Classroom

On April 22, 2001, the Freedom Corner Memorial was unveiled in Pittsburgh’s Hill District neighborhood. The memorial’s location marks the spot where the community put an end to urban development as well as gathered to fight for their civil rights. In the 1960’s, the community stopped urban developers from continuing demolition past Crawford Street. The City of Pittsburgh had already demolished half of the Lower Hill District to build the Civic Arena. However, the community stopped the project before the developers depleted their community’s cultural resources. After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the Hill District’s African American community started to riot and destroy buildings. After the riots, the community marched down Centre Street to the location of Freedom Corner to meet head to head with law enforcement. The memorial symbolizes the conflicts and struggles that the Hill District’s African American community had to face but also serves as a beacon of hope for their future.

Freedom Corner is located at the corner of Crawford Street and Centre Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Hill District neighborhood. Dedicated in 2001, the memorial showcases the African American community’s fight for freedom. The site was once a place where civil rights activists would meet during marches and is now a place to reflect on past struggles. 

Freedom Corner

This tour includes landmarks related to the life of influential playwright, August Wilson, and efforts to promote civil rights in Pittsburg

Martin Robinson Delany was born May 6, 1812 in what is now Charles Town, Jefferson County, West Virginia to Pati and Samuel Delany. His mother was a free Black woman of Mandinka ethnicity whose parents Shango and Graci were royalty from the Niger Valley region of West Africa and were freed in Virginia after a period of enslavement (possibly because of their noble blood). His father, meanwhile, was a slave at the time of Martin’s birth. His parents, like Pati’s, were African nobles but were of the Gola ethnicity from what is now Liberia. Because Virginia law mandated that children inherit their enslaved status from their mothers, Martin was born free and, when an attempt was made to enslave him and his siblings his mother traveled on foot twenty miles to Winchester, Virginia to prove their free status. Growing up, Martin and his siblings learned to read from a copy of The New York Primer and Spelling Book obtained from a traveling salesman (a risky venture with education for African Americans banned in the state of Virginia). When the book’s existence was discovered by authorities in 1822, Pati was forced to flee with her children to nearby Chambersburg in the free state of Pennsylvania. His father followed them a year later after being permitted to purchase his freedom.In 1831, at the age of nineteenth, Martin Delany moved from Chambersburg to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He continued his quest to expand his education upon his arrival, enlisting in adult classes held by the Trinity African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wylie Avenue. He went on to attend courses at Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania (now Washington &amp; Jefferson College). There, he learned classics, Latin, and Greek under Molliston M. Clark. In 1832, during a cholera epidemic in Pittsburgh, Delany began apprenticing under a series of abolitionist doctors that included Andrew N. McDowell, F. Julius LeMoyne, and Joseph P. Gazzam. From these mentors he learned the prevailing medical science of the time, which centered on the techniques of cupping and leeching. In 1850, he became one of the first three Black men admitted to Harvard Medical School along with Daniel Laing, Jr. and Isaac H. Snowden. Within a month of their entrance to the school, however, Delany, Laing, and Snowden were expelled upon the protests of white students who objected to learning alongside African Americans. Delany’s expulsion from Harvard significantly impacted his political activities of the time. By 1850, he had long been active in the abolitionist cause. In 1835, Delany had attended his first National Negro Convention in Philadelphia and in 1839 traveled through the southern states to learn more about the conditions of slavery. Four years later, he established The Mystery as the first African American newspaper west of the Allegheny Mountains. Much of The Mystery’s content went on to be republished in other abolitionist papers of the time, most notably famed anti-slavery advocate William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator. Garrison was so impressed with Delany’s work, in fact, that he along with Frederick Douglass met with Delany during their visit to Pittsburgh in 1847. The following year, Delany and Douglass began publishing their joint venture the North Star, a newspaper operating out of Rochester, New York. After living in Rochester briefly, Delany returned to Pittsburgh in 1849 before his brief stint at Harvard in 1850. His expulsion from medical school convinced Delany that African Americans would never attain equal rights in the United States. So, in 1852 Delany published The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, the first book-length defense of Black emigration to Africa. This has led many to describe Delany as the first Black nationalist in American history. Delany returned to Pittsburgh from Harvard and continued his practice as a physician, remaining in the city when many fled during yet another cholera outbreak in 1854. His emigrationist stance took him outside of western Pennsylvania on a number of occasions over the following decade, however. In 1854, he led the National Emigration Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. Two years later, he moved his family to Chatham, Ontario and began serving as an Underground Railroad conductor assisting refugee slaves acclimating to freedom after their escape from the United States. In 1859, he sailed for Liberia, where he signed agreements with local leaders in what is now Nigeria to allow Black emigrants to settle there. In April 1860 he was honored by the International Statistical Congress in London over the objections of white American delegates there. He also around that time published a novel meant as a response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin titled Blake; or the Huts of America, in which he sought to make his Black characters less passive than those in the work of his white counterpart. Perhaps his most notable achievement of this period of his life, however, was attaining the rank of major in the United States Army after recruiting Black soldiers for the US Colored Troops after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. This particular achievement made Delany the first and highest ranking Black field grade officer in the Union Army. Delany resumed his political activities after the Confederate rebellion was defeated in 1865, working for the Freedman’s Bureau and Reconstruction government in Charleston, South Carolina for many years. He also continued his support for Black emigration to Africa, joining the Liberian Exodus Joint-Stock Steampship Company in 1878, which was founded to funnel African Americans to Liberia after Reconstruction ended in 1877 and managed to send a shipload of emigrants across the Atlantic Ocean before going bankrupt in 1879. For the next several years, Delany sought unsuccessfully to receive an appointment from the Republican administration in Washington, D.C. In 1884, he returned to life with his family, who had remained in the North during Reconstruction, and resumed his medical practice to make ends meet. The following year, on January 24, 1885, he passed away at the age of seventy-three in Oberlin, Ohio, where he is buried in a family plot that includes his wife and three of his children. In 2006, the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center paid for a monument to be erected on the plot commemorating Delany’s life and achievements. The historical marker at this site, noting the location of the offices of his newspaper The Mystery, has been available for public viewing twenty-four hours a day since its placement by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in 1991.

