was interviewed by the Academy of Achievement in Washington, D.C. on July 22, 2012. This podcast presents excerpts from that interview, along with selections for her performance at Washington's historic Ford's Theatre on October 18, 2011.

One of the most gifted and admired actors in America, Morgan Freeman was born in Memphis and raised in Mississippi. At an early age, he found his calling acting in school plays. In the seventh grade, he won the state championship in a student theatrical competition. In his teens he was appearing on Nashville radio. He turned down a college scholarship to join the Air Force; on leaving the service in 1959, he headed to Hollywood, where he auditioned unsuccessfully for eight impoverished years. He moved to New York City, and was finally offered a part in an Off-Broadway production about the Freedom Riders of the civil rights era. He later won a role in the Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! with Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway. A regular role as Easy Reader on public television's The Electric Company made him a familiar figure to younger audiences, and led to film roles, including his breakout performance in Street Smart (1987). He followed with unforgettable roles in Glory and Unforgiven. After receiving Oscar nominations for his roles in Driving Miss Daisy and The Shawshank Redemption, he received a well-deserved Oscar in 2005 for his performance in Million Dollar Baby. He captured one of the century's great figures with his performance as South Africa's President Nelson Mandela in the 2009 film Invictus. In addition to his work in motion pictures, he is a founder of PLANIT NOW, an association that provides preparedness assistance to communities exposed to severe storms and hurricanes. Morgan Freeman discusses his life and career in this podcast, recorded by the Academy of Achievement in Washington D.C. on June 4, 2012.

Johnny Mathis was only 19 years old when a Columbia Records executive heard him singing in a San Francisco nightclub and decided to sign the teenage singer on the spot. After his first album, recorded in a jazz style, failed to register with the public, producer Mitch Miller guided Mathis to a more straightforward romantic sound, leading to hits like "Wonderful, Wonderful" and "It's Not For Me to Say." A series of appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show made Mathis a national star, and at age 22 he had the number one record in the country, "Chances Are." In 1958, only two years into his recording career, he released a "Greatest Hits" collection; it inaugurated a recording industry practice that continues to this day and is one of the most bestselling records of all time. Johnny Mathis continued to record Top 40 hits in each of the first four decades of his career, reaching number one again in 1980 with "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late." His velvet voice and impeccable phrasing have won the hearts of listeners the world over. His mastery of American song has won the enduring affection of his public and the profound respect of his peers, who have honored him with the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award, and a place in the Grammy Hall of Fame. For half a century, through all the changes in musical fashion, Johnny Mathis has sounded a pure note of romance, and brought magic to millions. This performance was recorded in 2011 at the Academy of Achievement in Washington, D.C.

Since she first hit the charts with "Don't Make Me Over" in 1962, the unmistakable voice and flawless musicianship of Dionne Warwick have made her an international musical legend. Her soulful blend of pop, gospel and soul styles has transcended musical and cultural boundaries. She began singing in church in her home town of East Orange, New Jersey. While attending Hartt College of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, she began working as a back-up singer on recording sessions in New York City. Songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David recruited her to record demos of their songs, and soon she won a recording contract of her own. The team of singer Warwick with writers Bacharach and David recorded 30 hit singles, and nearly 20 best-selling albums in the first ten years of their collaboration. Hits like "Anyone Who Had A Heart," and "Walk On By" spread Warwick's fame all over the word. She received her first Grammy Award in 1968 for Bacharach and David's "Do You Know The Way to San Jose?" In 1970, she received her second Grammy for the best-selling album I'll Never Fall In Love Again, featuring the Bacharach-David song of the same name. In the 1908s, Warwick led the music industry's fight against AIDS. Her chart-topping single "That's What Friends Are For," recorded with her friends Elton John and Gladys Knight, raised millions of dollars for AIDS research. In 2010 she published her memoir, My Life as I See It. This podcast was recorded during her 2011 appearance at the Academy of Achievement in Washington, D.C. The performance is interspersed with excerpts from the Academy's exclusive interview with Dionne Warwick.

In 1995, when retired General Colin Powell took himself out of the running for President of the United States, he was leading every candidate in every poll. At the time, his autobiography, My American Journey, was a national bestseller. Millions of Americans have been inspired by his life story, from his boyhood in the South Bronx, through service in Vietnam, to his term as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. General Powell was the first African-American and the youngest officer ever to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ranking officer in the United States military. Most Americans got their first vivid impressions of General Powell in this role, at his televised press briefings during the 1991 Gulf War. His articulate, forthright manner and unassuming dignity made him a favorite of statesmen, journalists and the general public. In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed him Secretary of State, a position that placed him at the head of America's foreign policy, and fourth in line of succession to the Presidency itself. He served throughout the first term of the Bush administration, a period that included the September 2001 attacks on the United States and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He remains one of the most admired Americans, a leader whose prestige transcends party and ideology. For over 20 years, he has been at the center of the most momentous events of our time.

