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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, we continue the oral history call-in series that we're doing on the most defining news event of your lifetime. We're taking this decade by decade. We started last week with callers in your 90s, 80s, then 70s. Yesterday, we invited people in your 60s. This call-in today will only be for you if you are in your 50s, on the most defining news event of your lifetime. It can be local or national or global.

Immigrants, welcome to talk about things from your country of origin, maybe when you were young. (212)-433-WNYC. For some extra fun, we'll invite you, as we've been doing, to name the most memorable concert you ever saw if you have one. People so far have cited things like seeing Duke Ellington's orchestra in Paris, the Rolling Stones and Stevie Wonder on the same bill, Leonard Bernstein conducting a young people's concert at Lincoln Center, Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park, and so much more. How about you if you are in your 50s? (212)-433-WNYC, 433-9692. It's the oral history call in series we're doing on the most defining news event of your lifetime decade by decade today if you are in your 50s.

Here are a few of the calls we've gotten during our last three shows.

Speaker: Hi, Brian. I want to talk to you about the day. I was five years old, and what happened was something I had never seen at that point in life. A block party broke out on my street. My mother and father and my four sisters, we all went down to Washington for the march on Washington. That was a very, very explosive experience for my teenage self. I'm 76, so I'm like one of the original boomers born in '46.

Speaker: It's funny. I've always observed that some people's lives are shaped by these extraordinary events. I'm so grateful for this series. My father was born in 1915, and I could never understand why he couldn't get over the Great Depression until AIDS happened to me. I was working on Broadway. I was a general manager. People started to get sick and die, and then we found out what it was and nobody was doing anything.

Brian Lehrer: In that set, we heard Joe on Staten Island who's in his 80s, Gregory in Harlem who's in his 70s, and Barbara in Washington Heights who's in her 60s. What news event has been most defining in your life if you are in your 50s? Now, if you're in your 50s, just for a little context to help set this up, you're definitely not a baby boomer. Now, we've passed the baby boomers in this oral history series. For example, if you turned 55 this year, you were born in 1968.

Did you define yourself at all in opposition to your older boomer brothers and sisters or your much older boomer parents? Was that a thing for you? If the boomers were somewhat about sex and drugs and rock & roll, as they say, you reached puberty just as AIDS was beginning to peak. Did that help form your attitude toward sex? If you're 55 today, you were 18 when college basketball star, Len Bias, died from cocaine. You were 14 when Michael Jackson's Thriller came out. 23 for Nevermind by Nirvana. 26 when Kurt Cobain took his own life. You were just six years old for Watergate, so maybe the first presidential scandal you knew was Iran-Contra when you were turning 18. Ronald Reagan was president for all of your teenage years, and he was popular with young voters.

When you were 16, Reagan was so popular he even carried New York in his re-election in 1984. Did Ronald Reagan help form your political view of the world, or maybe it was Jesse Jackson, who run in the Democratic primaries for two election cycles? Your first presidential election would have been Dukakis versus H.W. Bush in '88, but with the choice of Jesse Jackson in the Democratic primaries. The Cold War ended and the Berlin wall came down when you were 21 if you're 55 today.

Tiananmen Square was that same year too. George H.W. Bush became president, and New York City elected its first Black mayor, David Dinkins when you were 21. The city and the country were in a deep recession and period of high crime in those four years under Democrat Dinkins and Republican Bush. Some of you would've been smeared as slackers for allegedly not being ambitious in the workplace, but it was hard to find a good job during that recession, so why define yourself by work?

Then it all flipped in 1993, 30 years ago when you were 25 when Democrat Bill Clinton became president and Republican Rudy Giuliani became mayor. Clinton as a fresh young hope nationally, Giuliani as more of a backlash. You were the first generation to grow up with MTV, and maybe you watched Alison Stewart in her Peabody award-winning role as MTV political correspondent during the 1992 election when you were 24. Of course, there was so much more. Those are just some points of recent history to jog your memory peg to people who are 55.

