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Chapter 3 Pittsburgh’s Modern Black Freedom Movement
- University of Pittsburgh Press
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90 inspired both by their own history of social struggle and the rapid growth of the Civil Rights movement in the South, African Americans in Pittsburgh escalated their efforts for social change during the 1960s. The emergence of new organizations reinforced and expanded the ongoing activities of the Pittsburgh Urban League and NAACP. Until the late 1960s, “nonviolent direct action” defined Pittsburgh’s black freedom struggle. In the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and the Eight-Day Riot of 1968, however, Black Power emerged at the forefront of Pittsburgh’s African American liberation movement. The black freedom struggle dramatically exposed the class and racial limitations of Pittsburgh’s Renaissance I. While the 1960s and early 1970s brought about substantial improvements in the lives of African Americans, such changes failed to eradicate the fundamental underpinnings of Jim Crow, class, and racial inequality in the city’s life. Consequently, African Americans would soon face the brunt of deindustrialization as Pittsburgh prepared for Renaissance II.1 53 Pittsburgh's modern Black Freedom movement TrotterDay text.indd 90 4/14/10 11:12 AM Pittsburgh's modern Black Freedom movement • 91 Nonviolent Direct Action As the Civil Rights movement expanded and dissatisfaction with Jim Crow in the urban North grew, African Americans in Pittsburgh formed a variety of new grassroots nonviolent direct action organizations to fight for social justice. These organizations included the United Negro Protest Committee (UNPC), the Black United Movement for Progress, Operation Dig, and the Black Construction Coalition (BCC). In alliance with the NAACP, Urban League, and their white supporters, the mass marches and protest activities of these groups targeted discrimination in a broad cross section of private and public institutions: area department stores, hospitals, and schools; the construction trades, the steel industry, and other industrial firms; utility companies, real estate firms, banks, and other financial institutions. Numerous people played a pivotal leadership role in the civil rights and political struggles of Pittsburgh’s black community during the period, including, but not limited to: Byrd Brown, attorney and president of the local branch of the NAACP; Jim McCoy, organizer for the United Steel Workers of America (USWA); William “Bouie” Haden, community activist; Alma Fox, executive director of the Pittsburgh branch of the NAACP; Nate Smith, labor activist; and Donald McIlvane, Catholic priest.2 Established in 1963, the United Negro Protest Committee forged a grassroots coalition of interracial civil rights, religious, and civic organizations , including the NAACP and the Greater Pittsburgh Civic League. Under the leadership of Jim McCoy, who was not only a paid organizer for the USWA but also a volunteer chairman of the NAACP’s labor and industry committee, the UNPC gathered statistics on black employment in area firms and initiated talks with discriminatory companies. Over the next five years, the organization launched vigorous job discrimination protests against a broad range of area employers, including the A&P grocery chain, Isaly’s dairy stores, the Duquesne Light utility company, the Pittsburgh Brewing Company, and the Bell Telephone Company.3 Following meetings with Rev. Charles E. McFadden, chairman of the UNPC’s subcommittee on groceries and chain stores, A&P hired an African American in its personnel department. Isaly’s also signed an agreement with the UNPC, promising to hire a black manager at one of its stores and to increase the number of blacks in production and office jobs. By the late 1960s, the Pittsburgh Brewing Company, and the city’s TrotterDay text.indd 91 4/14/10 11:12 AM [18.118.140.108] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 08:56 GMT) 92 • Pittsburgh's modern Black Freedom movement advertising industry reached similar hiring agreements with UNPC. The Bell Telephone Company also agreed “in principle” with the UNPC’s proposal to hire one thousand additional black workers, including more African Americans in its employment office, but the company refused Women and men march around Duquesne Light Company Building, some wearing armbands reading, “Let’s March,” 1963. Source: Carnegie Museum of Art, Charles “Teenie” Harris Collection, photo #2001.35.10675. Photograph © 2009 Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. TrotterDay text.indd 92 4/14/10 11:12 AM Pittsburgh's modern Black Freedom movement • 93 to sign an agreement on the premise that it had already reached a “Plans for Progress” accord with the federal government. Nonetheless, under mounting pressure from the UNPC, Bell promised to meet with the organization on a regular basis to monitor the firm’s progress on the hiring and promotion of black workers.4 In 1963...