In 1995, when retired General Colin Powell took himself out of the running for President of the United States, he was leading every candidate in every poll. At the time, his autobiography, My American Journey, was a national bestseller. Millions of Americans have been inspired by his life story, from his boyhood in the South Bronx, through service in Vietnam, to his term as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. General Powell was the first African-American and the youngest officer ever to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ranking officer in the United States military. Most Americans got their first vivid impressions of General Powell in this role, at his televised press briefings during the 1991 Gulf War. His articulate, forthright manner and unassuming dignity made him a favorite of statesmen, journalists and the general public. In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed him Secretary of State, a position that placed him at the head of America's foreign policy, and fourth in line of succession to the Presidency itself. He served throughout the first term of the Bush administration, a period that included the September 2001 attacks on the United States and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He remains one of the most admired Americans, a leader whose prestige transcends party and ideology. For over 20 years, he has been at the center of the most momentous events of our time.

In the rock and roll pantheon, Chuck Berry stands alone. Every element of the music existed before he ever stepped onstage, but no one can deny he was the first writer and performer to put it all together. In the 1950s, he combined stinging guitar licks with a jumping rhythm section, sly lyrics and an audacious stage presence to create a sound and style that proved irresistible to both black and white audiences at a time when radio and performance venues were still largely segregated. His very first single, "Maybellene," went to number one on the R&B charts in 1955 immediately crossed over to the pop charts. Hit followed hit: "Sweet Little Sixteen," "Roll Over Beethoven," "Rock and Roll Music," and his signature song, "Johnny B. Goode." His trademark two-string riffs and patented duck-walk made him rock's first guitar hero. Chuck Berry's sound and attitude inspired a generation of rockers on both sides of the Atlantic; the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and Bob Marley all recorded Chuck Berry songs, and his repertoire became required learning for aspiring pickers everywhere. A recording of "Johnny B. Goode" was placed on the Voyager I space probe to spread Chuck Berry's message of joy to the stars and beyond.

Hailed as the greatest team player on the greatest team of all time, Bill Russell led the Boston Celtics in the longest championship streak in U.S. sports history. With a flair for defense never before seen on a basketball court, allied with an uncanny ability to excel under pressure and an indomitable will to win, Russell dominated the game of basketball from his earliest days as a student athlete to his triumphant career in the pros. As captain of the Boston Celtics, he led the team to nine championships, including the unsurpassed streak of eight consecutive wins. In 1967, he succeeded the legendary Red Auerbach as the team's head coach, becoming the first African American to coach a major league sports team in the United States. Serving as a player-coach, without an assistant, he guided the Celtics to two additional championships. Bill Russell achieved this unprecedented record while facing down the incessant harassment and prejudice that hounded African Americans in the 1950s and '60s. His courage and dignity in overcoming these obstacles have been an inspiration to all Americans. In this podcast, recorded at the 2008 International Achievement Summit in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, the Hall of Famer speaks less of his accomplishments on the basketball court than of his achievements as a father.

On November 4, 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was elected President of the United States. The first African American to be elected to the nation's highest office, his victory is a milestone in American history. The son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, Obama grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. After graduating from Columbia University, he moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he served as President of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. In 1995 he published a moving account of his family and his youth, Dreams From My Father. Little noticed at the time, it later became an international bestseller. When Obama taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, overflow crowds gathered in the halls outside his classroom to listen to his lectures through the open door. In addition to teaching and practicing law in Chicago, he served for eight years in the Illinois State Senate. Barack Obama became a national figure overnight with his electrifying keynote speech at the 2004 National Democratic Convention. At the time, Obama had just won an upset victory in a primary election to become the Democratic nominee for a U.S. Senate seat. With one speech, a virtual unknown had become the most inspiring personality in American politics. That fall, he won his Senate race in an overwhelming landslide. From the day he arrived in Washington, the news media debated the question: could this freshman Senator make a serious run for the White House? Soon he was breaking fundraising records and drawing passionately enthusiastic crowds around the country. Running against an array of the most seasoned leaders in American politics, Senator Obama ran an intensely disciplined campaign, deploying the resources of the Internet to build an unprecedented national network of donors and volunteers. After winning the nomination of the Democratic Party, he triumphed in states where Democratic candidates had not competed in decades. His inauguration on January 20, 2009 was celebrated around the world as the beginning of a new era, and a vindication of the American Dream. After only eight months in office, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his "efforts to strengthen international diplomacy," his "vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons" and for inspiring hope and creating "a new climate in international politics." He had just begun his presidential campaign when he addressed the Academy of Achievement in Washington in 2007. In his remarks, he pays tribute to a leader who inspired him, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

It would be difficult to name another athlete who dominated his sport as long or as completely as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The greatest all-around player in the history of professional basketball, he ruled the sport through speed, agility and a devastating ambidextrous "sky hook" shot that sportswriters dubbed "the ultimate weapon." In the three seasons he played for the UCLA Bruins, he led the team to three NCAA championships and was named Most Outstanding Player in all three years, the only player in the history of the college game to hold this distinction. As a professional, his career was even more remarkable. In his 20 seasons in the NBA, he played in 19 All-Star Games, won six championship titles and six Most Valuable Player awards. Over the course of his career, he blocked more than 3,100 shots, made 17,400 rebounds and scored 38,837 points, making him the highest-scoring player in NBA history, a record that may never be broken. Adored by his fans and revered by his teammates, he retired to the most heartfelt tributes in sports history. Since retirement, he has chosen to pursue a second career as an author, enjoying success with books on African American history, World War II, the Harlem Renaissance and his own experiences coaching basketball on an Apache Indian reservation. One of the most durable athletes in the history of any sport, he has gone on to earn the world's enduring respect for his accomplishments as a human being.

