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Summary
Summary
" Smoketown brilliantly offers us a chance to see this other black renaissance and spend time with the many luminaries who sparked it...It's thanks to such a gifted storyteller as Whitaker that this forgotten chapter of American history can finally be told in all its vibrancy and glory."-- The New York Times Book Review
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.
Author Notes
Mark Whitaker is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, My Long Trip Home , and Smoketown . The former managing editor of CNN Worldwide, he was previously the Washington bureau chief for NBC News and a reporter and editor at Newsweek, where he rose to become the first African-American leader of a national newsweekly.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Former CNN and Newsweek editor Whitaker (Cosby: His Life and Times) rebounds from his controversial Cosby biography with an informative and illuminating account of Smoketown, an African-American community in Pittsburgh. Centered in the city's Hill District, Smoketown thrived from the 1920s to the '50s. Though Smoketown was smaller than New York's Harlem or Chicago's South Side, Whitaker compares the flourishing enclave where his grandparents lived to "fifteenth-century Florence and early-twentieth-century Vienna: a miraculous flowering of social and cultural achievement." Smoketown's culture was made possible, Whitaker writes, by the great migration from the South and the city's exceptional educational opportunities. Whitaker writes of such prominent Smoketown figures as Robert L. Vann, publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier, the most widely read black newspaper in America; playwright August Wilson, who celebrated the power of community "whether in the ordinary life of rooming houses and jitney stations, or in the grandest accomplishments of the Hill District in its heyday." He also acknowledges Smoketown's contributions to the sports world, including boxer Joe Louis and baseball stars Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige, and profiles musical icons Billy Eckstine, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, and Billy Strayhorn, as well as photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris. Whitaker shines a well-deserved and long-overdue spotlight on this city within a city. Maps & photos. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A "glittering saga" about the other black Renaissance.Veteran newsman and reporter Whitaker (Cosby: His Life and Times, 2014, etc.) explored his own family's black history in My Long Trip Home (2011), which included stories about his Pittsburgh grandparents' funeral business. Here, he returns to the city to reveal its incredibly rich black heritage from the late 19th century to the 1950s. As the author writes, Pittsburgh had a "glorious stretch" as "one of the most vibrant and consequential communities of color in U.S. history." Drawing on a five-page cast of characters, he tells this lively story with a linked series of family histories. In the Gilded Age, Pittsburgh had no shortage of wealthy entrepreneurs: Carnegie, Westinghouse, Heinz, Mellon, and Frick. But there was also Cumberland "Cap" Posey, a black steamboat engineer and coal tycoon who had the foresight to invest in the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper that is at the heart of this story. In 1910, Posey hired a black attorney, Robert Lee Vann, the "calculating crusader," who would be its farsighted editor. Every step of the way, as Whitaker vividly chronicles Pittsburgh's key black figures in music, sports, and politics, the Courier is front and center. Its sports reporters championed the rise of the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis; as his popularity grew, the paper's circulation skyrocketed, and it became America's most influential black newspaper. Pittsburgh now had the best Negro League baseball teams, thanks to racketeer-turned-promotor Gus "Big Red" Greenlee, and the Hill District, home of the future "bard of a broken world," playwright August Wilson. Sports reporter Wendell Smith played a major role in integrating baseball with his coverage of Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson, and the Courier also chronicled the rise of two of music's greatest pianists, the self-taught prodigy Erroll Garner and the jazz composer Billy Strayhorn.An expansive, prodigiously researched, and masterfully told history. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