The historical marker at this location commemorates the nearby site of the offices of Martin R. Delany’s newspaper The Mystery. Published between 1843 and 1848, The Mystery was the first African American newspaper established west of the Allegheny Mountains. The Mystery was only one of Delany’s many notable ventures, which together spanned a remarkable career as physician, abolitionist, Black nationalist, and US Army officer. As a resident of the city off and on for decades in the nineteenth century, Delany was one of Pittsburgh’s most famous Black citizens and one of the most prominent African Americans of his day. While the original offices of The Mystery no longer exist, the historical marker commemorating the newspaper’s publications can be viewed here twenty-four hours a day.

Martin R. Delany Historical Marker

Famous suffragists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns of the National American Woman Suffrage Association held the first suffrage parade in the United States in Washington, D.C. on March 3, 1913, the day prior to Woodrow Wilson’s first inauguration as president. Paul and Burns borrowed the idea for a suffrage parade and many other tactics from Emmeline Pankhurst of Britain’s Women’s Social and Political Union, an organization noted for its provocative political activities. Such activities, coordinated nationwide across the United Kingdom, were designed primarily to draw public attention to the cause of women’s suffrage and put pressure on male officials to make opposing that cause politically inconvenient. The Woman Suffrage Procession, as Paul and Burns called their first parade in Washington, D.C., was part of a much larger effort on their part to mimic the Women’s Social and Political Union by leading a nationwide movement in the United States with a shared goal, coordinated schedule of protests, and common set of political tactics. The endeavor brought new intensity to the women’s suffrage movement on a national stage after decades of crawling state-by-state progress, with parades, protests, and eventually hunger strikes drawing levels of attention to the cause that federal officials were ultimately unable to ignore.The suffragists of Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania, as in most areas of the United States, embraced this renewed intensity with enthusiasm and creativity. The women’s suffrage movement had existed in the state of Pennsylvania since 1852, when Quaker activists organized the state’s first women’s suffrage convention in Chester County. For many women in Pittsburgh, support for suffrage grew out of their participation in the temperance movement. Believing alcohol consumption made men more likely to abuse their wives and deplete family finances, women in Pittsburgh and across the United States fought tenaciously in support of prohibition laws. Many of the women that helped form Allegheny County’s chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in 1874 went on to become the backbone of the women’s suffrage movement in western Pennsylvania. For others, on the other hand, the suffrage movement was from the very first intertwined with the issue of the abolition of slavery and civil rights for African Americans. Many of Pennsylvania’s early suffragists began their political lives as abolitionists and built their organizations on a commitment to achieving both votes for women and an end to the institution of slavery. For at least a portion of such activists, this commitment continued after emancipation, with the Equal Rights Association of Philadelphia organized in 1866 to gain votes for women and African Americans alike. Still, as in many other states, women’s suffrage organizations in Pennsylvania separated along racial lines more often than not. In Pittsburgh Black women (particularly in the Hill District) had been active in the cause of suffrage since 1894, when the Aurora Reading Club organized to give its members a space to discuss political events. By the 1910s, Black women in the city led by noted activists Daisy Lampkin, Grace Lowndes, and Emma Writt had organized chapters of the Lucy Stone and Anna Shaw leagues to coordinate their suffrage activities. White women led by Jeannie Bradley Roessing, Julian Kennedy, and Mary Blakewell, meanwhile, formed the Allegheny County Equal Rights Association in 1904 and later the Equal Franchise Federation in 1910. These women were responsible for the implementation of the “Pittsburgh Plan,” a slate of political activities meant to draw attention to the cause of suffrage across the region and state. Most notably, suffragists cast a replica of the Liberty Bell and toured it across the state of Pennsylvania in a flatbed truck with the clapper tied down and the message that “freedom will not ring until women have the vote.” Lampkin, Lowndes, and Writt, meanwhile, focused much of their attention on gaining support for women’s suffrage among Black men, holding lectures and meetings in tandem with male-only social organizations like the Loendi Club to draw their members into the movement. They also played a key role in coordinating local suffrage efforts with national ones. Lampkin was known for holding so-called “echo meetings” as part of this endeavor, sending representatives to national organization meetings and taking detailed notes so that Pittsburgh suffragists could hold replica meetings later. The activities of Black and white suffragists in Pittsburgh dovetailed with the suffrage parade of 1914. Members from both groups held positions on the planning committee responsible for organizing the parade and when it took place on May 2 it became the only fully integrated suffrage march in the history of the United States. While others across the nation included Black suffragists at the ends of their parades in separate contingents, those of Pittsburgh marched both as a bloc representing the National Association of Colored Women in the center of the parade as well as intermingling throughout other sections. The parade also included a group of ten young girls wearing sashes to represent the states which had thus far approved women’s suffrage. Students from the Pennsylvania College of Women (now Chatham University), Boy Scouts, mounted policemen, marching bands, and male members of the Pittsburgh City Council also marched in the parade, which drew an estimated audience of 10,000. After marching from Monongahela Wharf through downtown the parade found its way to the Jenkins Arcade Building, where seven stands had been erected so that audience members could listen to thirty speakers voice their support for suffrage on the Frick lot. Pittsburgh’s women’s suffrage movement, like others across the United States, faced its fair share of racial tensions and discrimination. The white women of the city and region, like so many before and after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, were not dependable allies in the cause of Black suffrage as Black women had been in the cause of women’s suffrage. Unlike the movements of other locations, Pittsburgh’s women’s suffrage movement featured a level of formal cooperation between Black and white suffragists that makes it stand out from its counterparts. Black and white women worked together to coordinate the fight for their shared cause both within and without the city of Pittsburgh in ways that can be considered uncommon for the period. The fact that Black and white women served together on the planning committee for the city’s first suffrage parade lends the event a distinction shared by no other such event in the history of the nation. Pittsburgh’s suffrage parade of 1914 was the only march for women’s suffrage in which Black women held formal positions of influence within the organizing structure. For that alone, the parade is worthy of note. Anyone interested in learning more about it can visit the location of its ending point near here or the Carnegie Museum during its regular operating hours.

