The WPA history of the Negro in Pittsburgh / edited by Laurence A. Glasco.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Glasco, Laurence Admiral.

Federal Writers' Project (Pa.)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh--History.

African Americans.

African Americans--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh--Social conditions.

African Americans--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh--Interviews.

History.

Social conditions.

Pittsburgh (Pa.)--History.

Pittsburgh (Pa.).

Pittsburgh (Pa.)--Race relations.

Pittsburgh (Pa.)--Biography.

African Americans--Pennsylvania--History.

Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.

Genre:

Interviews.

Biographies.

Physical Description:

vii, 422 pages : maps ; 25 cm

Other Title:

History of the Negro in Pittsburgh

Negro in Pittsburgh

Place of Publication:

Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press, [2004]

Summary:

The story of Pittsburgh's African Americans is deeply entwined with that of other ethnic groups, yet in many ways it is unique. Before the Civil War, Pittsburgh's rivers and proximity to the Mason-Dixon line made it a critical junction on the Underground Railroad and offered runaway slaves an important measure of freedom. Following the war, Pittsburgh offered increasing opportunities for white wage laborers, but not until World War I cut off the supply of European labor did the city's mines, mills, and factories open to black workers. This touched off a massive black migration from the South in search of economic opportunities and a better life. The discrimination that African Americans continued to face in Pittsburgh, as elsewhere in the nation, made their history a turbulent struggle for equality.

In the 1930s, the WPA's Federal Writers' Project provided work to thousands of unemployed writers, editors, and researchers of all races. The monumental American Guide Series featured books on states, cities, rivers, and ethnic groups, opening an unprecedented view into the lives of the American people. University of Pittsburgh English professor J. Ernest Wright was selected to compile and edit "The Negro in Pittsburgh." He assembled an impressive, racially mixed team of writers and other professionals -- including newspaper editors, teachers, preachers, and social workers -- but when a hostile Congress abruptly terminated funding for the program in 1939, the nearly completed project languished, almost forgotten, in the depths of the Pennsylvania State Library. Never before published, The WPA History of the Negro in Pittsburgh combines the original texts with an insightful introduction and explanatory notes by historian Laurence Glasco.

The essays in this pioneering history of African Americans in Pittsburgh were written before World War II and the economic recovery that followed the Great Depression; before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and desegregation; before the destruction of a black cultural locus in the lower Hill District. The book, therefore, not only tells the history of African Americans in Pittsburgh from colonial times to the 1930s, but also exquisitely captures the perspective of the period in which it was created. Presented thematically, chapters cover such topics as the abolitionist and civil rights movements; the significance of the wage worker in an industrial city; the development of the church, of education, and the press; and the influential arts and folkways of the Pittsburgh community. The book closes with a stirring collection of personal interviews in which citizens speak frankly about their own experiences. These narratives express intense frustration, but also hope, pride, and a deep conviction to bring about change. In the words of one woman from the Hill District, "Opportunity should be free just as the air; it's free; it's free to breathe for all of us... The remedy is to tell people the truth... Tell us the truth about everything. Tell us the whole truth."

Contents:

Chapter 1. The Shadow of the Plantation 21

Chapter 2. The Negro on the Frontier 35

Chapter 3. The Early Community, 1804-1860 53

Chapter 4. Abolition Years 100

Chapter 5. Civil Rights 168

Chapter 6. The Negro Wage Worker 216

Chapter 7. Church, School and Press 230

Chapter 8. The Later Community 250

Chapter 12. Folkways 259

Chapter 13. Arts and Culture 293

Chapter 14. The People Speak 334

Appendix 1. Memorial of Pittsburgh's Free Citizens of Color, 1837 361

Appendix 2. Lewis Woodson's "Birthday Memorandum" of 1856 368

Appendix 3. Two Poems by George B. Vashon: "Vincent Oge" and "A Life Day" 369

Appendix 4. Transcriptions of Selected Newspaper Items 383

Appendix 6. List of Microfilmed Materials 407

African American Migration Routes to Pittsburgh, 1760-1860 409

Underground Railroad Routes in Western Pennsylvania 410

Pittsburgh Downtown, Hill District, and Allegheny City (North Side), ca. 1850 411

Pittsburgh Neighborhoods and Settlements, 1865 412.

Notes:

First publication of the unfinished manuscript "The Negro in Pittsburgh" produced by the Federal Writer's Project in Pennsylvania.

"A John D.S. and Aida C. Truxall book"--P. opp. t.p.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 398-406) and index.

ISBN:

0822942321

OCLC:

54454977