Smoketown
My parents are originally from the Philly area, but I grew up in Miami. I lived there until I was twenty-three, but finally moved to Pittsburgh in the mistaken belief that graduate school would automatically get me a job as an ambassador or the UN Secretary General. Turns out you need some actual direction or specialization or something. You can't just wander willy-nilly through the halls of academia and think that will just automatically get you a job. That was a surprise. Anyway, in the eleven years since moving to Pittsburgh, I have come to really love the city. There's still some things I miss about Miami - the sun and heat, for one thing, and the food for another. I don't care what Pittsburghers say, you can't just slap some soggy fries on a sandwich and think that's real food. The food and English-style weather notwithstanding, Pittsburgh's a pretty cool place. I love the leaves changing, and the snow, and crocuses and tulips in the spring. I worry about the air and water quality, but love the museums, the architecture, the plucky resourceful nature of the people, and the frankly ridiculous accent, even though I cringe every time my also Miami-born husband says "the floor needs swept", which he does just to make me crazy.
Belonging (and not belonging) to both Pittsburgh and Miami meant that I had a lot of options when I got to the "a book by a local author" prompt of the 2018 PopSugar Reading Challenge. I could read Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, or Nellie Bly's Ten Days in a Mad-House. Maybe something by Carl Hiaasen or Dave Barry or Leonard Pitts. I was trying to choose an option when I heard about the publication of Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance, by Mark Whitaker. My history of Pittsburgh isn't good enough, though I would posit that Pittsburgh doesn't do enough to promote its history. This is the site of the Whiskey Rebellion, of Fort Duquesne (Fort Pitt, now), of the Allegheny Arsenal explosion. The Mellons and Carnegies of the world made their fortunes here. The air traffic controllers who landed planes during the Berlin airlift trained in Pittsburgh (our weather really is terrible). Why is Pittsburgh not a major tourist destination? I think we haven't advertised enough reasons to come here. It can't be that the only things people know about Pittsburgh are industrial decline and the Steelers.
In addition to the historical events mentioned above, it turns out that Pittsburgh was the site of a major black renaissance rivaling that of Harlem. Pittsburgh incubated jazz, ragtime, and swing music. Satchel Paige and Josh Gordon played for Pittsburgh Negro League teams. Pittsburgh was the home of the Pittsburgh Courier, at one time the most the important black newspaper in the United States. The Courier lobbied for equal rights for blacks in the military, in major league baseball, and Courier reporters were at the scene of most of the major Civil Rights events in the South. Whitaker covers the rise of downtown and its skyscrapers. It was great learning about the history of different Pittsburgh neighborhoods, including East Liberty, where I lived for a time, just before gentrification began to take over. Predictably, the wealthy white Highland Park neighborhood was given a nice park, while the historically black Hill District, the home of a number of elite black social clubs and restaurants, was demolished to make way for the Civic Arena. Of course, not enough new housing was built to accommodate the black citizens who were suddenly made homeless. It seems that gentrification is not a new problem.
Mark Whitaker, being a journalist, focuses primarily on the Courier's involvement in twentieth century black history, but the book is at its most compelling when it comes to the Civil Rights movement. While I was interested in reading about August Wilson, Billy Eckstine, and Lena Horne, and about Wendell Smith's role in getting Jackie Robinson onto the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Civil Rights section, and Evelyn Cunningham's coverage for the Courier, held the most immediate interest for me. Cunningham became friends with major Civil Rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., and even had the nerve to try to interview Bull Conner, who had a predictably terrible response to her questions.
I don't fare well with non-fiction - in real life, everyone has the same five names, and it gets really hard to figure out which John or Michael an author is referring to, plus the narrative style is typically much drier. I found Smoketown to be much more accessible, though not a page-turner. To be fair, the only non-fiction books I have found to be page turners are All the President's Men and pretty much anything by Mary Roach. The above notwithstanding, Smoketown is an easy, engaging, informative read. It should be required reading in Pittsburgh schools, and I think would be a great answer to all the people who react with shock when informed that I chose to move to Pittsburgh.
Belonging (and not belonging) to both Pittsburgh and Miami meant that I had a lot of options when I got to the "a book by a local author" prompt of the 2018 PopSugar Reading Challenge. I could read Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, or Nellie Bly's Ten Days in a Mad-House. Maybe something by Carl Hiaasen or Dave Barry or Leonard Pitts. I was trying to choose an option when I heard about the publication of Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance, by Mark Whitaker. My history of Pittsburgh isn't good enough, though I would posit that Pittsburgh doesn't do enough to promote its history. This is the site of the Whiskey Rebellion, of Fort Duquesne (Fort Pitt, now), of the Allegheny Arsenal explosion. The Mellons and Carnegies of the world made their fortunes here. The air traffic controllers who landed planes during the Berlin airlift trained in Pittsburgh (our weather really is terrible). Why is Pittsburgh not a major tourist destination? I think we haven't advertised enough reasons to come here. It can't be that the only things people know about Pittsburgh are industrial decline and the Steelers.
In addition to the historical events mentioned above, it turns out that Pittsburgh was the site of a major black renaissance rivaling that of Harlem. Pittsburgh incubated jazz, ragtime, and swing music. Satchel Paige and Josh Gordon played for Pittsburgh Negro League teams. Pittsburgh was the home of the Pittsburgh Courier, at one time the most the important black newspaper in the United States. The Courier lobbied for equal rights for blacks in the military, in major league baseball, and Courier reporters were at the scene of most of the major Civil Rights events in the South. Whitaker covers the rise of downtown and its skyscrapers. It was great learning about the history of different Pittsburgh neighborhoods, including East Liberty, where I lived for a time, just before gentrification began to take over. Predictably, the wealthy white Highland Park neighborhood was given a nice park, while the historically black Hill District, the home of a number of elite black social clubs and restaurants, was demolished to make way for the Civic Arena. Of course, not enough new housing was built to accommodate the black citizens who were suddenly made homeless. It seems that gentrification is not a new problem.
Mark Whitaker, being a journalist, focuses primarily on the Courier's involvement in twentieth century black history, but the book is at its most compelling when it comes to the Civil Rights movement. While I was interested in reading about August Wilson, Billy Eckstine, and Lena Horne, and about Wendell Smith's role in getting Jackie Robinson onto the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Civil Rights section, and Evelyn Cunningham's coverage for the Courier, held the most immediate interest for me. Cunningham became friends with major Civil Rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., and even had the nerve to try to interview Bull Conner, who had a predictably terrible response to her questions.
I don't fare well with non-fiction - in real life, everyone has the same five names, and it gets really hard to figure out which John or Michael an author is referring to, plus the narrative style is typically much drier. I found Smoketown to be much more accessible, though not a page-turner. To be fair, the only non-fiction books I have found to be page turners are All the President's Men and pretty much anything by Mary Roach. The above notwithstanding, Smoketown is an easy, engaging, informative read. It should be required reading in Pittsburgh schools, and I think would be a great answer to all the people who react with shock when informed that I chose to move to Pittsburgh.
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