PITTSBURGH’S GLITTERING BLACK CULTURE
This special edition celebrates the social and cultural achievements in Pittsburgh’s black communities during the early- to mid-20th century and takes a look at the rich diversity and accomplishments that continue today in the Steel City. ‘Smoketown’ rev
While researching a family memoir, journalist Mark Whitaker discovered pictures of his Pittsburgh grandparents he had never seen.
One image shows his paternal grandmother, Edith McColes Whitaker, wearing a hat and pearls at a ladies luncheon in 1941. In the other, his grandfather, funeral director C.S. Whitaker Sr., presides at the burial of a black war veteran during the 1950s.
Mr. Whitaker, whose father grew up in Pittsburgh, visited his grandparents every summer. By then, his grandmother, who had a mortician’s license, had moved the Whitaker Funeral Home from the Hill District to Climax Street in Beltzhoover.
As Mr. Whitaker clicked through an array of Charles “Teenie” Harris pictures, he was astonished by the many famous faces of athletes, entrepreneurs, journalists and jazz giants who figured in Pittsburgh’s black renaissance from the 1930s to the 1960s.
There was boxer Joe Louis and baseball players Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson. There was businessman Gus Greenlee, the Crawford Grill nightclub owner who bankrolled the Pittsburgh Crawfords baseball team. Composers Mary Lou Williams and Billy Strayhorn as well as Billy Eckstine, an influential band leader and vocalist, were among 50 musicians who honed their major league talents here. The Pittsburgh Courier, the nation’s most influential black newspaper, included columns by sportswriter Wendell Smith, who advocated successfully for the integration of baseball. Finally, there was playwright August Wilson, who set nine of his 10 plays in the Hill District.
“As extraordinary as all those people were, a lot of their success had to do with the fact that they came out of this extraordinary culture. I decided I wanted to tell that story,” the 60-year-old author said in a
telephone interview. A New York City resident, he was the first African-American to serve as editor of Newsweek magazine.
His new book, “Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance,” revisits a time when thriving businesses, churches, clubs and theaters made the Hill District a cohesive, vibrant community.
A key influence among black readers was The Pittsburgh Courier, a weekly newspaper so influential that its circulation, for a few decades, exceeded The Chicago Defender. The Courier’s savvy editor, Robert Lee Vann, was the son of a slave and grew up sleeping in a North Carolina home’s kitchen while his mother cooked for a white family. Mr. Vann came north to Pittsburgh, attended the University of Pittsburgh on a scholarship and also earned a law degree there.
“He was a fiercely independent guy. He didn’t play ball with the black establishment. He knew a lot of them. He corresponded with them. But he also feuded with them,” Mr. Whitaker said.
Mr. Vann succeeded in urging African-Americans, who usually supported Republican candidates, to turn Abraham Lincoln’s face to the wall and vote for Franklin Roosevelt.
“There is probably no black national leader in 1932 who FDR owed more to when he was first elected,” Mr. Whitaker said.
Another influential journalist, Wendell Smith, was a Pittsburgh Courier sports columnist. He was a genial, persistent man with a positive attitude.
“He was crusading for the integration of black baseball weekin and week out for a decade before Jackie Robinson comes on the scene. I think you can make a case that the ground would not have been ready for Branch Rickey’s great experiment if not for a lot of the work that Wendell Smith and the Courier had done, ”Mr. Whitaker said.
Mr. Smith introduced Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to Jackie Robinson. While Mr. Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, Mr. Smith served as Mr. Robinson’s driver, ghost writer, spokesman and travel companion.
Meanwhile, the city’s music scene was also rich in talent. Black students benefited from learning to play classical music at Pittsburgh’s public high schools, especially Schenley and Westinghouse.
“Black folks would go out of their way to send their kids to those schools,” the author said, adding that pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines was sent to live with an aunt in East Liberty so he could attend Schenley.
“Billy Strayhorn’s mother moved the family to a back alley in Homewood so that she could send Billy to Westinghouse ,” the author said.
Mr. Strayhorn saved money from a drugstore job to pay for private piano lessons with Charlotte Catlin, an elegant black pianist who performed for Pittsburgh’s white society parties.
“She was an extraordinary pianist in her own right and taught all of these people. She came from this incredibly accomplished musical family. She had befriended Lena Horne and invited her to perform with her. She helped Lena develop the musical style for which she became known. If nothing else, I feel good about the fact that there is now in this book an acknowledgement of how extraordinary she was,” Mr. Whitakersaid.
The author hopes his book will in still pride in Pittsburgh’ s black renaissance.
“Welive in an era now that there’sjust so much attention paid to racism, to the history of oppression of blacks. What gets lost is the record of black achievement and black ambition and black contribution to our culture. That’s what’s great about the ‘Teenie’ Harris photographs as well. They testify to the vibrancy and the joy that went along with allthe hardship,” he said.