If you're anywhere in your 50s, you tell us, what was the most defining news event of your life? (212)-433-WNYC. Your most memorable concert if you want to throw one in. We'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your calls with the most defining news event of your lifetime if you're in your 50s. You can throw in the most memorable concert if you want. Akisa, in Fort Lauderdale, you are on WNYC. Hi, Akisa.

Akisa: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I have a couple of memorable moments. I'm 51. I grew up in Manhattan. Hip hop, of course, for me, was a big defining moment. It bloomed in my teenage life. I remember dancing in the tunnel and seeing Run-DMC in the tunnel. Also, voting for the first time when I was 18 for David Dinkins. I remember the old machines that there was a huge lever you had to pull to the left and pull to the right. That was very memorable for me. Those machines, I don't think are in use anymore.

Also, Mandela being released from jail. That was pretty huge for me because I remember at the time, my family went to Riverside Church up at Columbia. We would have letter-writing campaigns for companies to divest from apartheid. When he was released from prison and then came to New York, I remember seeing him praying in the Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan, and then seeing him speak at Riverside Church. That was pretty memorable.

Finally, Rodney King. I think in your teens and 20s is when you really become aware of the world. I just remember being dumbfounded by the cops being acquitted. That still sticks in my brain. His famous quote of, "Can we all get along?" It definitely, still sticks in my brain.

Brian Lehrer: How do you think your adult life has been shaped by the collection of news events you just cited?

Akisa: I think, for me, I became very conscious of being a Black woman in New York and in the world, being a child of immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa, Panama, and Kenya. It makes you very aware of who you are in relationship to race, an American raised in New York. It informed what work that I do and how I want to go forth in achieving that work.

Brian Lehrer: Akisa, thanks. Oh, do you have a concert you want to throw in, or maybe you did Run-DMC?

Akisa: My very first concert was Prince in that regard, and I saved my babysitting money for weeks. I was so happy.

Brian Lehrer: Great story. Akisa, thank you very much. Brian in Metuchen, you are on WNYC. Hi, Brian.

Brian: Hi, Brian. A second-time caller. Thanks for having me on. One of the things I remember pretty clearly, and I used to be, I still am, a big fan of news and current events and used to watch Walter Cronkite. I remember the election of Ronald Reagan, and actually being uncomfortable with that, being scared, being not sure of what was happening in the world.

I can't say why at this point I had that just discomfort, but I definitely remember being aware. Maybe it was the environment I was in, but definitely feeling very uncomfortable with his election.

Brian Lehrer: You would've been a teenager then, I guess, right? Or only about 12.

Brian: Yes, about 13. 12, 13 at that time, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Did your parents instill that discomfort in you?

Brian: I think it had to be a combination of their beliefs and friends but just coming of age at that point in time and being into culture and music. I think that there was a lot of influence out that led me to feel anti-Reagan I think and feel like it was something-- It's difficult putting it into words now but it felt that there was a change to the freedom I had enjoyed or I guess growing up I felt like something more restrictive was happening at a time where I was trying to break out of the rules and bonds of your parental influence.

Brian Lehrer: Brian, thank you so much for chiming in. Janet in Great Falls, Montana you're on WNYC. Hi, Janet.

Janet: Hi, Brian. Can I just say life is hard and you make it so much less hard and I thank you?

Brian Lehrer: You're very kind. What's your news about?

Janet: I'm 59 and in 1991 I was about mid-late 20s when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court and I was working in a sexual and domestic violence crisis center and my job included tallying every quarter of statistics. Back then we didn't have computerized statistics. I read through every priceless call, every visit, every horror story a woman or child had reported to us and the details of it and marked on these sheets all these statistics.

