Beauty pageants promote the fantasy of the ideal woman. But for 35 years, one contest in New York City celebrated the everyday working girl.

Each month starting in 1941, a young woman was elected “Miss Subways,” and her face gazed down on transit riders as they rode through the city. Her photo was accompanied by a short bio describing her hopes, dreams and aspirations. The public got to choose the winners – so Miss Subway represented the perfect New York miss. She was also a barometer of changing times.

Miss Subways was one of the first integrated beauty pageants in America. An African-American Miss Subways was selected in 1948 – more than thirty years before there was a black Miss America. By the 1950s, there were Miss Subways who were black, Asian, Jewish, and Hispanic – the faces of New York’s female commuters.

In this episode of the Radio Diaries Podcast, meet the Miss Subways. This episode originally aired on NPR in 2012.

Meet Miss Subways

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50 years ago, radio broadcaster Studs Terkel published a book called WORKING: People Talk About What They Do All Day, and How They Feel About What They Do. Terkel went around the country with a tape recorder and had conversations with ordinary Americans about their jobs and their reflections on them. The book ended up being an unexpected bestseller. For a long time, the recordings of these interviews went unheard, but back in 2015, we and Jane Saks at Project& were given access to the original raw interviews. We also tracked down some of the people Terkel had interviewed to catch up on their lives, and made a series called "Working, Then and Now." 50 years later, it's interesting how much some jobs have changed, and others have disappeared entirely. Today on the podcast, we revisit that series in an hour-long special.

Working, Then and Now

Paul Alexander, one of two people in the U.S. still relying on an iron lung to survive, died on March 11, 2024 at the age of 78. Paul contracted polio in 1952 at six years old, and has had to rely on an iron lung — a big metal ventilator that encases the body from the neck to toes — since then. We spoke to Paul a few years ago about his life and the lessons he’s learned from living under uncommon circumstances. So, this week on the podcast, we’re sharing some of that conversation, as well as revisiting the story of the now the only person in the U.S. still relying on an iron lung to survive: Martha Lillard.

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This story has support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and listeners like you. Music from Blue Dot Sessions, Epidemic Sounds and the song “Iron Lung” by Taylor Phelan and the Canes. Follow us on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Facebook @radiodiaries, and visit us at radiodiaries.org.

My Iron Lung (Revisited)

We’re revisiting one of our favorite stories from years ago — with a new twist. Laura Rothenberg spent most of her life knowing she would die young. She had cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs. She documented her life in an audio diary, showing her attempt to live the normal life of a nineteen year old college student. Laura died in 2003 — but her audio diary wasn’t all she left behind.

You can find Laura Rothenberg’s book of poetry, When Poetry Visits, at https://www.codhill.com/product/when-poetry-visits/#:\~:text=The%20poems%20in%20this%20collection,people%20do%20by%20old%20age.

You can also find Laura’s memoir, Breathing for a Living, at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

Thanks to Taylor Schilling for featuring in this episode. Special thanks to Bryan Doerries and Mary Rothenberg.

My So-Called Lungs (Revisited)

In 1921, a man named Harry Pace started the first major Black-owned record company in the United States. He called it Black Swan Records.

In an era when few Black musicians were recorded, the company was revolutionary. It launched the careers of Ethel Waters, Fletcher Henderson, William Grant Still, and Alberta Hunter, artists who transformed American music.

But Black Swan’s success would be short-lived. Just a couple years after Pace founded the company, larger, wealthier, white competitors started to take an interest in the artists whose careers Pace had propelled. Then, Pace’s own life took a mysterious turn.

This episode was originally published in 2021.

The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records

This week, we’re featuring an episode of a podcast we’re big fans of: The Last Archive! The Last Archive tells little known histories and how they affect our modern lives. Today’s story, “Parakeet Panic,” explores when invasive parakeets began to spread in New York City in the 1970s — and the government decided that the solution was to kill them all.

If you liked this episode, you can listen to more of The Last Archive at thelastarchive.com, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Follow us @radiodiaries on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Facebook for more of our recommendations and stories, or visit us at radiodiaries.org.

Meet Miss Subways

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