From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is unfictional.

Basically, my mother's deathbed.

She told me to find out the truth.

I told her okay.

Today on the program, we highlight I took

today on the program we highlight the work of radio diaries and their award-winning documentary program Willie McGee and the traveling electric chair a granddaughter's search for the truth.

Joe Richmond is the man behind radio diaries,

and he's been helping people document their own lives

in their own words.

Programs are produced without any narration.

The stories are told only by the people who lived them, and most of the recording is done by the

subjects themselves.

They carry audio recorders and record their own thoughts and conversations.

Afterwards, the producers take hours and hours of tape and weave together the story.

This past weekend in Chicago, Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair won the

silver medal at the Third Coast International Audio Festival for

producer Joe Richmond and his co-producer Samara Freemark. The story

originally ran on NPR's all things considered and the piece

begins with the voice of ATC host Robert Siegel. On the night of May 7th

1951 close to a thousand people gathered around the courthouse in the small town

of Laurel, Mississippi.

They came to witness the execution of Willie McGee, a young black man convicted of raping a white woman. The

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