The document discusses the history of the Hill District neighborhood in Pittsburgh from the 1950s to present day. It describes how the neighborhood was impacted by urban renewal efforts like the demolition of the Lower Hill to build the Civic Arena in the 1950s, displacing many residents. Today the neighborhood is experiencing gentrification as new developments price out long-time residents, and school closures are forcing students from different neighborhoods to combine, increasing tensions. The document advocates for voting for policies to promote affordable housing and support for Pittsburgh public schools.

1. Markeyla Robinson
March 2, 2016
African American History
Have you ever wondered what your neighborhood was like “backin the
day”? Well back in the day in my neighborhood, now and then known as the Hill
District, exploded in an uproar with a total of 505 fires. The fires were set due to
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination April 5, 1968. The riot lasted until April
12, 1968. The riot resulted in just one death but 926 arrests. Dr. King’s death was a
part of the civil rights movement, which didn’t just affect the Hill District. The
civil rights movement affected the United States as a whole. Martin Luther King Jr.
was the icon of the civil rights movement. He attracted national attention in 1955
when he and other civil rights activists were arrested. They were arrested for not
surrendering their seats to whites in Montgomery, Alabama. Then in 1963 in
Birmingham, Alabama he guided a peaceful mass demonstration which the police
responded to with police dogs and fire hoses. This responsefrom the police
resulted in controversy. The controversy lead to a march which attracted more than
250,000 protestors to Washington, DC where Dr. King gave his famous “I have a
dream” speech.

2. Another significant event that happened around the time the civil rights
movement was happening, was the demolition of the lower hill to make room for
the construction of the civic arena. The civic arena was built more than 55 years
ago on 1961. The civic arena took the place of what was affordable housing for
African Americans. This was also a true melting potfull of culture and businesses
for African Americans from all over, Jewish immigrants, Greeks, Italians, etc.
Rootshockis the traumatic stress reaction to the destruction of all or part of one’s
emotional ecosystem. A man named Carlos Peterson experienced root shockafter
the destruction of the lower hill.
Another significant event that occurred and affected not just the Hill district
but Pittsburgh and the United States was World War 1. World War 1 started in
1914 because of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. World
War 2 occurred because of the invasion of Poland in 1939, but only started in
America in 1941 because of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Both world wars started
in Europe. During world war one African Americans began moving from the south
because Pittsburgh provided steel mill labor. The rise in Steel mill laborers was
because of the war needs. Apart of the great migration freed blacks came in search
of a better life here in Pittsburgh and settled on the Hill District.
One more historic event after another, On October29, 1929 the Great
Depression became prevalent in Pennsylvania. Between 1927 and 1933

3. Pennsylvania lost more than 270,000 manufacturing jobs, the third largest job loss
in the country. In 1932, Pennsylvania had the largest amount of families with
324,000 of them. Father James Cox of Pittsburgh organized “Houses of
Hospitality”, to distribute food and clothes to the unemployed. “Local charities and
relief boards were overwhelmed by the needy municipalities turned to the counties,
and the counties turned to the state.” In other words, the people wanted help from
the neighborhoods but the neighborhoods weren’t able to handle the situation, so
they went to get help from the county. The county couldn’t handle it either, so the
county went to the state. “The state was unwilling to raise taxes, the republican
majority in the state assembly refused additional assistance.” After the delay to
make a decision on the state, the state legislature agreed to authorize a state
employment relief board. Pennsylvania was one of the six states to continue to vote
for Herbert Hoover instead of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR).
Unlike the Pittsburgh Renaissance, the Harlem Renaissance was a good
thing. The Harlem renaissance happened between the end of World War one and
the middle of the 1930’s. During the Harlem Renaissance, Harlem was where
culture happened. Harlem became the neighborhood to go for Black writers, poets,
photographers, musicians, and scholars. Many of the African Americans came to
Harlem from the South to express their talents. Langston Hughes and Zora Neale
Hurston were two of the many talents who achieved recognition. Langston

4. Hughes’s poem “Democracy” speaks of how everyone has the right to the same
opportunities, but no matter how much fighting this personor that persondoes
everyone will never be equal. In one stanza he says
“I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.”
To me this says that Langston Hughes is saying if he were to listen to people and
go with the flow and hope for freedom to come, he’d be dead. What he wants, he
wants now, not tomorrow. Zora Neale Hurston’s “How it feels to be colored me”
tells of how she isn’t ashamed to be colored and regardless of how anybody else
feels of her complexion, she accepts it. Zora believes that anybody who doesn’t
want to pleasure themselves with her company is their loss. I know she feels this
way because in her essay she says “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it
does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves
the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.” In my opinion this is how all, not
just colored, but every gender, religion, color, and/or race discriminated against,
should feel. Zara says “At certain times I have no race, I am me.” She says this