Pittsburgh’s first suffrage parade held its closing ceremonies near this approximate location on May 2, 1914. It was one of many such events organized across the United States between the first Woman Suffrage Procession held in Washington, D.C. in 1913 and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The Equal Franchise Federation was primarily responsible for organizing the Pittsburgh parade in 1914, an organization founded and led by white suffragists. The event is notable, however, as the only suffrage march in the United States in which Black women held positions on the planning committee and the procession was integrated. This location is, as it was in 1914, public space and is accessible twenty-four hours a day. The Carnegie Museum has also created a miniature reconstruction of the parade, which can be viewed during its regular operating hours.

Pittsburgh's First Suffrage Parade, 1914

Gimbels was a chain of department stores throughout the United States. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1914, Gimbels Department Store was opened to the public. The store was considered a "flagship" store and received nationwide attention However, in the early 1930s, as racial tensions began increasing throughout the nation, it was discovered that the store refused to hire African American women. In 1935, a protest was held by young, African American women. They picketed the store wearing signs that called the store "UN-AMERICAN" and exposed the truth about the stores hiring policies.&nbsp; In 1997, the store, now called the Heinz 57 Center after Gimbels went out of business in the late 1980s, was added to the list of historic landmarks by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation.

Gimbels Department Store was a part of the Gimbels chain of department stores from 1914 to the late 1980s. In 1935, the store saw protesters picketing the store for not hiring African Americans. 

