One of the sad side effects of getting older is that you see so many of your longtime friends and allies pass away.
He helped create the Jacob H. Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University. “He backed economic empowerment, the dismantling of educational inequities, and reparations for slavery,” as Maureen O’Donnell put it in her Sun-Times obituary. “He saw the people of the African diaspora as a pan-African source of power and pride.”
In October of last year, Conrad dropped by the studio for an interview, and we talked at length about his life. On top over everything else, he was a riveting storyteller who knew the pleasures of taking a tangent wherever it may lead.
