Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance
(OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, OverDrive Listen)
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.
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Mark Whitaker. (2018). Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance. Unabridged Blackstone Publishing.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Mark Whitaker. 2018. Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance. Blackstone Publishing.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Mark Whitaker, Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance. Blackstone Publishing, 2018.
MLA Citation (style guide)Mark Whitaker. Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance. Unabridged Blackstone Publishing, 2018.
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Mark Whitaker is former managing editor of CNN Worldwide, and was previously the Washington bureau chief for NBC News and the first African American leader of Newsweek.
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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.
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December 18, 2017
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.
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- content: Regularly overshadowed by Harlem and Chicago, Pittsburgh was also a major force in the black renaissance of the first half of the twentieth century. Whitaker's book opens a window on this vibrant sector of black culture. Prentice Onayemi offers an engaging, easy-on-the-ears narration. His mellow tone carries listeners through some overly detailed passages. He varies his tone to fit the material and sometimes just to change the pace. For direct quotes, he changes his pitch or adopts an accent to set those words apart. The only weakness is the author's narrative structure, which at times follows a seemingly serpentine path from one anecdote to another before making a point. But the stories are interesting, and Onayemi tells them well. R.C.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
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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...
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