Protest Against Gimbels Department Store, 1935 

The African American Cultural Center’s namesake August Wilson is one of the most well-known artists to come out of Pittsburgh. Born Frederick August Kittel, Jr. in the Hill District on April 27, 1945, the playwright honored his mother’s role in raising him by assuming her maiden name after his father’s death in 1965. Wilson was an undeniable product of Pittsburgh’s complex and often fraught racial history. When they moved from the Hill District (the primary destination for Black families during the Great Migration) to the predominantly white Hazelwood, Wilson’s family faced racial hostility and were ultimately driven from the neighborhood. In the tenth grade a teacher at Gladstone High School accused Wilson of plagiarizing a paper on Napoleon Bonaparte, prompting him to drop out. While he worked various odd jobs Wilson sought to continue his education on his own, utilizing the Carnegie Library so extensively that it would later grant him an honorary high school diploma. He was also heavily influenced by the vibrant Black cultural scene of the Hill District at the time, an artistic movement that fed into the Black Arts Movement that inspired so much of Wilson’s work as a playwright. His most famous work, a ten-play series known as the Pittsburgh (or Century) Cycle that explores Black stories over the twentieth century, is largely a product of these experiences. The dynamic African American cultural entrepot of Pittsburgh that produced August Wilson also prompted efforts to open a museum celebrating the city’s Black artists. For decades, Pittsburgh witnessed a number of failed plans to open a museum for the display and preservation of African American culture and art. The Selma Burke Art Center operated in East Liberty until its closure in 1981. Emma Slaughter and Melvin Campbell co-founded the Homewood Art Museum and purchased land on Frankstown Avenue in Homewood shortly thereafter but were unable to raise the funds to build on the site. The plans for the museum that became the August Wilson Center began as early as 1996 and were pitched by Pittsburgh's NAACP President Tim Stevens in a document titled “Plans for Progress” meant to convince NAACP’s national organization to hold its annual conference in the city (which it did in 1997). The document called on then Mayor Tom Murphy to provide funding for a museum African American arts and culture in Pittsburgh, which Murphy subsequently did. From 1998 to 2002, funds were raised from the Urban Redevelopment Authority, Pittsburgh Foundation, State of Pennsylvania, Heinz Endowments, and various other sources. In 2006, August Wilson was chosen as the namesake of the center following his death the previous year. A short time later, the design of the center began to proceed under architect Allison G. Williams and San Francisco firm Perkins+Will. The 65,000 square foot center opened for patrons on September 17 and 19 of 2009. Unfortunately, the museum began suffering financially in 2012 and in January 2014 a federal court ruled that its debts could be resolved by its liquidation. A sheriff’s sale in November of that year resulted in its mortgage holder Dollar Bank purchasing the site for $1,912.50. Originally, Dollar Bank planned to sell the site to a developer so that a hotel could be constructed on top of the center. When Mayor Bill Peduto, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, and the Urban Redevelopment Authority fought the move, however, Dollar Bank agreed to sell to a nonprofit consortium that included the Pittsburgh Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, and the Thomas Tull Family Foundation. The sale necessitate a name change for the center, which initially became the August Wilson Cultural Center before switching to the August Wilson African American Cultural Center after an online petition protesting the removal of “African American” from the name. Since its sale the center has shown promising signs of financial recovery. It finished 2018 with a budget surplus and increased its operating budget sevenfold from 2015 to 2020. The center’s salvation in 2014 preserved a unique and essential contributor to Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania’s cultural community. Since its opening, the museum has worked to fulfill "its mission of preserving, presenting, interpreting, celebrating and shaping the art, culture and history of African Americans utilizing the rich history, legacy and culture of African Americans from Western Pennsylvania as a foundation." It has housed a variety of art forms, from traditional visual artwork to the performing arts. Among its recently featured artists have been Romare Bearden, Vanessa German, Peju Alatise, Tarish Pipkins, Latoya Ruby Frazier, and Hebru Brantley. It also offers programs throughout the year dedicated to the celebration of theater, dance, music, and film and hosts various festivals including the Black Bottom Film Festival, the TRUTHSayers speaker series, and the Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival. Through such programs and exhibits, the center servs as a fundamental pillar of the artistic and cultural community in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania and of African American experiences in the region. For these reasons the August Wilson African American Cultural Center represents an invaluable resource for its community. The African American communities of Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania have histories that are both long and vital to the city and region at large. The August Wilson Center celebrates those histories and offers its patrons an incomparable opportunity to appreciate the cultural and artistic experiences and contributions of creators like its namesake playwright. Without such experiences and contributions Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania would be less vibrant and dynamic places to live and without the August Wilson African American Cultural Center the area’s residents would be unable to fully appreciate that fact.

The August Wilson African American Cultural Center on Liberty Avenue is dedicated to housing and celebrating the creative work of western Pennsylvania’s African American community. Plans to open such a center began as early as 1996 but were not realized until 2009. The center is named for August Wilson, a playwright from Pittsburgh who won two Pulitzer Prizes and two Tony Awards. Honoring his legacy, the August Wilson Center has become a premier site for the commemoration of African American arts and culture in the region. The center presents performances, visual arts programs, rotating exhibits, and special events, and features galleries, classrooms, a 500-seat theater, gift shop, and a café. It is open from 11 AM to 6 PM Wednesday and Thursday, 11 AM to 8 PM Friday and Saturday, and 11 AM to 5 PM on Sunday.

