Voices of History: Stories of community

Welcome to Voices of History, a PA Humanities project inspired by the works of renowned playwright August Wilson and designed to showcase the voices of everyday Black Pennsylvanians. We launched the project in Pittsburgh, inviting community members to gather and share personal stories about life in the 20th and 21st centuries in the Steel City. Fifteen people were selected to professionally record their stories to start a statewide archival collection. Their stories are of struggles, triumphs, family, community, and more, and we’re excited to share them now. 

In these videos, you’ll hear remembrances and reflections on neighborhoods, and stories of impact and influence in the community. Each video brings the individual stories to life in the storytellers’ own words, enriched by archival photos.

“East Liberty’s Italian Army”

Dr. Sheila Beasley wasn’t a likely candidate to work in a tire shop right out of college, given that she didn’t have a car or even a license to drive. Likewise, the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in East Liberty wasn’t a likely location for a community hub. But Beasley’s natural sales ability shone through in her job interview, and her employment gave her the chance to witness the blend of the “old guard” Italians and African Americans sitting in the waiting room and sharing stories, food, celebrating birthdays, and talking about the golden era of East Liberty. 

“Just to be a part of those stories, it’s sad that urban renewal had some displacement of those families and those people but it was really that the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company allowed a space for people to still feel comfortable, still share, and I really recognize that from watching them and being inspired by them that we truly are more alike than different.”

“Using Law to Help Community”

Jay Gilmer came to Pittsburgh for his first job out of law school in 1983, working as one of the few Black attorneys at the Buchanan Ingersoll law firm. Gilmer thought he was going in a corporate law direction, but the more he got to know people working in the community, both through the firm and his church in Homewood, the more he was drawn to do the same. Now in his “semi-retirement,” Gilmer continues serving Homewood as Operation Better Block’s executive director.

“Although I thought I was going to be doing corporate law work, it was clear that the people I was encountering in the church and in the community were not doing mergers and acquisitions and million-dollar financing. They were trying to make communities better, improve communities, build buildings, help children, things like that. So that’s what I started to do as well.”

“Swimming Pools”

Janis Burley comes from a large family with deep roots in Homewood. One summer in the early 1950s, her father and uncle were among a group of African American children from the neighborhood who were recruited to go swimming as part of a campaign by a local pastor and a civil rights attorney to desegregate public pools all over Pittsburgh. 

“I think of young people now going to the pools whenever they feel like it. At one time, they weren’t allowed. They weren’t permitted. And it was actually dangerous.”

“When the Hill was Little Harlem”

From his living room window, Reggie Howze can see the little red church in the Hill District where he worked shining pews with Murphy’s Oil as an 11-year-old to earn a quarter per day. Now 80, he remembers the Hill from his childhood, a vibrant place that never slept where music filled the air… and a 5-year-old could sneak out the kitchen window and stand in barroom doors chewing bubble gum and watching people dance. Life changed for his family after they moved from the Lower Hill to the Upper Hill to make way for the construction of the new Civic Arena, but not necessarily for the better. 

“We thought we’d died and went to heaven. We didn’t really realize the trickery that the powers that be had tricked us out of moving from our old neighborhood to build the Civic Arena. I can remember as a child the newspaper came out on Sunday and it had a special section in the newspaper. The section was telling all the Black people who lived in the Lower Hill District that if they moved that they could come back and everybody was going to have a nice house with a white picket fence around it. So everybody was moving with the full intention that we would come back. But, you know, it wasn’t intended for us to ever come back.”

The Voices of History project in Pittsburgh is made possible through the generous support of The Heinz Endowments, Erie Insurance, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and individual donors.