As I did that, that week of, I was listening to public radio through the long, long hours that I had to work to get it done and listening to those hideous confirmation hearings that Anita Hill had to sit through. It was not a good combination. I reached a combustion point. Anyway, I don't know how much the story to tell but it was hugely impactful. Of course for--

Brian Lehrer: Bringing that kind of sexual harassment allegation into public view in that way. Yes?

Janet: Right and the courage and for any woman and for a Black woman and to be treated that she was treated terribly and by Joe Biden and Company. I had to work really hard to get over myself to support Joe Biden for president and I certainly do and all that. Boy, back then it was a different time. That White Boys Club treated her-- Not just her but the other women who wanted to speak and were not allowed to. The way that whole thing was handled just told women that we don't count in the work. If we're not treated well in the workplace or not treated as human beings in the workplace or elsewhere or assaulted, it doesn't matter.

We continued to shut up for all these decades since in large part and fortunately, a few years ago that got taken up and I could not believe it. I felt the earth moving.

Brian Lehrer: Relating back to the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings. Janet, thank you so much for calling in with that from Great Falls, Montana. Please call us again. Edmont in Mount Vernon, you're on WNYC. Hi, Edmont.

Edmont: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. Hitting that intro of all those moments in my life, I'm 54 and it was just like a movie reel you rolled off in the beginning. I'm like wow, okay, all those impactful points. The one that I called into for myself was the election of President Obama and standing online with my young children and my husband for hours to vote was just so moving. Watching the inauguration in events that you just thought would never ever happen.

Then I would also say that in your reflection, I wanted to mention also that my years when Ronald Reagan was elected and that emphasis on trickle-down economics and it never made sense to me on how that would work and as well as moving to a service economy. I never heard people really discuss how it was during his presidency that he advocated moving to a service economy and the ramifications that we're facing now of that move away from manufacturing including socialism and all of that.

Brian Lehrer: It's interesting because most people cite something very early like their teen years or their early to mid-20s as the defining news event for them, but I hear you. For you, it was the election of Obama. By then you were about 40. Do you want to name a concert?

Edmont: Yes and I didn't also want to give you two for one because I asked my father who's 99 William Wiggins. He said it was the signing of the civil rights legislation by Johnson was his most defining moment. He listens to you every morning.

Brian Lehrer: Tell your father to call in on Monday, Martin Luther King Day because we're going to do a different oral history call-in that day specifically for people who remember anything from the civil rights era. We invite your 99-year-old dad to call in. Real quick Edmont, give us that concert.

Edmont: Jill Scott in the early 2000s with my cousins and sisters, we all went like 15 of us and it was just such a wonderful experience.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Dale in Brooklyn is calling in with one that I didn't mention in there. Of course, you couldn't mention everything but in that rundown of some big, big events from the '80s but a few people are bringing this up on the phones and on Twitter. Dale, you're going to get the honors. You're on WNYC. Hi.

Dale: Oh, thank you. Yes. First-time caller. Definitely the challenge of disaster. The explosion of the space shuttle. I actually stayed home and watched it on TV back when I was a senior in high school. That was definitely an impact at the time. I can't remember exactly what was said, but I remember the flight control saying something rather generic like, "Oh, we've had a technical failure." 'm just thinking, "Oh really? I think so." Yes, that was definitely a big impact for me at the time.

Brian Lehrer: What impact, of course, it was such a horrible thing, I'm sure to watch the Challenger explode, I guess, on live television. Did it affect, I don't know, your attitude toward the space program or your attitude toward risks in your own life? We just have 20 seconds.

Dale: Yes, I think that, and some of the hearings afterward of showing the physics, just how things, how that badly risks were taken for NASA.

Brian Lehrer: The engineering of it. Do you have a concert for us?

Dale: Yes. I was going to mention at Rammstein last year, It was an amazing concert provider but then I recalled that I saw Beastie Boys' first and last concert in Brooklyn. That was definitely-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Dale, and thanks to all of you in your 50's who called in for our oral history call-in today. Tomorrow it's on to callers in your 40's. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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