August Wilson African American Cultural Center

The impetus behind the disability rights movement of the twentieth century that led to the protest on Liberty Avenue in 1990 can be found in the civil rights advances of African Americans and other groups in the 1950s and 1960s. Prior to this era much of the public discourse surrounding people with disabilities in the United States focused on charity and institutionalization, exclusionary concepts that impacted their social, political, and economic agency. With the rise of the civil rights movements of the mid-twentieth century, however, disability rights advocates began increasingly to fight for policies that emphasized independent living, a philosophy that centers people with disabilities as experts on their own needs in terms of freedom, control, and self-determination. As a result, centers for independent living appeared across the United States (the first in Berkeley, California in 1972), peer support organizations run by people with disabilities that in many areas became the focal point of local disability rights advocacy. This nationwide network of advocates helped push through legislation critical for enabling independent living among Americans with disabilities. One of the most important of these pieces of legislation was the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968, which enforced uniform accessibility standards for buildings in terms of design, construction, and alteration. The provisions of the Architectural Barriers Act were not enforced in Pittsburgh for another decade. It was not until the mayorship of Richard Caliguiri, who initiated the “Renaissance II” program of urban renewal, that city leaders began investigating how they might make their home more accessible to residents with disabilities. Caliguiri formed the Committee on Architectural Barriers in 1978, his second year in office, to assess the accessibility of public and private buildings across the Pittsburgh area. He also obtained federal grant money under the Architectural Barriers Act to upgrade municipal and public buildings like the Carnegie Museum, Buhl Planetarium, the City-County Building, and Allegheny County Courthouse. As Committee on Architectural Barriers members like Ruth Brenyo (founder of Open Doors for the Handicapped) made clear, however, the major roadblock to improving accessibility in Pittsburgh were privately-owned facilities, not public ones. As a result, architectural barriers in Pittsburgh came down slowly and with considerable delays. By the end of Caliguiri’s time as mayor in 1988, much of downtown Pittsburgh remained inaccessible to its residents with disabilities. While neighborhoods like Oakland and Southside received curb cuts and sidewalk ramps through federal grant money administered by the Committee on Architectural Barriers in tandem with funding from private owners, many private owners and businesses in downtown continued to refuse to cooperate with accessibility standards. It was in response to these delays that the United Cerebral Palsy of Pittsburgh Association and Three Rivers Center for Independent Living organized their protest on Liberty Avenue on May 4, 1990. During the protest, twenty individuals in wheelchairs made their way from the Federal Building on Liberty Avenue to Market Square. According to comedian, actor, and Pittsburgh-native Don Brockett (Chef Brockett on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood), who participated in the protest, Liberty Avenue was specifically chosen because some of its intersections had curb cuts on one side of the street and not on the other. Passersby watched as protesters navigated the difficult transition from one side of the street to the other, a movement that emphasized the inequitable accessibility standards of the neighborhood. U.S. Representative Doug Walgren was also on-site to make that message hit home, telling onlookers that “those who happen to be able-bodied are only temporarily able-bodied, and many of them will face the same kinds of difficulties some time in their life.” Disability rights were, in Walgren’s estimation then, not only a matter of individual access but community good. When speaking with reporters, the executive director of the Three Rivers Center for Independent Living Bill Chrisner, emphasized that the coming vote on the Americans with Disabilities Act was the key to protecting disability rights and ensuring that accessibility standards were met in areas like Pittsburgh. That bill, which eventually passed on July 26 of that year, was the most sweeping disability rights legislation of the twentieth century. Not only did it prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability and force employers to provide reasonable accommodations to workers with disabilities, it also imposed accessibility standards on commercial properties in addition to public buildings. A protest by disability advocates in March known as the Capitol Crawl (in which protestors with disabilities abandoned assistive devices and crawled up the one hundred steps to the U.S. Capitol) was a pivotal moment in pressuring Congress to push the ADA through into law. Similarly, the May protest on Liberty Avenue in Pittsburgh called attention to the barriers standing between people with disabilities and independent living. With the help of the ADA, disability advocates were able to bring new pressures to bear on the private owners of buildings in downtown Pittsburgh. As a result, by the time Mayor Thomas Murphy appointed a new task force to assess accessibility in the city in 1995, significant advances had been made in downtown. The site of the Liberty Avenue protest by disability rights activists in Pittsburgh is an important reminder that progress is neither inevitable nor assured. Twenty-two years after the passage of the Architectural Barriers Act in 1968, the residents of Pittsburgh with disabilities still lacked access to many of the areas in the heart of their own city. It took years of advocacy, activism, and assessment to fight toward a more equitable and accessible city for all of Pittsburgh’s citizens. Without the unflagging efforts of organizations like the United Cerebral Palsy of Pittsburgh Association, Three Rivers Center for Independent Living, and Open Doors for the Handicapped, as well as the allyship of political leaders like Richard Caliguiri, the advancements in accessibility Pittsburgh enjoys would not have been possible.

