Root Shock. Mindy Thompson Fullilove
are going to make their fire, and you are going to fix their stove because the stove is run by coal. And I didn’t want to be none of them guys there. Them guys worked too hard.”
Ken shared his discovery, made at an early age, of how to get change. “I’m talking five or six years old. My dad used to frequent Centre Avenue, the bars, and with us being on Clarke Street, it wasn’t that far. And I remember some of the bars had brass rails and sawdust on the floor, and I would go up there looking for my dad, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to be up there, but everyone knew my dad and knew I was his son, so they’d give me quarters. And I said, ‘Hey, I can get some money!’ And even if I knew my dad wasn’t up there, I would be up there.”
George Moses, in the same group, remembered, “Every Saturday, it was just an unwritten law; every Saturday [the numbers runners] would come down there, and all the boys, there might be thirty of us, they’d take us out to Forbes Field, they’d buy us baseball tickets, and they got kind of like into that, they would support our little sandlot baseball team in the Lower Hill.”
Henry Belcher said, “Yeah, we was on the streets, selling papers. And we used to have little jam sessions on the corners. And someone would come around and he done got a new step or something. ‘Hey, look, man, here’s a step I got!’ And we would show each other steps, and we were actually teaching each other that way.”
When I asked him who invented that art form, he stressed, “The kids on the street accomplished these things themselves, like.” The exchange of dance steps was nourished by the existence of a performance circuit. Henry Belcher explained, “There were certain steps that every new dancer you’d meet knew. ’Cause, times we’d leave Pittsburgh, maybe we’d go up to Harrisburg and work in the clubs. Well, maybe some of them come from Philly or Washington, New York or something, can come up over there to work too. We’d be working on the same deal together. Well, there were certain things that we all knew, these routines. One was called a ‘sham’ and one was called the ‘be-scorts’ and we used to use them as an opening or a closing, because everybody already knew them. You didn’t have to make up no ending on the show.”
The interconnections—in this case, the young boys developing their individual virtuosity, the group establishing a common core of ideas, nurtured both by the local street scene and the national circuit—were essential to the survival and prosperity of the community. Because of the generative nature of the interconnections, those that showed true talent had many venues in which to nurture their talents—Henry Belcher said there were ten or twenty clubs in the Lower Hill, including the Sonia Club, the Crawford Grill, the Ritz Club, Stanley’s, Lopez, Javel Jungles, and the Washington Club, as well as the big theaters, such as the New Granada and the Roosevelt Theater.
“You had clubs, like, maybe two or three on every block . . . And then they had the after-hour clubs, they used to run all night long. People would be coming out of there and it would be daylight. People would be running to catch the streetcar. They had streetcars then; they didn’t have buses. And the people would be running to catch the streetcars and things. But it was amazing, you know? And you didn’t realize, you were just living with what was going on. But that’s just like the Hill House here.14 This was a Jewish place called the Irene Kaufman Settlement. But the Jews never realized that they would have to give that up to the blacks.”
The clubs were supported by the men and women who were working in the factories and mines of the Pittsburgh area. Henry Belcher said that, though they were uneducated people from the South, they had more money than they’d ever had in their lives. “And when they got their pay at the end of the week, they just had a ball.”
Interactions of all kinds kept the Hill afloat and made sure that everybody ate, had clothes to wear, and behaved properly. The boys on the streets got advice from older men: the dancers and musicians taught them how to refine their arts; the pimps showed them an easy way to make money; the regular guys urged them to go straight—“Even if you see me do it, don’t you do it.”
Thelma Lovette, who is a matriarch of the Hill, spoke with me about what the community was like when she was growing up in the 1920s and ’30s.15 She was the fifth of eleven children. Her mother had been born in the Hill, and her father had migrated there. She recalled how white shopkeepers helped her father get started in business. “In May 1919, [Papa] decided that he would work for himself. I know the date because my mother delivered a set of twins. The Gross brothers, a set of Jewish brothers who owned a confectionery store at the corner of Wiley and Crawford, were the ones who suggested that Papa use the converted stable behind Burke’s [Theater] and set up a shop. Father was a self-taught plumber. His skills and talents were often sought after by many who needed various plumbing jobs done. Outhouses had been outlawed and indoor plumbing was required. They were putting the bathrooms in the homes, so Papa had lots of work to do.”
In another story she related, she put across the same message of mutual aid and comfort. “I remember Papa telling us, ‘Always remember the neighborhood grocer. Because when you need, he will help you.’ The government was rationing sugar and butter. We had a neighborhood grocer—Rosenfield was the name of the family. He would always find a square of butter for Papa. We always had butter.”
Such reciprocity depended on connection, both within the Hill and among the Hill and other Pittsburgh communities. Though everyone assured me that it was not necessary to leave the Hill, as everything you needed was there, people did leave for work and shopping. One of the ways to travel was the incline, Pittsburghese for a railroad that runs up the side of a mountain. Agnes Franklin filled me in on the role the incline, which ran from the top of the Hill to the Strip Market, played in the community. “[The incline] is a big thing. And because [my family] didn’t live far from there, we were the first ones that those hucksters were in contact with. I remember my grandmother who would want something from down the Strip, she would watch me out the window: go down the incline, get off the incline, go buy her what she wants, and get back on the incline. And she would watch me the whole time.
“And they started to tear down inclines, right? But they only tore our incline down,” she remembered with bitterness. “The other inclines today are in storage, or monuments, but they tore this incline down. But that incline, you know the sign is still there. But whenever I think about the incline they have over on Mount Washington? We had an incline! It cost five cents, didn’t it? Something like that.”
The comings and goings included treats, as well as chores. Barbara Suber told me, “I feel sorry for the kids today. We didn’t have money, but we didn’t miss a parade, and the circus used to come down on Gray Street, and the trains. And we was always there. The kids haven’t had that experience.”
The active, creative life of the archipelago ghetto nation was the result of its interior processes: artists nurtured by the collective and, in turn, giving expression to the people’s moods, issues, and tribulations. In addition, different neighborhoods developed along particular pathways, each making unique contributions to the strength of the whole. But the wall of oppression that ringed the ghetto remained an obstacle to dwelling that had to be removed. Just as with the creation of art, the fight against oppression was the result of both the contributions of special individuals—in this case, especially brave individuals—and the will of neighborhoods.
Fig. 2.2. Charles “Teenie” Harris. “Mother and Daughter in Front of the YMCA in the Hill District.” 1942. COURTESY OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART, PITTSBURGH.
Fig. 2.3. Charles “Teenie” Harris. “Iron City Marching Band in front of the Carnegie Library on Wylie Avenue.” 1940s. COURTESY OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART, PITTSBURGH.
Fig. 2.4. Esther Bubley. “Art Class at Irene Kaufman Settlement House.” June 1950. From the Pittsburgh Photographic Project.