5. because she doesn’tdefine herself as a race, she defines herself as Zara. These
were only two of the many pieces written in this time period.
After World War 2, the Pittsburgh renaissance began. The Pittsburgh
renaissance was the fancy term for the demolition of the lower hill. The renovation
of Pittsburgh came due to corporations considering moving their headquarters out
of Pittsburgh to New York City. The black smoke from the steel mills covered the
skies, despite earlier attempts at controlling the smoke. The Pittsburgh Renaissance
was set into action to try and attract corporations. After the war, there were four
main concerns, “Overspecialized economy, degraded environment, inadequate
infrastructure, and deteriorating downtown”. Air pollution and flood controlwere
two of the biggest problems Pittsburgh faced. In Octoberof 1946, enforcement of
reducing coal consumption began and Pittsburgh’s skies brightened. Leaders from
the Pittsburgh Regional Planning Association used traditional development
methods to attract new companies and to keep local industries from moving out of
Pittsburgh. Point State Park and Gateway Center were the two symbols of the
renovation of Downtown. Pittsburgh was known for its steel mills in the 1800’s,
and all the way up until a law was passed in 1941 for the reduction of coal. The
Steel Mills were apart of Pittsburgh’s economy, it was how Pittsburgh made
money. To handle the problem without risking its economy, railroad companies
switched from coal to diesel fuel and natural gas was piped into the city.

6. Eventually, in the 1980’s the iron and steel industry collapsed and Pittsburgh’s air
quality improved.
Currently in the Hill District renovations are being made and places that
were first majority African American are now majority college students. Such as
Oak Hill Apartments located on the upper hill, many of the apartments can only be
afforded through housing. The newest apartments located on Brackenridge are
occupied by families with high incomes and college students. The rent for the
apartments are unreasonably high and barely affordable. Most families that occupy
the Oak Hill Apartments get by becauseof housing assistance. Another set of
newly built housing units are the houses built up what used to be, Elmore, now
Skyline Terrace. The city fought to make some houses available to people with
housing assistance and affordable for people who have low income jobs.
Also a problem faced by not just the Hill District, but Pittsburgh are the
closing of schools all over the Pittsburgh Public Schooldistrict. Due to the closing
of schools in other neighborhoods, students are forced to go to schoolin
neighborhoods that don’tget along. Forexample, due to the closing and demolition
of Obama Academy, Students had to relocate to Peabody, now known as Obama
Academy. Even though the schools are close, they’d harbor stents from different
neighborhoods, now combined. The gentrification of the various neighborhoods
affect the fights in the schools becausewhen students have to relocate to a different

7. neighborhood that doesn’tget along with their neighborhood, fights happen. If
there was a Pittsburgh Public schoolin every major area/ neighborhoods, fights
would be to a minimum and class sizes would be smaller. Most students work
better in smaller class sizes because that means less distractions and with less
distractions the students can learn better.
Although from 2011 to 2013 Pittsburgh Public school’s graduation rate
grew from 68.5 percent to 77.4 percent, the numbers don’ttell the full story. I
cannot speak for every schoolin the district but I can speak as a student from
University Prep. As a student of the Pittsburgh Public schools district I experience
firsthand the problem with the state and district not being able to pass a budget for
Pittsburgh Public schools. When the state is unable to pass a budget schools aren’t
able to receive the resources they need. Resources suchas books, computers,
notebooks, etc. All things that require money cannot be bought because no budget
has been set for the individual districts.
To change the course of the future our best bet is to vote correctly during the
2016 election. It’s obvious that Donald Trump isn’t the correct vote because he’s
promoting hate. Hate is something our country has worked hundreds of years to
eliminate, but with people like trump and his followers it’s hard to 100% eliminate
hate in America. I personally am a supporter of Bernie Sanders. He supports free
college tuition, fifteen dollar minimum wage, Obama care, and creating more jobs

8. in America. On March 31, 2016 my school’s 2016 class went to the Bernie
sander’s rally here in Pittsburgh, PA at the David Lawrence convention center. The
rally was a fun experience and it was good for us seniors to hear firsthand what
Bernie would do if he became president.
In conclusion, Martin Luther King was an icon for the civil rights movement
and when he was assassinated the Hill District broke out in an uproar. Poets such
as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale were just a few of the icons for the Harlem
Renaissance. The Pittsburgh Renaissance was just a fancy name for the demolition
of the lower Hill district to make room to create the Civic arena. The spacein
which the civic arena was is now a parking lot for the Consoleenergy center.
citizens can do about it.

9. Works Cited
clpgh.org/exhibit/neighborhoods/hill
popularpittsburgh.com
triblive.com
triblive.com/news