The Hill

Home in August Wilson’s Century Cycle

aUGUST wILSON’S HILL DISTRICT 1. Gem of the Ocean

2. Joe Turner

4. The Piano Lesson

5. Seven Guitars

6. Fences

7. Two Trains Running 8. Jitney

9. King Hedley II

10. Radio Golf

The hill todayDaisy’s House 1727 Bedford Ave.

Demographics2010 Census Data Population: 11,00082% Black residentsMedian household income: $14,858Unemployment: 26.7%

Residents living below the poverty level: 27%

Average House or Condo Value: $107,000

Compare to the Bluff where the average

value of a home jumps to $600,000

“Pittsburgh’s Neighborhood Data and Map Resource.” www.pghsnap.gov

“LITTLE HAITI” TO “LITTLE HARLEM”

By the 1930s, the Hill District became a center for Black arts and culture earning it the nickname “Little Harlem.” A popular stop-over for musicians travelling from New York to Chicago, jazz greats Charlie Mingus, Lena Horne, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Cab Calloway, Erroll Garner, Duke Ellington, and Stanley Turrentine all played the Hill. In 1935 the Pittsburgh Crawfords won the Negro National League championship with five future Hall of Famers - Josh Gibson, known as "the black Babe Ruth," Satchel Paige, James "Cool Papa" Bell, Oscar Charleston and Judy Johnson. And Gus Greenlee’s Crawford Grill was the place to be and be seen.

The free Black population in Pittsburgh can be traced to the Revolutionary War era, when the Continental army welcomed Black conscripts. Some of these freedmen formed a middle-class community in an area known as “Little Haiti,” which would become part of the Hill District and would later attract runaway slaves during the mid-1800s.

Between 1870 and 1890, great numbers of Jewish immigrants arrived from Europe's ghettos. After the Jews came the Italians, the Syrians, the Greeks, and the Poles. Southern Blacks began migrating to Pittsburgh between 1880 and 1890.

Doyle, Patrick. “Pittsburgh’s Hill District Reimagined.” Pittsburgh Magazine. 22 Jan. 2015.

Redevelopment, riots, displacementIn September 1955, the federal government approved the Lower Hill Redevelopment plan, making available $17.4 million in loans and grants. In 1957, during the bulldozing for redevelopment, it was remarked that "The Hill...was completely worn out, like an old pair of shoes that has gone the last mile." Ninety-five acres were slated for clearing.

Redevelopment displaced over 8,000 residents:

1,239 black families 312 white“The Hill District: History.” The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. www.clpgh.org

The Hill took on further damage in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Racial tensions had been building in Pittsburgh for years when the assassination occurred, and King's murder incensed many Black members of the Hill (and the larger Pittsburgh) community. The National Guard was called in to enforce a curfew, and the riots, which began April 5, 1968, raged until April 12.

The week of violence saw 505 fires, $620,000 in property damage, one death and 926 arrests.

By 1970 the Hill District saw its largest decline in resident population losing 13,000 in one decade. Between 1940 and 2010 the neighborhood lost more than 75% of its residents, and is currently hovering at nearly 11,200.

75% populatio

n decrease

Fox, Randy. “Pittsburgh’s Hill District: The Death of a Dream” Huffington Post. 16 Jul. 2012.

“We were land-based agrarian people from Africa. We were uprooted from Africa, and we spent 200 years developing our culture as black Americans. And then we left the South. We uprooted ourselves and attempted to transplant this culture to the pavements in the industrialized North. And it was a transplant that did not take.”

-August WilsonShannon, Sandra. “‘A Transplant That Did Not Take’: August Wilson’s Views on The Great Migration.” African American Review 13.3 (1997):659-66.

Questions about Home...★How do you define ‘home’?

★Why is ownership of property so important to the Black community in Wilson’s plays?

★How does migration and displacement interrupt the process of belonging?

Considerations of Home...★ Wilson often uses these motifs throughout his plays to explore what it means to claim a home and a

place of one’s own:

○ deeds

○ property

○ land

○ fences

○ houses

★ Go Big, or Go Home: Think about Wilson’s situation of his plays in the Hill District within the larger context of Pittsburgh (“Steel City”), in Pennsylvania (one of the original 13 colonies), in the Rust Belt (a region defined by heavy industry), in the Northern U.S.