TIME PIECES: A Dublin Memoir, by John Banville. (Knopf, $26.95.) The Booker Prize-winning novelist wanders Ireland's capital city, recalling people and places that still live in his memory. Scattered throughout are suitably atmospheric photographs by Paul Joyce. THE REAL LIFE OF THE PARTHENON, by Patricia Vigderman. (Mad Creek/Ohio State University Press, paper, $21.95.) An American scholar visits classic sites of the ancient world in a book that's part travelogue, part memoir and part musing on our complex, contested cultural heritage. SMOKETOWN: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance, by Mark Whitaker. (Simon & Schuster, $30.) Whitaker recounts the untold history of Pittsburgh's role as a mecca for African-Americans in the mid-20th century - from figures like Billy Strayhorn and August Wilson to the local newspaper, The Courier, which covered it all. FEEL FREE: Essays, byZadie Smith. (Penguin, $28.) Deftly roving from literature and philosophy to art, pop music and film, Smith's incisive new collection showcases her exuberance and range while making a cohesive argument for social and aesthetic freedom. A GIRL IN EXILE: Requiem for Linda B., by Ismail Kadare. Translated by John Hodgson. (Counterpoint, $25.) The famed Albanian writer, and perpetual Nobel Prize contender, produces a novel that grapples with the supernatural in a story set against a backdrop of interrogation, exile and thwarted lives. AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE, by Tayari Jones. (Algonquin, $26.95.) Roy and Celestial are a young black couple in Atlanta "on the come up," as he puts it, when he's convicted of a rape he did not commit and sentenced to 12 years in prison. The unfairness of the years stolen from this couple by a great cosmic error forms the novel's slow burn. MONSTER PORTRAITS, by Del and Sofia Samatar. (Rose Metal, paper, $14.95.) Del and Sofia Samatar are brother and sister, and their beautiful new book, which braids Del's art and Sofia's text, explores monstrosity and evil while inviting a discussion about race and diaspora. THE NIGHT DIARY, by Veera Hiranandani. (Dial, $16.99; ages 8 to 12.) A 12-year-old refugee and her family make their way to India's border during the bloody events of Partition in 1947. THE HEART AND MIND OF FRANCES PAULEY, by April Stevens. (Schwartz & Wade, $16.99; ages 8 to 12.) This understated middle grade debut features a dreamy 11-year-old who spends hours among the rocks in her backyard. What the book lacks in plot, it more than makes up in observation, mood and full-on feeling. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Choice Review
Journalist Whitaker masterfully weaves together the history of black journalism, athletics, and politics to show the power of Pittsburgh as a central location of black culture in the early 20th century. Comparing its history to those of cities like Chicago and Harlem, Whitaker argues that Pittsburgh has received less acclaim for its contributions to black life in the 20th century. Much of Whitaker's narrative is told through the pages of the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the most circulated black newspapers in the country. The author brings to light the lives and work of the paper's editors to show how they cultivated black culture across geographic locations, covering topics from boxing, jazz, and the Negro Leagues to the pursuite of anti-lynching laws in both the North and South, as well as other political endeavors. While much of the historical footprint of this story was lost when Pittsburgh destroyed the Hill District in the name of redevelopment, Whitaker resurrects the histories of those who labored to make Pittsburgh a central location of black culture. In so doing, his book provides a compelling history showing that the story of black Pittsburgh is ultimately one of promise, excitement, and joy. Summing Up: Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries. --Andrew R McKee, Florida State University
Library Journal Review
For several decades in the 20th century, the Pittsburgh Courier was the most influential black newspaper in America. At the height of its success, the paper had 14 regional editions and a circulation of almost half a million subscribers. The newspaper helped to promote the Double V campaign during World War II and to shift the black vote from republican to democrat, all while covering rising sports stars such as Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson. In his latest book, Whitaker (Cosby: His Life and Times) looks at Pittsburgh's forgotten impact on black culture and sports between the 1920s Harlem Renaissance and the later civil rights era. The narrative is structured around the activity of the Courier and the power it held over black America during World War II. Whitaker's attempt to broaden the story by including chapters on jazz greats born in Pittsburgh and August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle is ultimately unnecessary as the history of the paper and its influence on the larger culture is enough of a story on its own. VERDICT Whitaker provides important research on a pivotal moment in African American history, but at times the narrative strays a little too far from Pittsburgh.-John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. xiii |
| Cast of Characters | p. xvii |
| The Neighborhoods of Pittsburgh | p. xxiii |
| 1 The Brown Bomber's Cornermen | p. 1 |
| 2 The Negro Carnegies | p. 25 |
| 3 The Calculating Crusader | p. 53 |
| 4 The Rise and Fall of "Big Red" | p. 89 |
| 5 Billy and Lena | p. 123 |
| 6 The Double U Warriors | p. 153 |
| 7 The Complex Mr. B | p. 193 |
| 8 "Jackie's Boswell" | p. 231 |
| 9 The Women of "Up South" | p. 271 |
| 10 The Bard of a Broken World | p. 303 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 341 |
| Notes | p. 345 |
| Index | p. 385 |