Smoketown : the untold story of the other great Black Renaissance / Mark Whitaker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Whitaker, Mark, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

African Americans.

African Americans--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh--Intellectual life.

African Americans--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh--Social conditions--20th century.

African American athletes--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.

African American athletes.

Jazz musicians--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.

Jazz musicians.

Social conditions.

Intellectual life.

History.

Pittsburgh (Pa.)--Intellectual life--20th century.

Pittsburgh (Pa.).

Pittsburgh (Pa.)--Civilization.

African Americans--Intellectual life--20th century.

African Americans--Intellectual life.

African Americans--Social conditions.

Civilization.

Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.

Local Subjects:

Pittsburgh (Pa.)--Intellectual life--20th century.

Pittsburgh (Pa.)--Civilization.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xxi, 404 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 24 cm

Edition:

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.

Other Title:

Untold story of the other great Black Renaissance

Smoke town

Place of Publication:

New York : Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Summary:

"The other great Renaissance of black culture, influence, and glamour burst forth joyfully in what may seem an unlikely place--Pittsburgh, PA--from the 1920s through the 1950s. Today black Pittsburgh is known as the setting for August Wilson's famed plays about noble but doomed working-class strivers. But this community once had an impact on American history that rivaled the far larger black worlds of Harlem and Chicago. It published the most widely read black newspaper in the country, urging black voters to switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party and then rallying black support for World War II. It fielded two of the greatest baseball teams of the Negro Leagues and introduced Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Pittsburgh was the childhood home of jazz pioneers Billy Strayhorn, Billy Eckstine, Earl Hines, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner; Hall of Fame slugger Josh Gibson--and August Wilson himself. Some of the most glittering figures of the era were changed forever by the time they spent in the city, from Joe Louis and Satchel Paige to Duke Ellington and Lena Horne. Mark Whitaker's Smoketown is a captivating portrait of this unsung community and a vital addition to the story of black America. It depicts how ambitious Southern migrants were drawn to a steel-making city on a strategic river junction; how they were shaped by its schools and a spirit of commerce with roots in the Gilded Age; and how their world was eventually destroyed by industrial decline and urban renewal. Whitaker takes readers on a rousing, revelatory journey--and offers a timely reminder that Black History is not all bleak." -- Amazon.com.

Contents:

Cast of characters

The neighborhoods of Pittsburgh

The Brown Bomber's cornermen

The Negro Carnegies

The calculating crusader

The rise and fall of "Big Red"

Billy and Lena

The Double V warriors

The complex Mr. B

"Jackie's Boswell"

The women of "up south"

The bard of a broken world.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [345]-384) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Whitaker, Mark. Smoketown.

ISBN:

9781501122392

1501122398

9781501122422

1501122428

OCLC:

984512154