Smoketown : the untold story of the other great Black Renaissance

Author

Mark Whitaker

Call Number

• 973.0496 W578 (CEN)

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Publication Information

New York : Simon & Schuster, [2018]

Physical Description

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

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
• Map of Pittsburgh neighborhoods
• 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.