Pittsburgh's Hill District -- aka 'Little Harlem' -- was captured pretty well in 'Smoketown'
I reviewed the 2018 book by Mark Whitaker for the Post-Gazette.
'Smoketown': A fascinating journey into the Hill District's glorious past
Feb 4, 2018 12:00 AM
Few seasoned Pittsburghers of any color need to be told what the city’s Hill District was most famous for in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
It was jazz and baseball.
Yet as Mark Whitaker easily proves in “Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance,” his history of the Hill’s forgotten cultural renaissance and the talented men and women who created it, the achievements of Pittsburgh’s largest black neighborhood went far beyond the genius of pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines and the mighty home runs of Josh Gibson.
"SMOKETOWN: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE OTHER GREAT BLACK RENAISSANCE"
By Mark Whitaker
Simon and Schuster ($30).
Although often lawless and blighted in every serious socioeconomic way, the Hill District in its glory decades was a bustling, exciting and loosely policed Mecca of commerce, nightlife and vice for the Pittsburgh’s area’s 100,000 blacks and adventurous white jazz fans.
Until the late 1950s, when a hundred acres were flattened by the brutal wrecking ball of urban renewal, the Hill was home to about 40,000 mostly poor and working-class blacks and 10,000 immigrants from places such as Italy, Syria and Russia.
Its black population in the 1930s and ‘40s was much smaller than Harlem’s or Chicago’s. But as Mr. Whitaker shows, the enterprise of a handful of the Hill’s movers and shakers — legitimate businessmen and rich racketeers — had a remarkable, lasting and heretofore unsung influence on the culture and politics of black America.
Some of the Hill’s kingpins operated jazz nightclubs and huge dance palaces on the Hill’s main streets that regularly booked Billie Holiday and the Count Basie Orchestra, nurtured future superstars such as Sarah Vaughan and launched homegrown heroes such as band leader and singer Billy Eckstine, pianist Erroll Garner and composer Billy Strayhorn.
Numbers baron Gus Greenlee and his rival Cum Posey Jr., the son of a wealthy barge company tycoon, signed up future hall of famers like Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige and built the Pittsburgh Crawfords and Homestead Grays into the powerhouse teams of the Negro baseball leagues.
Meanwhile, through brilliant marketing and a tabloid-like style of advocacy journalism that crusaded for the equality and civil rights of blacks in the North and the Jim Crow South, publisher Robert L. Vann grew his weekly Pittsburgh Courier into the country’s largest and most politically important black newspaper.
The broad strokes of the Hill’s “forgotten” history lesson will not be breaking news for historically minded Pittsburghers or serious fans of jazz and baseball.
But most Americans, white and black, will be surprised to hear Mr. Whitaker declare that the Hill District was “for a brief and glorious stretch of the 20th century, one of the most vibrant and consequential communities of color in U.S. history.”
Mr. Whitaker, a New York journalist and former Newsweek editor with deep family roots in black Pittsburgh, does a thorough, convincing and footnote-free job of making his case.
He’s a good storyteller, whether he’s doing the play-by-play of the Homestead Steel Strike or describing how the Pittsburgh Courier worked behind the scenes to help Jackie Robinson get into the majors and stay there.
He devotes whole chapters to the platonic love affair of Lena Horne and Billy Strayhorn and to the life and the career of playwright August Wilson, who grew up on the Hill during the 1950s and 1960s and carried its cultural renaissance into the 21st century by setting nine of his acclaimed 10 plays there.
“Smoketown” is mostly about individuals — dozens of shrewd, driven and gifted individuals — and it’s packed with their mini-bios and stories of success and failure.
But the book’s recurring star and most important character is an institution, the Pittsburgh Courier. Often using quotes from the paper’s articles, writers and editors, Mr. Whitaker revisits several of its many national crusades, explains why the FBI and FDR threatened the Courier with censorship during the early days of World War II and devotes a chapter to the women reporters who went South to cover the early days of the civil rights movement.
“Smoketown” is an enjoyable and rewarding trip to a forgotten special place and time, but it isn’t perfect. Mr. Whitaker, who doesn’t seem to have an angry bone in his body or an ideological ax to grind with anyone or anything, isn’t as clear as he could have been about the Courier’s house politics.
Like almost all black papers of the day, and except for the unhappy and shocking fling its publisher had from 1932-40 with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Courier was reliably Republican, pro-business, moderately conservative and an enthusiastic supporter of Republican candidate Thomas Dewey in 1944 and 1948.
It’s too bad that during his worthy paean to the Courier, Mr. Whitaker didn’t give greater respect — or more than half a sentence — to the Courier’s prolific associate editor, columnist and renowned satirist, the controversial conservative/libertarian/radical George S. Schuyler.
Mr. Schuyler, aka “The Black Mencken,” was a super journalist who wrote virtually every in-house editorial for the Courier from 1926 to the early 1960s. In 1943 he was calling for government reparations for interned Japanese-Americans as well as black Americans and Native Americans.
It’s not unfair to say “Smoketown” probably goes a little too deep into the life and career of August Wilson, and gets lost now and then in the high weeds of jazz and baseball. There also are a couple of geographical confusions and other mistakes sharp-eyed Pittsburgh natives will catch.
But quibbles aside, with the publication of Mr. Whitaker’s enjoyable and long-overdue time trip back to “Smoketown,” he and Simon & Schuster have given the Hill District and its talented ghosts the national props they’ve always deserved.
Mark Whitaker will discuss “Smoketown” with Post-Gazette executive editor David Shribman Monday at the Heinz History Center, Strip District, at 6 p.m. Admission is free, with complimentary parking at the 11th and Smallman lot. Mr. Whitaker will sign copies of the book from 7:30-8:30 p.m. Space is limited. Call 412-263-1541 to register.
Journalist Bill Steigerwald is the author of “30 Days a Black Man,” the story of Post-Gazette star reporter Ray Sprigle’s historic 1948 undercover mission into the Jim Crow South.