This site was the start location for a demonstration against architectural barriers to people with disabilities that featured twenty protesters in wheelchairs making their way down Liberty Avenue to Market Square on sidewalks lacking curb cuts and ramps. The protest, which took place on May 4, 1990, was a response to downtown Pittsburgh’s lack of accessibility after a decade plus of advocacy to remove architectural barriers in the city’s other neighborhoods. The United Cerebral Palsy of Pittsburgh Association and Three Rivers Center for Independent Living organized the protest to coincide with “Barrier Awareness Week” in May, a commemoration highlighting barriers to independent living among people with disabilities. Shortly after the protest Congressional leaders passed the Americans with Disabilities Act mandating among other things that public spaces maintain certain accessibility standards, a stipulation that gave local activists in areas like Pittsburgh further grounds for enforcing the removal of architectural barriers. As a result, the sidewalks along which the protesters traveled on May 4, 1990 are accessible to anyone seeking to follow their route.

Accessibility Protest, May 4, 1990

Fences follows the story of the Maxon family from 1957-1964. Troy Maxon, the main character is a garbage man striving to provide for his family in a city ravaged by the cultural aspects of racism. He was a former baseball player in the Negro Leagues, who, according to himself and those around him, would have been good enough to play in the Major Leagues had they been integrated. Unfortunately, his career came to an end before Jackie Robinson integrated the league in 1947. Troy’s wife, Rose, plays the typical 1950s housewife. Obedient and hardworking, whilst always living in her husband’s shadow. Throughout the play, readers witness the degradation of Troy and Rose’s marriage.           Fences addresses several topics associated with the 1950s, and its impact on the lives of African Americans both in Pittsburgh and throughout the United States. Troy’s son, Cory, is an outstanding football player in his senior year of high school. He has fielded several offers from unnamed colleges and universities. Troy refuses to allow his son to play football in college, for fear that he will endure the same racial discrimination as he did during his baseball career.           The tensions between Troy and his son are one of only many plot lines throughout the play. Wilson brilliantly wrestles with the ideas of gender norms, relationships, discrimination, and even mental health throughout the play. Major topics of life in the 1950s are all discussed from this little house in Pittsburgh’s Hill District.

The setting of the 1985 play Fences by August Wilson. Fences focuses on the Maxon family, and their toils with the ever changing social and political life in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in the 1950s. Fences has won a Pulitzer Prize (1987), Tony Award (1987), and its 2016 film adaptation was nominated for four Academy Awards, with Viola Davis winning Best Supporting Actress for her role as Rose Maxon. 


Maxon House

August Wilson was born Frederick August Kittle on April 27 of 1945 and was the fourth child of six born to Frederick Sr and Daisy Kittle. The family lived in this building in a small apartment. Wilson’s father left at a very young age, leaving his mother to raise all six children alone. The area that the family resided in was mostly a Black neighborhood and the people and experiences of his life would go on to shape Wilson's writing, including his view on race relations which can be seen throughout many of his works. At the age of 15 Wilson dropped out of public school but continued to spend many hours dedicated to daily study. In between work and family obligation, and thanks to the integrated Pittsburgh libraries, he continued reading and writing while he worked different jobs to help his mother afford this apartment. The early years of the civil rights movement and observations about racial relations shaped Wilson's worldview. He was aware of the unfair treatment and wanted to be apart of the African American movement that was going on in this United States. In the 1960’s after a brief stent in the United States Army, he officially changed his name to “August Wilson” and started participating in the Black Arts movement. He started submitting poems to different forms of the Black press, and performing his poetry in local bars. In 1968 he was the co-founder and director of The Black Horizons theater in Pittsburgh. This is when Wilson started working on his ten part cycle of plays that were mostly set in the Hills District of Pittsburgh. Several of these plays would go on to win Pulitzer Prizes. He is now remembered as one of the most renowned artist of his generation. After his death in 2005 steps have been made to preserve the African American history that came out of Pittsburgh in honor of him. He helped spread cultural awareness, not only through theater but many other forms of art as well. His plays often depicted life in this neighborhood and even included scenes inspired by this small apartment. The building is now being restored and being turned into a spot for local artist to share their art.

August Wilson was one of Americas most gifted and talented African American playwrights. He was born in this house in the Hills District, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on April 27, 1945. This area at the time was home to a working class neighborhood that was predominantly African American. Wilson would later use this apartment house as the setting for some of his most famous plays. The culture and environment surrounding this small apartment led to some of the most important moments in Wilson's career. 

