Group recognizes four local Black leaders

From an early age, Jesse J. McLean Jr. had a calling.

“From the time I was a child of 10, I knew my gift was working with young people ... moving young folks from a place of despair to happiness,” Mr. McLean said Saturday, accepting a Black History Makers Award from the Talk Minority Action Groupin Pittsburgh.

Mr. McLean — the Western Pennsylvania executive director at Pressley Ridge, a Pittsburgh-based social services organization — was recognized for more than 30 years of service in the nonprofit sector in Pittsburgh, including developing a program that prepares middle school-age children for college.

“If something is going on in the county, Jesse is there ... always thinking about uplifting and positivity in the Black community,” state Rep. Ed Gainey, D-Lincoln-Lemington, said while presenting the award during a virtual Zoom event.

The awards, given out annually as part of Black History Month, recognize membersof the Black community throughout Pennsylvania.

The award winners this year included another Pittsburgh resident, Randall Taylor. The longtime activist is a former member of the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education and a founder of the Penn Plaza Support and Action Coalition, a support group for the hundreds of residents evicted from the Penn Plaza apartments in East Liberty.

Awards also went to Philadelphia resident Lisa Rhodes, chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Community Black caucus, and Harrisburg’s Homer C. Floyd, executive director of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission from 1970 to 2011.

“When I was offered the job in Pennsylvania, that was like a job of a lifetime for me,” said Mr. Floyd, who was born in the South and grewup in Massillon, Ohio.

“I was sick and tired of hearing, ‘We don’t rent to colored. ... You don’t eat in our restaurant, you can do takeout. ... We don’t loan money to those people.’”

Being head of the human relations commission “meant that all that I was hearing, I had the authority under the statute to try to correct. We could subpoena records and bring people in. We could correct the problem if we could identify it and get the evidence.”

“We think we made a difference in Pennsylvania,” he said.