In novels such as the modern classic, Beloved, Toni Morrison has fused history and legend, realism and fantasy, to craft an epic saga of African American life. Although her work is steeped in local history and folklore, the fundamental human values of her art have captured the hearts of readers around the world. After earning a Master's in English from Cornell University, Morrison taught at Howard University in Washington, D.C. for many years, and first took up writing as a form of escape from an unhappy marriage. She completed her first novel, The Bluest Eye, while raising two children on her own and working full time as an editor at Random House in New York. She received the National Book Critics Award for her second novel, Sula. Her third, Song of Solomon, attracted an international audience. A year after Beloved was published in 1987, Morrison received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 1993, Morrison was honored with the Nobel Prize for Literature. She is the first African American to receive this honor, and the first black woman of any country. She embraces her historic role proudly, and often writes on issues of race and gender in American life and letters. Now a Professor in the Council of Humanities at Princeton University, she has often said that she takes teaching as seriously as writing. Her novel, Love, appeared in 2003. Her opera, Margaret Garner, had its world premiere in the spring of 2005 and was performed throughout the United States. Morrison's novel A Mercy, published in 2008, returns to the subject of slavery in 17th-century America.

The most exciting and acclaimed playwright in American drama today, Suzan-Lori Parks is the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Audiences across the country relish her rich blend of fantasy, humor, history and legend, bursting with the music and wordplay of African American vernacular speech. The powerful theatricality of her work forces audiences to re-examine their thinking about race, sex, family, society and life itself. Her plays, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom and Venus, both won Off-Broadway's Obie Awards for Best Play. In Topdog/Underdog, written in only three days, two brothers named Lincoln and Booth work their way through a dense undergrowth of family grievances, until their names take on an awful relevance. A sensation at the Public Theatre in 2001, it moved to Broadway the following year, bringing the playwright a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" and the Pulitzer Prize. Another writer might have choked on the expectations raised by her success; Parks responded by writing one short play every day for a year. The resulting work, 365 Plays/365 Days, has been produced by a network of 700 theaters around the world, in venues ranging from street corners to opera houses. It is the largest grassroots collaboration in theater history. How does she explain her extraordinary productivity? "Discipline," she says, "is just an extension of the love you have for yourself."

"There is no such thing as an average human being. If you have a normal brain, you are superior. There's almost nothing that you can't do." When Benjamin Carson was in fifth grade, he was considered the "dummy" of his class. His classmates and teachers took it for granted that Ben would take an entire quiz without getting a single question right. He had a temper so violent that he would attack other children, even his mother, at the slightest provocation. "I was most likely to end up in jail, reform school, or the grave," he remembers. But Benjamin Carson turned his life around. He graduated from high school with honors, went on to Yale University and to medical school. At age 32, he became Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He is internationally recognized as a pioneer in his field. In his operation on the Binder conjoined twins in 1987, he succeeded where all predecessors had failed, in separating twins joined at the head.

He has recorded in a dazzling variety of styles, from the hard bop of his youth to the free jazz, avant-garde, fusion, Latin jazz, funk and R&B of subsequent decades. A formidable composer and bandleader, he is unparalleled in his imagination and expressiveness as a soloist. A 1956 album title still captures his enduring stature in the world of jazz: Saxophone Colossus. As he enters his ninth decade, he is still going strong. Always spontaneous, always unpredictable, with Sonny Rollins every performance is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. In this performance from the 2006 International Achievement Summit, he collaborates with the Tony Award-winning Broadway sensation Savion Glover. Starting in his teens, Glover led a movement to win respect for tap dance as a serious art form, drawing on the heritage of generations of masters who came before him. His elders and his contemporaries acclaim him as the greatest tap dancer of all time.

When Desmond Tutu became General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, he used his pulpit to decry the apartheid system of racial segregation. The South African government revoked his passport to prevent him from traveling, but Bishop Tutu refused to be silenced. International condemnation forced the government to rescind their decision. He had succeeded in drawing the world's attention to the injustice of the apartheid system. In 1984, his contribution to the cause of racial equality in South Africa was recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize. As Archbishop of Cape Town, spiritual leader of all Anglican Christians in South Africa, his spiritual authority dealt a death blow to white supremacy in South Africa. As Chairman of the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he helped his country to bind up its wounds, and choose forgiveness over revenge. Now retired from his episcopate, he continues to raise his voice for peace and justice all over the world.