The August Wilson House 

Ammon Field became home to the Pittsburgh Keystones, a professional Negro National League team in 1922. The team lasted only a single season and the field was later used by both the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays, two of the leading teams of the Negro Leagues. Starting out as a semi-pro team, the Crawfords began to attract attention to the public with their play in part owing to Josh Gibson. Cum Posey, owner and manager of the Homestead Grays, began to feel threatened by the Crawfords as they took in larger crowds. Posey convinced Hooks Tinker, the manager of the Crawfords, to bring on his brother, See Posey, to book games. By law, all amateur games were free to the public, but Posey closed all but one gate during one tournament and forced the public to give "donations" to the club. This hurt the popularity of the team and began their demise. Soon after, Posey managed to get Josh Gibson to sign on with his team the Grays. After losing their best player, interest in the Crawfords vanished.Josh Gibson moved with his family from Buena Vista, Georgia to Pittsburgh at a young age when his father found a job in the steel mills. Gibson was known for many years as "the Black Babe Ruth," a title that reflects an era when the accomplishments of Black athletes were often placed in comparison to white stars of the same sport. Today, Gibson is widely regarded as one of the greatest baseball players of all time with no qualifiers. Gibson's baseball career began in 1927 at the age of sixteen. From 1930 to 1931 he played for the Homestead Grays before playing for the Pittsburgh Crawfords from 1932 until 1936. He rejoined the Grays in 1937 and played until 1946. Gibson's talent was well-known among local African Americans while he was still young. This led to an invitation to replace the injured catcher of the Homestead Grays, Buck Ewing, on July 25, 1930, while he was in the grandstand at this historic ballpark. In this same year, he became the first to hit a home run in center at Forbes Field. In 1972, Josh Gibson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame as the second Negro League player, following Satchel Paige. Gibson’s vast amount of accomplishments may be one of the reasons why the name of Ammon Field was changed in 2008, to Josh Gibson Field in his honor. The current Josh Gibson Field is about one block west of the historic field which was located at the intersection of Somers Street and Bedford Avenue while the new location is between Kirkpatrick Street and Bedford Avenue.  Local residents created a non-profit to honor Josh Gibson and support local baseball in 1994. Access to the sport is a critical part of the Gibson Foundation's mission, and since, 1999, this field has been used by hundreds of children who are part of a little league associated with PONY Baseball which is also a non-profit organization. In May of 2008, Josh Gibson’s great-grandson Sean Gibson--who is also president of the Josh Gibson Foundation--announced that they would be renovating the field with new grass, new dugouts, scoreboards, a sprinkler system, and a concession stand with restrooms thanks to $300,000 that was raised from local organizations. Support for the project came from Pittsburgh Pirates Charities, the Baseball Tomorrow Fund, Del Monte Foods, the Grable Foundation, as well as The City of Pittsburgh. “Every kid may not have a chance to play in the majors," explained Sean Gibson, "but when they come on our field, we want them to feel like they’re in the majors.”

Ammon Field, currently known as Josh Gibson Field, dates back to the early 1920s and was home to teams such as the Pittsburgh Keystones, Homestead Grays, and, the Pittsburgh Crawfords. In the 1940s, the ballpark was divided into two youth ballparks. In 2008, Ammon Field was renamed after Baseball Hall of Fame member, Josh Gibson. The Josh Gibson Foundation was also created to care for the ball fields and ensure that area youth will always have a proper field.

Josh Gibson Field (Ammon Field) 

Greenlee Field was named after its owner, Gus Greenlee. The stadium was built in 1932 with a capacity with about 6,000. It was the first Black owned baseball field in the East. The Pittsburgh Crawfords called the field home, and the Homestead Grays also played there for a short time. Upon opening, the first game played on April 29, 1932 was a loss to the New York Black Yankees. Later in the year, that August lights were installed to allow for night baseball, making Greenlee the first field to allow for games at night. In 1935 the team won the National Negro League ball game and was named the 1935 Negro League Champs.Financial troubles began to surface and the loss of very important and vital players, Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige, it was a burden that the field and owner, Gus Greenlee, were not able to rise above. In just 6 short years the Pittsburgh Crawfords and Greenlee Field seized to exist. In December of 1938 demolition of the stadium began and the Bedford Dwellings housing project began on the site.On June 17, 2009 a historical marker was made public at the intersection of Bedford Avenue and Junilla Street near where the baseball stadium once stood. The historical marker is co-sponsored by the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum, the Josh Gibson Foundation, and the Society for American Baseball Research. (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)The historical marker reads, “Greenlee Field located here from 1932 to 1938, this was the first African American owned stadium in the Negro Leagues. Home of Gus Greenlee’s Pittsburgh Crawfords Baseball team, 1935 Negro League Champs. Players included Hall of Famers Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Cool Papa Bell.”

The site where Greenlee Field once stood has earned a place in history. Greenlee Field was the first and only Black-owned baseball field in the East but only stood for a short 6 years before being replaced with the Bedford Dwellings housing project. The field was named after the owner Gus Greenlee and was home to the Pittsburgh Crawfords. A Pennsylvania historical marker is placed on the intersection of Bedford Avenue and Junilla Street, near the place where the baseball stadium once stood. 

Greenlee Field 

August Wilson came to Eddie’s Restaurant to write his plays and to find inspiration. In Two Trains Running, the restaurant’s future is being questioned. Due to the city’s urban development plans, the restaurant’s location is prime real estate. Most buildings in the Lower Hill District had the same fate at this time. However, Eddie’s Restaurant was able to survive demolition until the twenty first century. The community did not want this business to be demolished and even considered it a historical landmark. However, the Urban Redevelopment Authority deemed the site not historically valuable and Eddie’s Restaurant was demolished in 2008.

