Western Pennsylvania Politics People here are honest, hard working, no-nonsense folks. In order of priority they love the Steelers and football first, then everything else. Money and labor issues are big. Racial issues matter, but they aren’t as important as others make them (see below). And that was clear to me even before this New [...]
Western Pennsylvania Politics
People here are honest, hard working, no-nonsense folks. In order of priority they love the Steelers and football first, then everything else.
Money and labor issues are big. Racial issues matter, but they aren’t as important as others make them (see below).
And that was clear to me even before this New York Times article today, which captures the sentiment of Western Pennsylvania quite well.
I love this quote from the article:
“She’s always talking about the ‘Average Joe,’ ” Jeremy Long said. “Average me! I don’t want myself in the Oval Office. I want someone smarter.”
Old Pittsburgh
As you may know, I was in Pittsburgh last week and through the weekend attending my college homecoming at Carnegie Mellon University.
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Whenever I visit there, I always stop in Homestead to look around Cumberland Posey’s (and Andrew Carnegie’s) old stomping grounds.
And I also visit the Hill District to look around that place, once a major Black Fives Era basketball hotbed. (It was great to see a brand new branch of the Carnegie Library right across the street from Hamm’s, the barber shop up there where everyone including me used to go and still goes.)
The Monticello Athletic Association, the Delaney Rifles, the Scholastic Athletic Association, and the Loendi Big Five were the best known all-black basketball teams of their time, during the 1910s and 1920s.
Homestead and the Hill look different now, due to urban renewal projects. But since I know how these enclaves used to be, I can often picture what it must have been like, and I try to find spots that once were but are no more.
Carnegie Mellon University
Speaking of reminiscing, even my alma mater, Carnegie Mellon, looks very different from when I was there as a student. I love this new sculpture on campus, and was able to capture it on film at a perfect moment.
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We have a strong Black Alumni Association that had a full agenda (check out event photos posted on Facebook), and I’m also involved with the school’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Historic Race Relations Via Basketball
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African Americans in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania historically have always had close ties with whites, many times through sports.
Scholastics owner and trainer Hunter Johnson was once the athletic trainer for the football and track teams at Carnegie Tech (predecessor to Carnegie Mellon).
Cumberland Posey played varsity basketball at Duquesne University and was his team’s leading scorer, all under an assumed name. He’s now in the Duquesne Sports Hall of Fame (with his real name).
Posey masterminded the highly popular and wildly successful ongoing series of intra-racial basketball games between his all-black Loendi Big Five team and local all-white powerhouse squads like the Coffey Club and the Second Story Morrys.
Loendi star William “Pimp” Young later became Secretary of Labor for Pennsylvania.
That business model was later employed by Robert Douglas and his New York Rens (aka Harlem Rens) with teams like the Osh Kosh All Stars, New York Original Celtics, Cleveland Rosenblums, and Philadelphia SPHAS.
Andrew Carnegie
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And as I’ve written previously, Andrew Carnegie himself shared close bonds with national as well as local black leaders.
Carnegie gave generously to Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute and Hampton Institute.
He also gave Cumberland Posey’s father — who owned shipping and mining businesses — lucrative contracts to haul coal, coke, ore, and slag to and from Pittsburgh for Carnegie Steel.
Carnegie, who said, “My heart is in the work,” a phrase that became the motto for Carnegie Mellon University, also said that he never gave to people who needed — only to people who wanted.
Many of his views are documented in a lecture he gave in 1907, “The Negro In America,” about which I wrote not long ago.
The Monticello Athletic
One of the many new sights on CMU’s campus.
Andrew Carnegie with
Nice post Claude!
Western Pennsylvania, the history, the political significance and even the role Carnegie-Mellon plays into both the historic and the modern day politics.
You know, I’ve seen pictures of this sculpture before and this past weekend I was able to see it in person when I visited for Homecoming and, speaking of history, the 40th Anniversary of CMAP/CMARC minority retention program. However, this photograph gave me a new perspective on the sculpture that I never noticed before.
From this vantage point there’s a whole new meaning to me. Look at the students reaching for the stars, even in moments of when things are uncertain, cloudy, and potentially stormy, they’re still climbing. But even more, notice the peek of blue skies amidst all the clouds. Awesome photography!
Have you ever launch a kite into the wind and watched it soar? Well, that’s exactly what this looks like to me. Soar baby soar! Look at it (or them) go. That’s what CMU did for us… even with those cloudy days. I love it!
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Fine piece on Pitt, Claude. I’ve run across the nickname “Pimp” for a nearly-forgotten pro basketball star who played in Chicago in the Thirties & would like to ask — What did the nickname “Pimp” signify in Loendi star William “Pimp” Young’s day?
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Claude-
I’ve seen a copy of that sculpture at a museum in Dallas that was founded by the man who owned Neiman Marcus (Stanley Marcus?). It’s very lifelike close up.
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Hey Keith that’s an interesting question because Mr. Young’s nickname later changed to “Pep” in news reports after he became the Secretary of Labor and in his obituary. To loosely paraphrase Forrest Gump, I think that “pimp is as pimp does.”
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Cool! Yeah, it’s impressive, and the part you can’t see is that there are several people at the base if it looking up as if waiting to go next. One of the people waiting is an African American father holding his son’s hand. The thing goes up into the air about 150 feet.
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