Eddie’s Restaurant once sat here at 2172 Wylie Avenue. Hill District native, August Wilson would come to this restaurant to write his “Pittsburgh Cycle” plays and it is believed that he used the restaurant as inspiration for Two Trains Running. Unlike the restaurant in Two Trains Running, Eddie’s was demolished in 2008.

Eddie's Restaurant

In 1894, the Lutz Meat Market was established and became a community favorite until new ownership after the 1968 riots. August Wilson used the Lutz Meat Market as inspiration for his play, Two Trains Running. However, according to an article from The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, his portrayal of Karl Lutz, owner of the market, was not accurate. Wilson needed to add aspects of the racial tensions that plagued the Hill District at the time. It is believed that he portrayed Lutz as a white man who was trying to fool African Americans. According to those who knew him, Lutz cared for the whole community and considered his African American employees as family. The Lutz Meat Market was one of the only stores in the Hill District to have African American employees.

The Lutz Meat Market was once located in this building on Centre Avenue. The market was owned by Karl Lutz. August Wilson included both the market and Lutz in his play, Two Trains Running. Within the play, Wilson stressed that there were racial tensions between Lutz and the Hill District’s African American community. However, this portrayal went against the actual moral character of Karl Lutz. 

Lutz Meat Market

The Hill District’s African American community still utilizes the West Funeral Home today. In 1932, the funeral home was established by Thomas L. West Sr. It is one of the oldest African American- owned businesses in the Pittsburgh area. Due to segregation, the West Funeral Home was one of the only funeral homes that African Americans could use. August Wilson portrayed West as a greedy man in his play, Two Trains Running. However, according to an article from The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, these claims by Wilson were wrong. West was believed to be a very religious and kind man. Although still in operation, the West Funeral Home is threated by a lack in clients and an increased number of funeral homes. For now, the funeral home continues to function as Thomas L. West Sr. had intended.

West Funeral Home was originally located here at 2216 Centre Avenue. The funeral home served the African American community and continues to do so today at its 2215 Wylie Avenue location. The West family has owned and operated this funeral home for three generations. August Wilson included the funeral home and its owner, Thomas L. West Sr., in Two Trains Running. However, Wilson’s portrayal of West was inaccurate. 

West Funeral Home - Original Location

After years of unrest in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the city erupted in violent protests. Dr. King's death was the spark in the powderkeg of dozens of cities throughout the United States, as riots, fires, and general unrest became the norm for several days following his death. Throughout Pittsburgh, the Hill District, North Side, and Homewood Districts were the epicenter of protests. After years of discrimination and its wide range of side effects, the city erupted with the death of the leader of the Civil Rights Movement. 1968 was a year of unrest throughout the United States, with mounting tensions over race, sex, and the war in Vietnam came to a head in the spring and summer with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. In the end, it took the Pennsylvania National Guard six days to control the protests, 1,000 people were arrested, 36 people were injured and one person was killed in the protests throughout the city.

Homewood Playground and Homewood Swimming Pool are the approximate location of a lumberyard fire that took place during the April 1968 riots within Pittsburgh. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, Pittsburgh erupted in six days of violent protests, culminating in a fire at a Homewood Lumberyard.  

Homewood Playground

The Crawford Grill was a Black-owned club that often hosted some of the&nbsp;leading jazz musicians. This was a place where members of the African-American community often gathered to socialize, and as the civil rights movement spread throughout the city, the venue also attracted a growing interracial clientele.&nbsp;&nbsp; Legendary baseball players like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson often came to the club. These men had been members of the Pittsburgh Crawfords baseball team, a leading team in the final years of segregated baseball. The Crawfords were an independent club and quickly were regarded as one of the best Black teams in America at that time. For many, this was more than a building or a night club, but&nbsp;a place where white and Black people met and socialized on terms of equality and plan strategies to promote equality in housing and employment. Establishments of this type were&nbsp;often referred to as a 'Black-and -tan club' owing to its being a place of&nbsp;accommodation for people of all races and ethnic groups. The building was purchased by local investors in 2010 who still have the hopes of rebuilding the structure into a local restaurant and venue. A historical marker is all that designates this building as a venue where some of America's top Jazz performers and athletes congregated during the civil rights era.&nbsp;

Located within the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the Crawford Grill was one of the popular night clubs that catered to the African American community during the 1950s and 1960s. The club featured some of the leading jazz artists and was also one of the few places where white ad Black residents socialized together during the civil rights era. This club was also a place where baseball legends like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson frequently visited. The building has been vacant since 2003 but there is now a historical marker that offers a concise history of the establishment and its historical significance. 

August Wilson, African American History, and the Civil Rights Movement in Pittsburgh

Freedom Corner

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources