Podcasts about Pittsburgh Courier

Send us a textNot often do we find people who make the case for how race, liberty, and equality belong together. Even less often do we find them making arguments in the height of racially and economically troubled times. And EVEN LESS do we find audio clips of them doing so. These people are inspiring. They stand up against the currents of the time to speak their minds, for the benefit of everyone. In doing so, they garner respect and build coalitions across ideological lines, because they have to. We can learn from them and aspire to be like them today.In a really unique episode, I am excited to welcome David Beito to the podcast to talk about Rose Wilder Lane's column, "Rose Lane Says," and how she brought together these three concepts of race, liberty, and equality to make an appealing case for freedom. He shares with us a clip of Lane herself, speaking on these issues. Want to explore more?Timothy Sandefur on Freedom's Furies, a Great Antidote podcast.Nico Perrino on Individual Rights and Free Expression, a Great Antidote podcast.Rachel Ferguson on Black Liberation Through the Marketplace, a Great Antidote podcast. Alice Temnick, Prudence on the Prairie, at Speaking of SmithMustafa Akyol, Liberty Was Islam's First Call, at the Online Library of LibertyNever miss another AdamSmithWorks update.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

In 1933, The Pittsburgh Courier published an editorial entitled 'Hitler Learns from America'. So how and why was fascism on the rise in the United States from the Great Depression to the Second World War?In this episode, Don speaks with Rachel Maddow, host of 'The Rachel Maddow Show' on MSNBC. Together, they explore the influence of propaganda, key figures of American Fascism, and the Great Sedition Trial of 1944.Rachel's latest book is 'Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.'Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code AMERICANHISTORYYou can take part in our listener survey here.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast.

Born and raised in Pennsylvania, the 97-year-old Pittsburgh-based artist and sculptor Thaddeus Mosley has a deep and enduring obsession with wood. In his late 20s, he began to use the material for art, carving sculptures in his basement studio, and with his sculpture-making now spanning 70 years, his enduring dedication to his craft is practically unparalleled. Represented by Karma gallery since 2019, Mosley has only now, in the past decade or so, begun to receive the international recognition and attention he has long deserved. In his hands, wood sings; he shapes and carves trees into striking abstract forms that often appear as if they're levitating while honoring and preserving their organic, natural character. As with the work of his two main influences, Constantin Brâncuși and Isamu Noguchi, Mosley, too, strives to make sculptures that, in his words, beyond today, “will be interesting in a hundred tomorrows.”On the episode, he talks about the language that poetry, music, and sculpture all share; his early years as a sports writer for a local newspaper; and his life-transforming relationship with the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.Special thanks to our Season 9 presenting sponsor, L'École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Thaddeus Mosley[4:13] Sam Gilliam[17:24] Carnegie Museum[21:08] Carnegie International[21:08] Leon Arkus[21:08] “Thaddeus Mosley: Forest”[21:08] “Inheritance”[24:20] Isamu Noguchi[27:53] Constantin Brâncuși[28:28] University of Pittsburgh[28:28] Martha Graham[46:15] Floyd Bennett Field[46:23] Ebony magazine[46:23] Sepia magazine[46:23] Jet magazine[46:23] Pittsburgh Courier[54:34] John Coltrane[51:37] Li Bo[51:37] Dylan Thomas[56:21] Bernard Leach[57:45] Langston Hughes[57:45] Countee Cullen[57:45] Harriet Tubman[57:45] Fannie Lou Hamer[57:45] “The Long-Legged Bait”[57:45] “Air Step - for Fayard and Harold Nicholas”[57:45] The Nicholas Brothers

In 1968, a peaceful civil rights protest turned deadly in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Known as the Orangeburg Massacre, it became known as one of the most violent events of the civil rights movement, but details aren't widely known. Host Nat Cardona is again joined by subject matter expert Dr. William Heine to discuss how peaceful protestors were met with violence, what happened to the victims, and who was- or wasn't- held responsible for the bloodshed. The two also discuss how the victims are remembered today. Listen to Episode 1 of the Orangeburg Massacre Read more here and here and here. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Welcome to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles. I'm your host Nat Cardona. In the last episode, we discuss the climate leading into the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre in Orangeburg, South Carolina. If you haven't listened to that episode, please go back and listen. There's a link in the show notes to help make it easier for you to find. In this week's episode, I'm again joined by Dr. William Heine. He's a former history professor at South Carolina State University. We discuss in detail how the peaceful protest by students was met with violence from law enforcement. We also go into who was or wasn't held responsible for the deaths of three students and the wounding of more than 20 others. And with that, let's get to it. So you have this pressure cooker of tensions for the handful of years nights before the actual event happens. What's the tipping point? What's the the other shoe that drops to turn from. You know, a lot of tension to violence. What were the what was the thing that happened that night? That's that's that's it. There was nothing. I mean, they were they're they're fronted each other and went back and forth or time. As I mentioned, there was a bonfire that was was put out. People continued to throw things at one point and officer of the highway patrol, a man named Shelly, got it. Looked like he'd been shot almost literally between the eyes. He went down at least semi-conscious for a period of time, bleeding profusely, and it appeared as if he had been been shot from the direction of the students. As it turned out, he had not been shot. He'd been hit with a heavy piece of timber. It had opened a wound on his forehead. They took him off after the hospital and at least another 10 minutes or more elapsed after Shelly was hit with the with the timber. A lot of people were at the time and sense under the mistaken impression, well surely got hit and then the highway patrolman opened fire. It didn't happen. It did not happen that way. They opened fire with no announcement that they were going to fire. Nobody said lock and load or know you have one minute or and 80 seconds to retreat or we're going to open fire. It wasn't announced. They just simply started shooting. Not all the highway patrolman shot. There were 66 of them aligned along the embankment and kind of curled around at right angles toward an unoccupied house next next door to the campus there. Some opened fire, some did not. Most of the students were hit in the back as they turned to run from the shotgun blast and more than 30 were were hit and three were killed and at least 28 were injured, some superficially, some very seriously. Note that there was no ready, aim, fire. It was just a spontaneous opening of a fire. The later it was, it was determined that apparently one of the highway patrol officers had fired a warning shot into the air with his sidearm and others not realizing that opened fire. You're hearing a a weapon go off. That's been about the best determination of how the highway patrolman came to open fire that night, roughly 10:30, 10:45 on February eight. Okay. So you have a bunch of these young people wounded. Three young men ultimately are massacred or killed. Can you talk a little bit about those three young men, if you don't mind? Well, two of them were college students. One was a high school student and they were there as much out of curiosity as a determination that they're going to be involved in protests. Henry Smith was probably the most active of the students. He wanted to be there. He did consider himself an activist. He was upset with conditions in the community and on the campus. And there's no question of his involvement, his determination to be a part of this. And the other college student was a freshman football player named Samuel Hammond from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It was there are of interest and curiosity. He was there with several other football players and athletes as well. He was shot and died shortly after that. Then there was Delano Middleton, who was the high school student. His mother worked on the campus and he kind of came up to see what was happening on the front of the campus. And he was ahead and fatally injured as well that night. He was he was local. He was from the Orangeburg area and Smith was from Marion, now probably 100 miles. He came from a poor family over there. And as I mentioned, Samuel Hammond was an athlete from Fort Lauderdale, although his parents, his father was from are down the road from Orangeburg and Bamberg, South Carolina. And so but they had connections and roots to the local area as well. Okay. Unfortunately, they're killed and other people are wounded. And then what? Like what is the what does that rest of the night like what happens pretty much immediately after? Well, it was chaos initially on the campus. I mean, there was fear, one, that this was just a prelude to an invasion by law enforcement that were going to head head on and through the campus and maybe continue shooting or occupy the campus. No one knew what was going on. There was a absence of communication of any time. They were taking wounded students out the back side of the campus and going to the to the hospital by a back route. The college infirmary was filled with bleeding students of was great fear, anger, trepidation about what? What, what, what's next. I hear and it took a number of hours for this to settle down in the meantime, that the accounts that were out through the media were, well, incomplete and false as it turned out as well. Associated Press tape sent out an account that there had been an exchange of gunfire on the campus with students shooting at highway patrolman and patrolman shooting back. And that was absolutely incorrect. And it was it was never a corrected by AP either. So the headlines, such as they were that appeared the next day, was that there had been an exchange of gunfire and the governor and the local authorities were pretty well convinced that they'd saved Orangeburg from some kind of massive black nationalist uprising. And as regrettable as it was that students got shot, that this was necessary to protect the community, protect the lives and property of people in Orangeburg. And the governor maintained that and continued to maintain that as the days and weeks and then months and even years went by. After that, he was convinced that he'd acted properly and that he had helped to preserve the security and preserve what threatened to become a much worse situation from exploding into that. And that is, to a large extent our the conventional story that was heard in the aftermath of the massacre, except for the black press that did cover the black newspapers at the time, the Baltimore Afro-American, the Pittsburgh Courier and our Defender, Jet magazine. I mean, they covered it, But as far as most people in the black community were concerned, that was just cold blooded murder by armed highway patrolman, all white who shot into a crowd of black young men protesting on their own campus unarmed at the time. So there are two versions that prevailed for many days, weeks and months, even years to the present day about what actually happened that night in 1968. Sure. We needed to take a quick break, so don't go too far. Just so listeners understand, there were out of the 70 or so patrolmen, nine were charged with shooting at protesters, but ultimately none were convicted of anything, totally just wiped clean. No one held accountable for the murders or the shootings. Anything, correct? That is correct. The U.S. Department of Justice tried to indict the nine highway patrolman who did admit shooting into the crowd of students. A federal grand jury in Columbia in the fall of 1968 refused to indict them on felony charges and the Department of Justice and ended them on misdemeanor charges, criminal information. And they went on trial the following spring of 1969 in federal court in Florence, South Carolina. And a jury of ten white people and two black people found them not guilty and that they felt their lives were in danger and therefore they were justified in shooting into this crowd of students, even if the students weren't armed with weapons. And so the nine Howard patrolmen were indeed acquitted. And then a year after that, Cleveland Sellers was brought to the bar of justice in Orangeburg, and he was charged with an assortment of charges, including inciting a riot. There. As it turned out, most of the charges were abandoned and he was finally convicted, not for what happened on the night of February, but on the night of February six at the bowling alley of inciting the crowd down there. And he was sentenced to a year in state prison in the Bradford River Federal Byrd River State Correctional Institution. He served nine months. He was released early on our good behavior. So he's the only one who was penalized for the events surrounding the Orangeburg Massacre in 1968. And I should point out that he was one of the people shot and wounded that night as while he was hit in the upper arm by a shotgun pellets there. So he had to face the indignity of going to jail and being shot as well. I'm really, really hoping to still hear back from him, to hear just his retelling of everything that happened. But thanks for laying out all out. So, yeah, ultimately, he's the only one who's punished for anything that had happened that night. And at the end of the day, no justice was served for the three young men that were killed. And, you know, here we are today. It's going on. What if we're 55, 56 years later? Like, how did we get here to where this major event that actually was so integral to the civil rights movement and so violence on top of it? How did we get to the point where this is just a blip on the radar in history, especially in terms with this? Do you have any input on that? Well, the circumstances under which it happened in in 1968 was not well covered at that time. And 1968 was a very tumultuous year in American history. At the time of the year of the massacre in early February, the Tet Offensive was breaking out in Vietnam. The Vietnam War absorbed the attention of many, many Americans and the media shortly before that, and in January, an American naval vessel, the Pueblo, had been captured by North Korea and its crew taken hostage. And then only weeks after the massacre, the sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, announced that he would not be running for reelection in 1968. And days after that, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was shot in Memphis, Tennessee. And then a couple of months after that, Robert Kennedy was shot after the Democratic primary in California, shot in Los Angeles, and he died a day or so later. And the the the massacre got lost in this series of events. And to that, it happens in a small rural town in South Carolina. And then most importantly, there was a group of black students and it simply did not draw the attention or the coverage of most people, especially most white people. It did, as I mentioned, draw the coverage of the black press and black students at other HBCU, other historically black colleges, universities, North Carolina, and to Morehouse, Howard in Washington DC. But it was largely overlooked and there was no story in Time magazine. There was a short story in Newsweek at the time, the media, in terms of television, I gave that very, very little attention. And what little attention it did give, it disappeared a very quickly. So most people never even heard of it. It didn't get into most of the history books. And two years later, when the shootings occurred in at Kent State, it just exploded across the front pages of newspapers and on all of the major networks, CBS and NBC and ABC at that time. And so virtually everyone in the aftermath of Kent State knew about the shootings of the four students at Kent who were all white and hardly anyone had heard of the students who had been shot at South Carolina State who were black, which and thank you for bringing that up, because with your affiliation with the College, for my understanding, student organizations have done a pretty good job of remembering what had happened there. I understand that there are their statues of the three young men on campus, or is that just sort now that's on campus. There's a memorial plaza there the year after the massacre in 1969, a small granite marker was placed there with the names of the three young men. And then 30 plus years after that, and there were bronze tablets established around that granite marker with the names of the 28 young men who were wounded there. And then three years ago or so, a a brick monument was created, built there, and then two years ago, there were busts of the three young men placed within that brick and lighted monument, the bust and Smith and Delano Middleton and Samuel Hammond are there. So there is a monument on campus that has expanded over the years. Okay. That's good to know. Thank you for clarifying all that. One of the last things here is, you know, we can't we can't change the past in how it was covered and portrayed and how no justice was done and all of that. But what would your, you know, the take away? You would hope for our listeners to get out of this or for people to learn from this? Do you have anything that you'd like to kind of part with? Well, you would hope that people would learn that you don't have law enforcement shoot into a crowd of unarmed people. But the fact of the matter is they did it and do it again and then shot into a crowd of protesting, protesting students at Kent State in May of 1970. And unfortunately, too often our law enforcement officers have taken it upon themselves to not only enforce the law, but apparently act as a jury and convict and punish those who they see protesting, demonstrating, are breaking the law in front of them. So that's one lesson that has regrettably not been learned very much, if at all, in the years and decades since then. The other regret as far as I'm concerned, and many other people were involved with the massacre and those who survived it, I there was never any formal investigation of what happened and why it happened. There was a presidential commission formed after they can say, killings on campus violence. Richard Nixon appointed the former governor of Pennsylvania, William Scranton, and they did a thorough investigation of what happened at Kent State, what happened at Jackson State that pretty much ignored Orangeburg to try to get at the problems that led to the shootings at Jackson State and Kent State in May of 1970. There's been other state investigations of of racially involved incidents everywhere from Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1923 to Rosewood, Florida, in 1922. More recent developments, but there was never a state or federal investigation of what happened in Orangeburg. And our effort to try to get into the underlying factors that contributed to this to try to bring some increased clarity. I don't know that would bring closure to this. It might it might help it might assist in that. But it has never happened. And I in terms of the foreseeable future, it doesn't look like it's going to happen, but it does. But in theory, it could still happen. That would be the. certainly. Okay. It's never too late. No, I mean, they investigated Tulsa almost 100 years after it happened. And Rosewood right, as well. Tulsa was 1921 and Rosewood was 1923. And state of Florida and state of Oklahoma did investigate those appointed people. They set aside relatively small amounts of money on this and then tried to undertake a thorough examination of the events that had occurred many decades before. Now we're more than a half century since Orangeburg. There's still no investigation, and there seems to be little inclination on the part of the political leaders to undertake such an investigation, even though it would be of of modest cost. The attitude seems to be, well, we don't need to bring that up again. I don't don't let us put the scab on that wound again. Let's just let it let it go. We can move on. And I will live in a better, happier future without digging into the past and stirring up the animosity and hard feelings once again. So we don't need no, we don't need an investigation like that and quit harping on it and quit suggesting that we do. And in fact, it's about time you stopped having those ceremonies in February 8th to commemorate this. That only inflames people in the community and people get upset with this and would rather not. It happened, I should say that I helping with that has been the local newspaper, the The Times and Democrat. They have done a lot in recent years to try to bring about some some healing and some effort to recognize what happened in the community as a serious, serious tragedy and loss of life and the injuries that occurred. And they've tried to bring people together in terms of healing with efforts to try to bring community leaders together, to agree, at least not to be so emotionally invested in this, that they that they have a hard time even speaking with each other. So The Times and Democratic Kathy Hughes and Lee Harder have have helped a lot there. Is there anything that you would like to add before we parted ways? You know, I would I would repeat the what I've almost repeated over the years ad nauseum now about the need for an investigation. We're losing people. In the past year, two of the young men who were wounded in 1968 have have died since the fall of 1922. And that's regrettable. But as the cliche goes, better late than never. So I would I repeat, a call for an investigation won't answer all the questions. It won't satisfy everyone. But I think it will help bring about an understanding of one of the most traumatic events that occurred in South Carolina in the 20th century. So on that note, I would would close and that's a great note to close on. I really appreciate your time this was honestly a way more information than I actually expected. So huge. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. And that's where we'll end the show for today. If you're interested in more details of how the victims of the massacre are being memorialized, please check out the articles linked in our show notes. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss what's coming next on Crime Chronicles. Thanks for listening.  

Liu Liangmo's story is as remarkable as it is unknown. An anti-imperialist, pro-Communist Christian, with a significant relationship to the Black Liberation Movement and the Indian Freedom Struggle, Liu lived in the U.S. as a diplomat after participating in the ongoing Chinese revolution. He wrote a column for the prominent Black newspaper. The Pittsburgh Courier, before returning to his home country and attaining a fairly high-ranking position there. His story offers notable insight into the history of pre- and post-revolutionary China and its approach to the Black freedom movement in the U.S. It also reveals much about the turbulent “Second Popular Front” era in China, during which time Communist forces obtained broader legitimacy. This has largely been erased from U.S. political and historical consciousness, which helps explain Liu's relative marginality. Most radical movements since the late 1960s have rightly critiqued the legacy of the Popular Front for blurring the lines between reform and revolution and, by extension, capitalism and communism. They see the Popular Front as an opportunist approach to building unity where radical ideas and the independent working-class program were subordinated to maintain legitimacy among left-liberal reform currents. What is lost in such sweeping generalizations are the unusual concrete circumstances and strategic conundrums that Communist forces faced worldwide in this moment, especially among the struggles of oppressed peoples against colonialism and fascism. Liu Liangmo's story provides an opportunity to critically examine this period anew. His Courier columns covered a wide breadth of “popular front” political activities and the relationships expressed in those writings speak to both the strengths and the weakness of Communist political activity during World War II. On the one hand, there was unprecedented vitality and significance to Communist-led interventions while, on the other hand, there was a lack of strategic clarity that forestalled a larger political breakthrough. Using Liu's columns as a foundation, we can address this moment and draw important international parallels. Read the full story here: https://www.liberationschool.org/liu-liangmo-pt-2/

Liu Liangmo (1909-1988) was a prominent Chinese anti-imperialist, religious leader and, from 1942-1945, columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier—at that time the nation's widest circulating Black newspaper. Liu's columns (and actions as an organizer) were a significant part of efforts by progressive Chinese people, on the mainland and in the diaspora, to build alliances with the Black Liberation movement as part of a broader effort to shape the post-war world. His words linked the causes of ending colonialism, imperialism, and race discrimination—from the Yangtze to the Ganges to the Mississippi—mirroring the words and actions of millions of others involved in similarly-minded struggles around the world, including Liu's favorite U.S. singer: Paul Robeson. Liu's columns represent the efforts of Communist and aligned currents to turn the allied effort in the favor of the exploited and the oppressed. This was counteracted in the so-called “Cold War,” as imperialist forces worked to make the world “safe for capitalism” in the wake of the World War II. His columns and activities offer interesting insight into the struggle within the “Second United Front” in China between the Nationalist Kuomintang and the Communists during the Second World War and their differing approaches to the post-war world: whether China should be an anti-colonial vanguard or seek inclusion in the imperialist “great power” club. The “Nationalist” Chinese government's chose the latter, heavily impacting their approach to racism in the US. Read the full article here: https://www.liberationschool.org/liu-liangmo-pt-1/

On July 27, 1984, Pete Rose of the Montreal Expos collects the 3,503rd single of his career, passing Hall of Famer Ty Cobb for the all-time singles lead. Rose reaches the milestone against former teammate and Phillies ace Steve Carlton.July 27, 1928, 41-year-old Ty Cobb of the Philadelphia Athletics makes the final regular start of his Hall of Fame career. Cobb collects a single and a double before being hit with a pitch by George “Sarge” Connally. The pitch leaves Cobb with a bad bruise, forcing him to leave the game.July 27, 1970, Ford C. Frick, former sportswriter, league president, and co-founder of the Hall of Fame and Museum, is inducted into the Hall of Fame. Joining him in the induction class are shortstop Lou Boudreau, center fielder Earle Combs, and pitcher Jesse Haines.On July 27th, 1988 Tommy John achieves what is believed to be a major league first by committing three errors on one play in the 4th inning in the Yankees' 16 - 3 rout of the Brewers. The feat ties the major-league record for errors in one inning by a pitcher. On July 27, 1897, one of the finest catchers in Negro leagues history is born in Eagle Pass, Texas. James "Biz" Mackey played from 1918 to 1947, much of that time as a player/manager. In a 1954 poll conducted by the Pittsburgh Courier, Mackey was voted the top Negro league catcher. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2006.Historical Recap performed by:Robyn Newton from - Robyn Says This Day In Baseball is Sponsored by - www.vintagebaseballreflections.com - Join the membership today and listen to 50 years of baseball history told to you by the folks who were there! As a special offer, all our listeners can use the term - thisdayinbaseball at the membership check out.

 Bob refers to himself as “just a retired former journalist, freelance writer and communications guy.”  However, Mr. Gatty started blogging about politics in 2017, and now, thousands of blogs later, he has followers all over the world. He cut his journalistic legs while working with the Pittsburgh Courier, an African American weekly. In time, he worked at a number of PA papers, eventually leading him to be named ‘bureau chief' at the state capital bureau in Trenton, NJ, In time, Bob spent years working in politics in Washington including becoming chief of staff for Rep. James J. Florio (D), who later became governor of New Jersey.He retired in 2016 after running a successful political media consulting  business “G-NET Strategic Communications” in the DC area. My guest is in awe of his mother and is adamant about all the good his mom taught him especially her advice about never giving up on his dreams. Neither Bob nor his mom attended college, yet she was insistent that he keep after his journalism career. "She burned it into my sole, that if I wanted to accomplish anything in life, I  couldn't quit, I had to go after it despite the odds." WEBSITE: https://www.leantotheleft.net/aboutlink to Bob'sBio (from the Lean to the Left website):https://www.leantotheleft.net/about Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bob.gatty and https://www.facebook.com/notfakenews.2Twitter: @leantotheleft.1Instagram: bobgatty_leantotheleftTikTok: leantotheleftLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobgatty/

This week, professor and historian Brooks E. Hefner discusses his book Black Pulp: Genre Fiction in the Shadow of Jim Crow, a deep dive into mid-century African American newspapers, exploring how Black pulp fiction reassembled genre formulas in the service of racial justice. Hefner is interviewed by journalist Evan F. Moore. The following conversation originally took place May 15, 2022 at the American Writers Festival and was recorded live. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HOME About Black Pulp: Genre Fiction in the Shadow of Jim Crow In recent years, Jordan Peele's Get Out, Marvel's Black Panther, and HBO's Watchmen have been lauded for the innovative ways they repurpose genre conventions to criticize white supremacy, celebrate Black resistance, and imagine a more racially just world—important progressive messages widely spread precisely because they are packaged in popular genres. But it turns out, such generic retooling for antiracist purposes is nothing new. As Brooks E. Hefner's Black Pulp shows, this tradition of antiracist genre revision begins even earlier than recent studies of Black superhero comics of the 1960s have revealed. Hefner traces it back to a phenomenon that began in the 1920s, to serialized (and sometimes syndicated) genre stories written by Black authors in Black newspapers with large circulations among middle- and working-class Black readers. From the pages of the Pittsburgh Courier and the Baltimore Afro-American, Hefner recovers a rich archive of African American genre fiction from the 1920s through the mid-1950s—spanning everything from romance, hero-adventure, and crime stories to westerns and science fiction. Reading these stories, Hefner explores how their authors deployed, critiqued, and reassembled genre formulas—and the pleasures they offer to readers—in the service of racial justice: to criticize Jim Crow segregation, racial capitalism, and the sexual exploitation of Black women; to imagine successful interracial romance and collective sociopolitical progress; and to cheer Black agency, even retributive violence in the face of white supremacy. These popular stories differ significantly from contemporaneous, now-canonized African American protest novels that tend to represent Jim Crow America as a deterministic machine and its Black inhabitants as doomed victims. Widely consumed but since forgotten, these genre stories—and Hefner's incisive analysis of them—offer a more vibrant understanding of African American literary history.

In January 1942, a young Black man from Kansas wrote a letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, the nation's largest Black newspaper at the time. He poignantly asked the questions that many Black men also asked while serving in a segregated military during World War II. “Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?” wrote James G. Thompson. “Will things be better for the next generation in the peace to follow? Would it be demanding too much to demand full citizenship rights in exchange for the sacrificing of my life? Is the kind of America I know worth defending?” That letter echoed in the mind of historian Matthew Delmont. The title of his new book, “Half American” was inspired by Thompson's letter. In it, he painfully recounts what Black service members of the day faced as they fought in a segregated military. During World War II, Black Americans were inspired by the idea of a double victory — to defeat not only the fascism abroad, but also racism at home. But the idea of equality was dismissed by many in leadership, who saw the cry as radical and even seditious. Friday, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller spoke with Delmont about how Black men and women fought for that double victory, why Black Americans saw World War II coming before white Americans did, and how what we acknowledge — or ignore — in history shapes our world today. Guest: Matthew Delmont is the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth College and an expert on African American history and the history of civil rights. His new book is “Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad.” To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.  Subscribe to the MPR News with Kerri Miller podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or RSS. Subscribe to the Thread newsletter for the latest book and author news and must-read recommendations. 

Bob Kendrick tells the powerful story of the life and death of Porter Moss, who pitched in three East-West All-Star games before he was gunned down on a train in Tennessee at the age of 34, and left to die because of the color of his skin. Special thanks to the work, research, and inspiration of the University of Memphis, the University of Baltimore, Gary Ashwill and the Seamheads Database, Dr. Kurt McBee, Dr. Henry Louis Taylor, Dr. Raymond Doswell, the late John Erardi, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the unheralded voices of the Pittsburgh Courier and baseball's Black press.Interview with Ernest Burke courtesy of the University of Baltimore - Ernest BurkeFollow Bob Kendrick on Twitter - @nlbmprezVisit the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City - https://nlbm.com

Andy Masich, CEO & President of the Heinz History Center, takes a look back at the Pittsburgh Courier. 

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for April 25.United Negro College Fund was founded.It is is a philanthropic organization that funds scholarships for Black students and general scholarship funds for 37 private historically Black colleges and universities.The organization awards 10,000 students annually through 400 scholarship and internship programs, so that students from low-and moderate-income families can afford college tuition, books and room and board.In 1943, Frederick D. Patterson wrote a letter to The Pittsburgh Courier proposing the creation of an alliance of black colleges that would raise money for their mutual benefit.Its first campaign received the support of many prominent Americans, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt and John D. Rockefeller, II. The collective effort raised $765,000, equivalent to $10 million today, which is three times what its member institutions had raised separately the previous year.In June 2020, philanthropists Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin donated $120 million to the UNCF to be used as scholarship funds for students enrolled at UNCF institutions. Their single donation is the largest in UNCF history.Learn black history, teach black history at blackfacts.com

In recent years, Jordan Peele's Get Out, Marvel's Black Panther, and HBO's Watchmen have been lauded for the innovative ways they repurpose genre conventions to criticize white supremacy, celebrate Black resistance, and imagine a more racially just world—important progressive messages widely spread precisely because they are packaged in popular genres. But it turns out, such generic retooling for antiracist purposes is nothing new.   As Brooks E. Hefner's Black Pulp shows, this tradition of antiracist genre revision begins even earlier than recent studies of Black superhero comics of the 1960s have revealed. Hefner traces it back to a phenomenon that began in the 1920s, to serialized (and sometimes syndicated) genre stories written by Black authors in Black newspapers with large circulations among middle- and working-class Black readers. From the pages of the Pittsburgh Courier and the Baltimore Afro-American, Hefner recovers a rich archive of African American genre fiction from the 1920s through the mid-1950s—spanning everything from romance, hero-adventure, and crime stories to westerns and science fiction. Reading these stories, Hefner explores how their authors deployed, critiqued, and reassembled genre formulas—and the pleasures they offer to readers—in the service of racial justice: to criticize Jim Crow segregation, racial capitalism, and the sexual exploitation of Black women; to imagine successful interracial romance and collective sociopolitical progress; and to cheer Black agency, even retributive violence in the face of white supremacy.  _______________________________________________   Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski. Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang. Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

Andy Masich, CEO & President of the Heinz History Center, takes a look back at the Pittsburgh Courier.  (Photo: Oleksandr Hruts/Getty Images) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Adam Lee Cilli's book Canaan, Dim and Far: Black Reformers and the Pursuit of Citizenship in Pittsburgh, 1915-1945 (U Georgia Press, 2021) is an assiduously researched book about the activism of African American reformers and migrants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1915 to 1945. Adam Cilli argues that Pittsburgh is central to the story of the Black freedom struggle in the North and the nation as a whole. “Pittsburgh represents a crucial site for illuminating how reformers maneuvered within a political culture driven by industrial capitalism and informed by white supremacist rhetorics,” states Cilli in the opening section of his narrative. Migrants also played a significant role in this story and they made up “two-thirds of all African Americans in Pittsburgh by 1930.” Cilli further argues that although the middle-class reformers defined the “major social justice campaigns of the day,” it was the Black migrants who gave these initiatives “shape and force.” In this text, the author illustrates how a host of journalists, trade unionists, workers, lawyers, scholars and medical professionals advanced the struggle for Black equality in an urban setting. With an “Introduction,” more than thirty illustrations, seven chapters, and a “Conclusion” section, Cilli traces the social, intellectual and cultural history of Black Pittsburgh.  The first two chapters “The Ugliest, Deadest Town: Migrants and Reformers in the Steel City, 1915-1929” and “A Healthy and Prosperous Race: The Urban League of Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Jobs, Housing, and Health, 1915-1929” cover the Great Migration to Pittsburgh, housing and settlement patterns of the Black community in Pittsburgh, and the role of the National Urban League in Black middle-class reform. Cilli introduces a cast of characters and associations in these first two chapters key to his narrative including Reverend James Simmons, Bartow Tipper, and Robert L. Vann. Pittsburgh's Urban League was critical in supporting the social needs of the new Black migrants as assessed in Chapter Two. Chapter Three “The Weapons of Legal Defense: The Pittsburgh NAACP and the Criminal Justice System, 1924-1934” and Chapter Four “The Ranks of the New Army: The Pittsburgh Courier and the Fight for Political Power and National Recognition, 1929-1933” focus on the strategy of legal defense as espoused by the NAACP and the work of newspaperman Robert L. Vann respectively. Chapter Three opens with a discussion of the mass arrest of Black migrants at a house party. These migrants were asked to pay a sum of $2.50 per person to the police but some like Joe Williams and his wife Mildred did not pay and were carted off to jail. These were the type of cases that interested the Pittsburgh NAACP. While in Chapter Four, Cilli concentrates on the key role of Vann in using the Pittsburgh Courier to advance Black social justice claims. The final three chapters focus on educational reform, the labor movement, and Black equality in the New Deal Era. Pittsburgh's Urban League continued to play a role in providing “educational outreach services” for African American students in city schools as detailed in Chapter Five. Black trade unionists began to organize in earnest during the 1930s and began to meet and strategize in Pittsburgh as Cilli notes in Chapter Six. While in Chapter Seven, the assessment of African Americans and their quest for equal employment equity is further analyzed. In Canaan, Dim and Far, Cilli presents his readers with a comprehensive survey of the centrality of Pittsburgh in the Black freedom struggle while offering a more nuanced interpretation of the Black elite and racial uplift ideology in the process. This text is an important historical intervention in African American history in terms of the author's coverage of key associations such as the NAACP and Urban League, labor activism, and Black newspaper history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Adam Lee Cilli's book Canaan, Dim and Far: Black Reformers and the Pursuit of Citizenship in Pittsburgh, 1915-1945 (U Georgia Press, 2021) is an assiduously researched book about the activism of African American reformers and migrants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1915 to 1945. Adam Cilli argues that Pittsburgh is central to the story of the Black freedom struggle in the North and the nation as a whole. “Pittsburgh represents a crucial site for illuminating how reformers maneuvered within a political culture driven by industrial capitalism and informed by white supremacist rhetorics,” states Cilli in the opening section of his narrative. Migrants also played a significant role in this story and they made up “two-thirds of all African Americans in Pittsburgh by 1930.” Cilli further argues that although the middle-class reformers defined the “major social justice campaigns of the day,” it was the Black migrants who gave these initiatives “shape and force.” In this text, the author illustrates how a host of journalists, trade unionists, workers, lawyers, scholars and medical professionals advanced the struggle for Black equality in an urban setting. With an “Introduction,” more than thirty illustrations, seven chapters, and a “Conclusion” section, Cilli traces the social, intellectual and cultural history of Black Pittsburgh.  The first two chapters “The Ugliest, Deadest Town: Migrants and Reformers in the Steel City, 1915-1929” and “A Healthy and Prosperous Race: The Urban League of Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Jobs, Housing, and Health, 1915-1929” cover the Great Migration to Pittsburgh, housing and settlement patterns of the Black community in Pittsburgh, and the role of the National Urban League in Black middle-class reform. Cilli introduces a cast of characters and associations in these first two chapters key to his narrative including Reverend James Simmons, Bartow Tipper, and Robert L. Vann. Pittsburgh's Urban League was critical in supporting the social needs of the new Black migrants as assessed in Chapter Two. Chapter Three “The Weapons of Legal Defense: The Pittsburgh NAACP and the Criminal Justice System, 1924-1934” and Chapter Four “The Ranks of the New Army: The Pittsburgh Courier and the Fight for Political Power and National Recognition, 1929-1933” focus on the strategy of legal defense as espoused by the NAACP and the work of newspaperman Robert L. Vann respectively. Chapter Three opens with a discussion of the mass arrest of Black migrants at a house party. These migrants were asked to pay a sum of $2.50 per person to the police but some like Joe Williams and his wife Mildred did not pay and were carted off to jail. These were the type of cases that interested the Pittsburgh NAACP. While in Chapter Four, Cilli concentrates on the key role of Vann in using the Pittsburgh Courier to advance Black social justice claims. The final three chapters focus on educational reform, the labor movement, and Black equality in the New Deal Era. Pittsburgh's Urban League continued to play a role in providing “educational outreach services” for African American students in city schools as detailed in Chapter Five. Black trade unionists began to organize in earnest during the 1930s and began to meet and strategize in Pittsburgh as Cilli notes in Chapter Six. While in Chapter Seven, the assessment of African Americans and their quest for equal employment equity is further analyzed. In Canaan, Dim and Far, Cilli presents his readers with a comprehensive survey of the centrality of Pittsburgh in the Black freedom struggle while offering a more nuanced interpretation of the Black elite and racial uplift ideology in the process. This text is an important historical intervention in African American history in terms of the author's coverage of key associations such as the NAACP and Urban League, labor activism, and Black newspaper history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

This week we're traveling to 1940s Mississippi with Mudbound! Join us to learn more about the 761st Tank Battalion, whooping cough, cigarettes in the US military, Black veterans in the Jim Crow South, and more! Content Warning: This episode includes discussions of lynching and other racist violence. Sources: The 761st Tank Battalion: "The Black Panthers Enter Combat: The 761st Tank Battalion, November 1944," National WWII History Museum. Available at https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-panthers-761st-tank-battalion Roger Cunningham, "761st Tank Battalion," On Point 9, 3 (2004) Walter Lewis, "A Brief History of the 761st Tank Battalion in World War II," Negro History Bulletin 25, 2 (1965) Cynthia Neverdon-Morton, "African Americans in WWII: A Pictorial Essay," Negro History Bulletin 51/57, 1/12 (1993) Whooping Cough: CDC, Immunology and Vaccine-Preventable Diseases--Pink Book--Pertussis https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/pert.pdf Nicolas Fanget, "Pertussis: a tale of two vaccines," Nature (28 September 2020). https://www.nature.com/articles/d42859-020-00013-8 E. Kuchar, M. Karlikowska-Skwarnik, S. Han, A. Nitsch-Osuch, "Pertussis: History of the Disease and Current Prevention Failure," Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology 934 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/5584_2016_21 Natalie Zarrelli, "Whooping Cough Killed 6,000 Kids a Year Before These Ex-Teachers Created a Vaccine," History (23 April 2019). https://www.history.com/news/whooping-cough-vaccine-pertussis-great-depression Harry M. Marks, "The Kendrick-Eldering-(Frost) pertussis vaccine field trial," Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 100:5 (May 2007): 242-7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1861415/ Carolyn G. Shapiro-Shapin, "Pearl Kendrick, Grace Eldering, and the Pertussis Vaccine," Emerging Infectious Diseases 16:8 (August 2010): 1273-8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3298325/ Smithsonian Antibody Initiative, "Suppressing Whooping Cough," Smithsonian National Museum of American History. https://www.si.edu/spotlight/antibody-initiative/suppressing-whooping-cough Samuel X. Radbill, "Whooping Cough in Fact and Fancy," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 13:1 (January 1943): 33-53. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44449087 Black Veterans in the South After WWII: PBS, "Terror and Triumph," The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow YouTube. https://youtu.be/vadRcW_r-SE Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America Targeting Black Veterans (2017). https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep30689 Jennifer E. Brooks, "Winning the Peace: Georgia Veterans and the Struggle to Define the Political Legacy of World War II," The Journal of Southern History 66:3 (August 2000): 563-604. https://doi.org/10.2307/2587868 "L.R. Police Brutality Still Major Issue In Lives of Little Rock Negro People," Arkansas State Press (Little Rock, Arkansas), December 17, 1948: 1. Readex: African American Newspapers. Defender Washington Bureau, "Attacks on GIs Spur Anti-Lynch Bill Fight," The Chicago Defender (31 March 1945): 4. ProQuest. "Editor Witness to S.C. Slaying," The Pittsburgh Courier (24 August 1946) 1. ProQuest. NAACP file, 1947 http://online.sfsu.edu/cwaldrep/NAACP%20LC%20Copies%20%5B3%5D.pdf Kathy Lohr, "FBI Re-Examines 1946 Lynching," NPR https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5579862 Drunk History, "Stetson Kennedy Infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan (feat. Matt Walsh & Jason Ritter)" Comedy Central, YouTube (4 October 2019). https://youtu.be/-3VyPR0S0LM Smoking in the US Military: Stanford Collection of Tobacco Advertisements, available at http://tobacco.stanford.edu/tobacco_main/images.php?token2=fm_st188.php&token1=fm_img5558.php&theme_file=fm_mt023.php&theme_name=War%20&%20Aviation&subtheme_name=World%20War%20II Richard Gunderman, "Smoking Rates Have Fallen to an All-Time Low, But How Did They Ever Get So High? The Conversation, available at https://theconversation.com/smoking-rates-in-us-have-fallen-to-all-time-low-but-how-did-they-ever-get-so-high-107185#:~:text=During%20World%20War%20II%2C%20free,companies%20manufacture%20290%20billion%20cigarettes. Elizabeth Smith and Ruth Malone, "Everywhere the Soldier Will Be: Wartime Tobacco Promotion in the US Military," American Journal of Public Health 99, 9 (2009) Mona Chalabi, "Cigarettes or War: Which is the Biggest Killer?" The Guardian, available at https://www.theguardian.com/news/reality-check/2013/dec/18/cigarettes-or-war-which-is-the-biggest-killer Lysia Saad, "US Smoking Rate Still Coming Down," Gallup, available at https://news.gallup.com/poll/109048/us-smoking-rate-still-coming-down.aspx Film Background: Sundance Institute, "Mudbound," https://www.sundance.org/projects/mudbound Ramin Setoodeh, "Can Netflix Crash the Oscars with Dee Rees' 'Mudbound'?" Variety (5 September 2017). https://variety.com/2017/film/features/mudbound-dee-rees-netflix-oscars-1202545540/ Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudbound_(film)

A native of Buffalo, New York, Naila Ansari (she/her) is an award-winning choreographer, director, and performing artist. She is a distinguished MFA graduate from the University at Buffalo in Dance and a Cum Laude undergraduate of Point Park's Conservatory of Performing Arts Program. Ansari is an original and former principal dancer for the August Wilson Center Dance Ensemble. The company was named “Top 25 Dance Companies to Watch” in Dance Magazine for the 2012-2013 season, featured at Jacob's Pillow and SummerStage NYC at Central Park. Ansari has danced and performed works for the legendary Lula Washington Dance Theatre out of Los Angeles, CA. She has had the privilege of dancing works by Robert Battle, Kyle Abraham, Camille A. Brown, Darrell Grand Moultrie, Sidra Bell, and Trebien Pollard, to name a few. Ansari's choreography has been set on a host of colleges, universities, professional theatres, and commercial projects. As an Assistant Professor in Theatre and Africana Studies at SUNY Buffalo State College, Ansari has merged artistry and scholarship to build and create works through community and collaborative processes that facilitate conversations on race and Black performance. She has published articles in Theatre Journal, received numerous grants and awards such as the New York State DanceForce Grant, and The Pittsburgh Courier 40 under 40 awards. Ansari is a research assistant and assistant choreographer for AT BUFFALO the Musical and the recent AT BUFFALO TED TALK under award-winning artist and scholar Dr. Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin. Ansari's award-winning choreographed work "Mine Eyes Have Seen" was selected and performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C for the American College Dance Association awards in 2018. Ansari is a collaborator with the UB Arts Collaboratory under the direction of Bronwyn Keenan. Her most recent project and a forthcoming book, The Movement of Joy, focuses on the performance of joy through the creative archiving of oral histories, movement histories, live-performance, and film. Ansari is currently the Dance Director for Ujima Company, inc. selected by the late Lorna C. Hill.

Welcome to another episode of Sportslifetalk where life without sports is just talk. We have Mr. Younited Surge, The mouf of the South, B Jones, the Head Coach KT, Ms. Manhattan and Gemini Jones. Make sure you like and follow us on IG, Twitter Facebook @sportlifetalk. You can watch the live streamed show on our Sportslifetalk Facebook page and on our YouTube channel. Episode 79: Roses Our cover coach this week is Rosey Brown Hall of Fame offensive lineman Rosey Brown was drafted in 1953 by the New York Giants after being named to the Pittsburgh-Courier's 1952 Black All-American Team. Over his career, Brown received All-NFL team honors for eight consecutive years, was a nine-time Pro Bowl selection and helped the Giants win a championship in 1956. Brown was named to the 1950's All-Decade Team and the NFL's 75th Anniversary All-Time Team. Episode available on our Facebook and YouTube page: https://youtu.be/3CQv5uWu8jA -Goat vs Goat -All that power -Bad Boys -and more.....

These two newspapers are two of the largest and most influential Black owned newspapers in the country. They were able to influence huge movements in the Black community as well as show Black excellence during a time of disenfranchisement in the Black community. Check out the episode for more info. Enjoy --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/EverydayBlackHistory/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/EverydayBlackHistory/support

Nothing that’s happened had to happen, or must happen again. That’s why historians aren’t prophets. Wars, booms, busts, inventions, breakthroughs – none of those things were inevitable. They happened, and they’ll keep happening in various forms. But specific events that shape history are always low-probability events. Their surprise is what causes them to leave a mark. And they were surprising specifically because they weren’t inevitable. A lot of things have to go right (or wrong) to move the needle in what is an otherwise random swarm of eight billion people on earth just trying to make it through the day. The problem when studying historical events is that you know how the story ends, and it’s impossible to un-remember what you know today when thinking about the past. It’s hard to imagine alternative paths of history when the actual path is already known. So things always look more inevitable than they were. Now let me tell you a story about the Great Depression. “After booms come busts,” is about as close to economic law as it gets. Study history, and the calamity that followed the booming 1920s, late 1990s, and early 2000s seems more than obvious. It seems inevitable. In October 1929 – the peak of history’s craziest stock bubble and eve of the Great Depression – economist Irving Fisher famously told an audience that “stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” We look at these comments today and laugh. How could someone so smart be so blind to something so inevitable? If you follow the rule that the crazier the boom, the harder the bust, the Great Depression must have been obvious. But Fisher was a smart guy. And he wasn’t alone. In an interview years ago I asked Robert Shiller, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on bubbles, about the inevitability of the Great Depression. He responded: Well, nobody forecasted that. Zero. Nobody. Now there were, of course, some guys who were saying the stock market is overpriced. But if you look at what they said, did that mean a depression is coming? A decade-long depression? No one said that. I have asked economic historians to give me the name of someone who predicted the depression, and it comes up zero. That stuck with me. Here we are, bloated with hindsight, knowing the crash after the roaring 1920s was obvious and inevitable. But for those who lived through it – people for whom the 1930s was a yet-to-be-discovered future – it was anything but. Two things can explain something that looks inevitable but wasn’t predicted by those who experienced it at the time: Either everyone in the past fell for a blinding delusion. Or everyone in the present is blinded by hindsight. We are crazy to think it’s all the former and none the latter. The article will attempt to show what people were thinking in the two years before the Great Depression. I’ll do so with newspaper clippings sourced from the Library of Congress chronicling what people actually said at the time. People who were just as smart as we are today and who wanted to avoid calamity as much as we do today – what were they thinking just before the economy collapsed into the Great Depression? People who were susceptible to the same behavioral quirks and humble laws of statistics as we are today – what did they think of their booming economy? How did they feel? What did they forecast? What worried them? What arguments were convincing to them? History is only interesting because nothing is inevitable. To better understand the stories we believe about our own future, we must first try to understand the views of people who didn’t yet know how their story would end. To understand the mood of the late 1920s you have to understand what the country went through a decade prior. One hundred sixteen thousand Americans died in World War I. Almost 700,000 died from the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918. As the war and the flu came to an end in 1919, America became gripped by one of its worst recessions of modern times. Business activity fell 38% as the economy transitioned from wartime production to regular business. Unemployment hit 12%. The triple hit of war, flu, and depression took a toll on morale. The Wall Street Journal, December 18th, 1920. “The war clouds darken the sky no more, but clouds of business depression and stagnation obscure the sun.” The Wall Street Journal, April 7th, 1921. “The economic outlook was never so complex as it is now.” Los Angeles Times, November 11th 1921. It’s vital to point this pessimism out, because an important part of the late-1920s boom is understanding how desperate people were for good news after a decade of national misery. As the clouds began to part in the mid-1920s, Americans were so exhausted from what they’d been through that they were quick to grab onto any signs of progress they could find. Historian Frederick Lewis Allen wrote in the 1930s: Like an overworked businessman beginning his vacation, the country had had to go through a period of restlessness and irritability, but was finally learning how to relax and amuse itself once more. A sense of disillusionment remained; like the suddenly liberated vacationist, the country felt that it ought to be enjoying itself more than it was, and that life was futile and nothing mattered much. But in the meantime it might as well play – following the crowd, take up the new toys that were amusing the crowd. By 1924 there’s a distinct shift in tone among the business press. The Baltimore Sun, January 1, 1924: America had endured more trauma than at any point since the Civil War in a way that left it shaken, scared, and skeptical. By 1928 the final traces of that fear subsided, and its people were ready to embrace the peace and prosperity they wanted so badly. Once secured, they had no intention of letting go and going back to where they were. On June 18th, 1927 the Washington Post wrote a headline that explains so much of what would took place over the next two years: One thing that sticks out about the late 1920s is the idea that prosperity wasn’t only alive, but was immortal. Those promoting this belief were not subtle. The New York Herald, August 12th, 1928: The Los Angeles Times, December 23rd, 1928: The Boston Globe, January 2nd 1928: The Christian Science Monitor, February 27th, 1928: The notion that recessions had been eliminated is easy to laugh at. But you have to consider three things about the 1920s that made the idea seem feasible. One is that the four inventions that transformed the 1920s – electricity, cars, the airplane, and the radio, and – seemed indistinguishable from magic to most Americans. They were more transformational to the economy than anything since the steam engine, and changed the way the average American lived day to day than perhaps any other technology before or since. Technology that spreads so far, so fast, and deeply tends to create an era of optimism, and a belief that humans can solve any problem no matter how difficult it looks. When you go from a horse to an airplane in one generation, taming the business cycle doesn’t sound outrageous, does it? The New York Times, May 15th, 1929: A second factor that made the end of recessions seem feasible was the idea that World War I was the “war to end all wars.” The documentary How to Live Forever asks a group of centenarians what the happiest day of their life was. “Armistice Day” one woman says, referring to the 1918 agreement that ended World War I. “Why?” the producer asks. “Because we knew there would be no more wars ever again,” she says. When you believe the world has entered an era of permanent peace, assuming permanent prosperity will follow isn’t a big stretch. The Boston Globe, October 6th, 1928: A third argument for why prosperity would be permanent was the diversification of the global economy. Manufacturing was to the 1920s what technology was to the 2000s – a new industry with big wages and seemingly endless growth. But unlike technology today, manufacturing was incredibly labor-intensive, providing good jobs for tens of millions of Americans. A new and powerful industry can create a sense that past rules of boom and bust no longer apply, because the economy has a new quiver in its belt. The LA Times, January 1st, 1929: That same day, Chicago Daily Tribune: Beyond the permanence of prosperity, optimism over technology and its ability to pull rural farmers into the new middle class gave the impression that the gains had barely begun. The Christian Science Monitor, May 15th, 1929: The view was shared outside of the United States. The Los Angeles Times, December 12th, 1928: Around the world, people wanted a piece of what America had. The Hartford Courant, August 6th, 1928: The Hartford Courant, May 16th, 1929, described “conditions more or less permanent” and “fears for the future seem increasingly without foundation.” Little things Americans could hardly consider a few years before became reality. After huge budget deficits to finance the war, government coffers were flush. The New York Times, June 27th, 1927: Consumer debt, we know in hindsight, was a major cause of the crash and depression. But at the time growing credit was seen as a good, clean fuel. The Washington Post, February 19th, 1929: When we look back at the late 1920s we think about crazy stock market valuations and shoe-shine boys giving stock tips. But that’s not what people paid attention to at the time. The newspapers are filled with charts like these: rational, level-headed, and fuel for optimism. The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 1928: Stocks were surging. But it looked justified, backed by real business values. The Wall Street Journal, March 5th, 1929: As manufacturing became a driving force of employment, workers discovered bargaining power in a way they never considered before, working on farms. The Washington Post, November 25th, 1928: Growing middle-class wages seemed to open endless possibilities. The Washington Post, November 13th, 1928: The New York Times put several of these arguments together on May 12th, 1929: The New York Herald, January 2nd, 1929: It’s hard to overstate how transformation these developments were to average Americans, particularly in light of the previous decade’s trauma. The New York Herald Tribune, October 14th, 1929: In 1920 Americans were out of work and desperate for a paycheck. Nine years later, the top national goal was promoting leisure time. The New York Herald Tribune September 30th, 1929: By 1929 the stock market had increased five-fold in the previous decade. Average earnings were at an all-time high. Unemployment was near an all-time low. Frederick Lewis Allen wrote: “This was a new era. Prosperity was coming into full and perfect flower.” A popular saying of the day, Allen writes, was “Prosperity due for a decline? Why, man, we’ve scarcely started!” “ It was a party, and no one wanted to stop dancing. To me the most fascinating part of the 1920s boom is what it did to American culture. Wealth quickly became the center topic of not just commerce, but values, happiness, and even religion. It took on a new place of importance that didn’t exist in previous generations when it was both lower and more concentrated. The New York Herald Tribune, February 11th, 1929: The Baltimore Sun, July 21st, 1929: Ladies’ Home Journal, June 5th, 1929: The Washington Post, June 6th, 1928: The New York Amsterdam News, January 5th, 1928: The New York Times, August 19th, 1928: Across the world, heads turned and respect grew. Chicago Daily Tribune, January 28th, 1929: In just a few years prosperity had taken on a new role in America – not something to dream about, but something that was secured today, guaranteed tomorrow, and sat at the center of what made Americans American. On September 10th, 1929, The Wall Street Journal wrote: Three weeks later, Irving Fisher made this famous proclamation: On October 1st, 1929, the Pittsburgh Courier sounded a faint alarm, warning that prosperity was a mental state subject to change: No one, though, could fathom what was in store next. The stock market lost a third of its value in the last few days of October, 1929. The immediate response was shock, but not dread. On October 26th The New York Times published an article titled, “‘All Well’ is View of Business Chiefs.” It quotes a dozen prominent businessmen: Arthur W. Loasby, president of the Equitable Trust Company: “There will be no repetition of the break of yesterday. The market fell of its own weight without regard to fundamental business conditions, which are sound. I have no fear of another comparable decline.” J.L. Julian, partner of the New York Stock Exchange firm of Fenner & Beane: “The worst is over. The selling yesterday was panicky brought on by hysteria. General conditions are good. Our inquires assure us that business throughout the country is sound.” M.C. Brush, president of the American International Corporation: “I do not look for a recurrence of Thursday and believe that the very best stocks can be bought at approximate present prices.” R.B. White, president of the Central Railroad of New Jersey: “There is nothing alarming in the situation as regards business. Business will continue the way it had. Plans in the railroad for the future have in no way been changed.” Three days later the market crashed again. It would not recover its losses until 1954. The first response to the crash was to view it as a temporary blip, and permanent prosperity would soon resume. The New York Times, October 30th, 1929: The Wall Street Journal, October 29th, 1929: The Boston Daily Globe, October 30th, 1929: The New York Times, October 30th, 1929: Barron’s, November 30th, 1929: Some saw the crash as a blessing, and an opportunity to simplify life that evolved so quickly in the previous five years. The New York Times, November 13th, 1929: The Christian Science Monitor, November 25th, 1929: Chicago Daily Tribune, November 26th, 1929: On New Year’s Eve 1929, as a year that began so bright came to such a shocking end, the Wall Street Journal made a friendly reminder: Keep investing, and you’ll undoubtedly have more money a year from now: Over the next three years the Great Depression put 12 million Americans out of work. The stock market fell 89%, reverting to levels last seen 36 years prior. GDP fell 27%. Prices fell 10% per year. Nine thousand banks failed, erasing $150 billion in American checking and savings accounts. Births declined 17%. Divorce rose by a third. Suicides rose by half. The depression gave rise to Adolf Hitler in Germany, setting the course for a world war that would go on to impact nearly every aspect of life we know today. It was, without question, one of the most consequential events of modern history. And when we look back at what people were thinking before it began, the question remains: Did they know? Did they have any clue? Were they blind to the inevitable? Or did they just suffer a terrible fate that wasn’t inevitable? There has never been a period in history where the majority of people didn’t look dumb in hindsight. People are good at analyzing and predicting things they know and can see. But they cannot think about or prepare for events they can’t fathom. These out-of-the-blue events go on to be the most consequential events of history, so when we look back it’s hard to understand why few people cared or prepared. The phrase “hindsight is 20/20” doesn’t seem right, because 20/20 implies everything coming into a clear view. In reality, hindsight makes most people look dumber than they actually were. Whether something is inevitable only matters if people know it’s inevitable. Knowing a decline is inevitable lets you prepare for it before it happens, and contextualize it when it does. The only important part of this story, I hope I have convinced you, is that no one saw the Great Depression as inevitable before it happened. I don’t think you can call the people of the late 1920s oblivious without answering the question, “Oblivious to what?” A future no one predicted? Consequences no one envisioned? Ignoring advice that no one gave? At the end of World War II it was assumed by most that, stripped of wartime spending, the economy would slip back into the depths of depression that preceded the war. We know today that it did not – it went on to prosper like never before. So were people oblivious in 1945? After the stock market crash of 1987, one investor recently recalled, “I remember an uneasy feeling as pundits predicted the start of the next Great Depression and the end of prosperity, as we knew it.” Instead, the 1990s were the most prosperous decade in history. Were we oblivious in 1987, too? The fact that we avoided depression in 1945, 1987 – and 2009 – might be the best evidence that the actual depression of the 1930s wasn’t inevitable. You can say, “Well, in 1945 the banking system didn’t collapse, and the 1990s were lucky because of the internet,” and so on. But no one in 1945 or 1990 knew those things, just as no one in 1929 knew their future. It’s not hard to imagine a world where policy responses were a little different, a presidential election tipped a different way, a second world war began a decade before it did, and the economic story of the 1930s playing out differently than it did. But we never get to hear the stories of what could have been or almost was. We only think something is inevitable if it’s obvious. And things only look obvious when everyone’s talking about them and predicting them. When you look back at what people said in the late 1920s – their confidence, their clarity, their logic – you can’t help but wonder what we are confident in today that will look foolish in the future. What those things might be, I don’t know. It wasn’t obvious in the 1920s. It won’t be obvious in the 2020s. That’s what makes history interesting – nothing’s inevitable. http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/history-is-only-interesting-because-nothing-is-inevitable/ gave rise togo on to impact nearly every aspect of lifeprepare for events they can’t fathomit was assumed by most

In this episode, Dr. Catherine Meeks interviews Bishop Barbara C. Harris. This is one of the last recorded conversations with Bishop Harris before her journey into eternity in March of 2020. Dr. Meeks spoke with Bishop Harris in November of 2019 in Atlanta at the launch of the Bishop Barbara C. Harris Justice Project honoring her legacy of dismantling racism and social injustices. Bishop Barbara Clementine Harris was born on June 12, 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Harris grew up in Germantown, a neighborhood of Philadelphia. Her mother, Beatrice Price Harris, played the organ for St. Barnabas Church and her father, Walter Harris, was a steelworker. While attending Philadelphia High School for Girls, where she excelled in music, Harris wrote a weekly column called High School Notes by Bobbi for the Philadelphia edition of the Pittsburgh Courier, an African American newspaper. After graduating from high school in 1948, she attended the Charles Morris Price School of Advertising and Journalism. She earned a certificate from Charles Morris Price in 1950. In later years, Harris would study at Villanova University and the Episcopal Divinity School.As a member of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity (ESCRU) since the late 1950s, Harris served on a number of diocesan committees. In the 1960s, she helped to form the Union of Black Clergy and Laity which was subsequently called the Union of Black Episcopalians (UBE). She was a member of the St. Dismas Fellowship and served on the board of the Pennsylvania Prison Society. During the summer of 1964, Harris volunteered with Delta Ministries in Greenville, Mississippi, educating and registering voters. In 1974, she advocated for the ordination of the “Philadelphia Eleven,” a group of women who had been ordained priests, but were labeled "irregular" by the Anglican Communion. By 1976, the church began to admit women priests and, in October 1980, Harris was ordained as a priest. After her ordination, she served as priest at St. Augustine of Hippo Church and as chaplain of Philadelphia County Prison.In 1984, Harris was appointed executive director of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company, molding the social direction of the Episcopal Church. Known for her strong advocacy for social justice, Harris was elected in 1988 as the consecrated Suffragan Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, becoming the first female bishop in the Anglican Communion. She served as bishop until 2002 when she retired at the age of seventy-two.

Geekorama is Produced by Superhero-Fiction.comhttps://www.superhero-fiction.com For this week’s episode of Geekorama, we’re talking about the movies that are so very bad, but we love them anyway. Pop-Culture Trivia - Jackie OrmesShe is the Google Doodle for September 1st. Ormes's first comic strip, Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, first appeared in the Pittsburgh Courier on May 1, 1937. Her work was not syndicated in the usual sense, but, since the Courier had fourteen city editions, she was indeed read from coast to coast. The strip, starring Torchy Brown, was a humorous depiction of a Mississippi teen who found fame and fortune singing and dancing in the Cotton Club.  GEEK OUTSTrish - Avenue Five on HBO. An interstellar cruise ship gets the Gilligan’s Island treatment and instead of a few months of cruising, they get...three and a half years. Hugh Laurie is SO good in this!Jeremy - After quite some waiting, the long-awaited sequel to Korea’s Train to Busan has been released. The first movie was a zombie sensation that revitalized the genre. While not a direct sequel, Peninsula has its moments to shine. The car chase scenes make Mad Max come off as a lackluster Sunday drive. While Peninsula has a bit of a genre crisis at times, it still entertains and has quite a few stand out moments. Definitely worth watching. Deep Dive - The Bad Movies (Some of Which We Might Love)Spiderman 3, Batman and Robin, The Shadow, Daredevil, Fantastic Four (all of them) and what about the made for TV Generation-X movie?. Tune in to find out which ones we love, and which ones we wish had never been made! QotW: If you had a time machine, what movie would you go back and erase from history?Visit Superhero-Fiction to Discover Uncanny Superhero Stories Subscribe to Geekorama to Stay Up-to-Date on All Things SuperheroiTunes | Spotify | Podbean | Youtube Follow Superhero-Fiction on Social MediaSuperhero-Fiction Facebook Page | Superhero-Fiction Facebook Group Trish Heinrich – Facebook | InstagramJeremy Flagg - Facebook | Instagram 

What do a mid-century photographer, a fresh new work, politics and poop jokes, solitary confinement and a music video all have in common? Why it must be time for a rhetoric journal roundup! This week we are going to take a little journey through the quarter’s last issue of Rhetoric Society Quarterly, otherwise known as the RSQ. The RSQ is the official publication of the Rhetorical Society of America, otherwise know as the RSA. So the RSA published the RSQ and now it’s time for the intro for you-know-who!   [intro]   Welcome to Mere Rhetoric, the podcast for beginners and insiders about the ideas, people and movements who shaped rhetorical history and I’m Mary Hedengren and I’ve finally finished the spring issue of the RSQ.   Before I give you a summary of this quarter’s issue, let me just give you a little context on the RSQ. The RSQ has been rolling out for decades and is probably one of the most prestigious and longest-running journals for rhetorical studies. If you become a dues-paying member of the RSA--and it’s pretty cheap for students--, you can receive your own subscription to the RSQ, and you’ll find that it has some of the same focus as the RSA conferences held every other year--it’s focused on the rhetoric side of comp/rhet, usually with a big dose of theory. You won’t find a lot of articles in the RSQ about first-year composition, but you will find archival research, cultural artifacts, history and more.    So let’s take a walk through the Spring 2020 issue of RSQ.   First off, we have an article from PhD candidate Emliy N. Smith because, yes, grad students can get published in RSQ. Smith has looked into the photograph of Charles “Teenie” Harris, an African American photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier. Smith argues that Harris’ photography counters other mid-century depictions of Black people in two important ways: first, the iconic form of photography--iconic photography, as Smith points out, are high performance. Think, as Smith says, of the photograph of raising the flag on Iwo Jima. It’s dramatic, semi-staged and capital M Meaningful. Harris had some pictures like that, but Smith is more interested in the other type of photography he did, the so called idiomatic image, colloquial and conversational. She describes photographs of Harris’ that show Black people creating their own lives as they are “simply moving about in a world suffused with structural racism” (85) like one picture showing kids at a Halloween party, part of their own community, and that community building its own future through its children. The “idiomatic, everyday work of building and sustaining ...Black community,” Smith argues, is itself a powerful mode of visual rhetoric, not less than the iconic mode.   Romeo Garcia and Jose M. Cortez wrote  the next article “The Trace of a Mark That Scatters: The Anthropoi and the Rhetoric of Decoloniality.” If you wondered what a third of those words mean, you are not alone. I had to read the abstract three times before I understood what the article was about, but then I began to see that those words I didn’t understand were exactly what the article was about. In rhetoric we talk a lot about postcolonialism, but these authors are seeking new theories andnew terms--one term is decoloniality. Instead of positioning, for example, the Latin American experience in terms of its difference from Europe, how about just “actually theorizing  rhetoric from the locus of non-Western … space” (94)? The authors give an example of the kind of contrastive rhetoric that really gets their goat. Don P Abbott wrote an article about rhetoric in Aztec culture where he  says, “It is possible that Aztec discourse, both practical and conceptually, would have continued to evolve as the culture itself developed” (qtd 99) and Garcia and Crotez are like…”wait what…? So you think Aztec culture was ‘undeveloped’? Do you think that logocentrism is the only way to figure rhetoric? Uh, no..!” This brings us to the other term in the title that might not be familiar--anthropoi. As you might guess, this word has a connection to anthropology, with the idea that the anthropoi are people you study, “that which cannot escape the status of being external to the subject and being gramed as object/nature” (97).  But wait! de-Colonialism has its own flaws. How can modern rhetoricians ever hope to reconstruct the rhetorics of people in radically different cultures living thousands of years ago? “Decoloniality,” the authors say, “cannot carry out its promis of decolonization while adopting the language and conceptual apparatus of propriety” (103)  If post-colonial thinks about the other and decoloniality gets caught in a loop of using western logocentrism to approach non-Western rhetorics, what’s the solution? Well….they propose an alterity symbolized in the letter X, both as the end of Latinx, and also as in the symbol you use to signify your name if you aren’t literate. They “move past decoloniality without completely giving up on its ground of intervention” seeking “ (104). Whew. That is some heavy stuff!   Don’t worry, the next article includes potty humor! Richard Benjamin Crosby at Brigham Young University (Go Cougs!), digs into the Rhetorical Grotesque, especially in the 21st century policial arena. He argues that leaders like Trump and Bolsonaro and Hugo Chavez and Silvio Berlusconi all “enact in rhetoric the kinds of incongruous combinations, comis distortions and corporeal excesses that scholars in art and literature have long associated with grotesquerie” (109, original emphasis). The grotesque, if you remember your Baktin, focuses a lot on the body, and bodily excess--eating, pooping, reproducing. As Crosby says. “The groteque’s only true allegiance is to transgression of the presumed order of things” (112) and it is in this way that politicians like Trump exemplify the grotesque-- positioning themselves as transgressive, shaking up the old foundation, and being grotesque is part of that. “A political cutlass” (112) as “a mode of communication, the essence of which is transgression of or deviation from and degradation of that which is presumed to be normal” through being 1- incongruous, 2- mocking, and 3- corporal. Crosby gives examples of political discourse of the grotesque from several different countries and political positions, but Trump is the clearest example for us, especially during the Primary campaign. Trump’s grotesque rhetoric argued that “Trump is real, because he is uncontained” (115) as Trump mocks  accusations that he calls women he doesn’t like “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals” and says “the big problem this country has is being politically correct” (116). Distrust in political institutions have led, says Crosby, to a “grotesque kairos” (119) of wanting to mock and dismantle social norms. And although we rebel-rousing rhetoricians often get excited about breaking social norms, Crosby points out that demagogues like Trump demonstrate that the grotesque is “a neutral tool that can be wielded by anyone skilled enough to use it” (120) and sometimes it can be disasterous.   From Trump’s consolidation of power we then move to the powerless--prisoners on hunger strikes in California’s Pelican Bay Prison. Chris S Earle writes an article called “‘More Resilient than Concrete and Steel”: Consciousness-Raising, Self-Discipline and Bodily Resistance in Solitary Confinement” where he argues that the “widespread, multiracial coalition emerged through years of organizing between prison cells, a process rendered nearly impossible by solitary confinement” (124). “Against the odds,” he relates, these prisoners “created a discursive space” in prison across racial boundaries in three collective hunger strikes opposition prisoner conditions (125). These hunger strikes took place in a Supermax prison and solitary confinement, among the prisoners termed “worst of the worst,” yet they exemplified “strict regimes of self-discipline” (132) as the prisoners “turned their bodies into weapons of resistance” and made “a moral critiques of solitary confinement” (133). Earle concludes his article by saying that making distinctions between nonviolent and violent offenders undermines prison reform efforts and justifies “even more inhumane conditions for many people in prison” (134).   In the next article, Jennifer Lin Lemesurier (li-mis-i-ur) walks us through the “racist kinesiologies” in Childish Gambino’s “this is America.” If you haven’t seen the music video of “This is America,” pause this podcast, fire up the YouTube and watch it now. You’ll thank me. [....] Aaaaaand we’re back. Lemesurier describes what Childish Gambino’s body is doing in this video as embodying two racist assumptions about black male bodies--that they are hyper talented and hyper violent. She takes us deep into the history of Black dance as seen through the filter of white eyes, as slavers demanded slaves dance on demand across the middle passage (141) and slave owners exhibit the “savage wildness” of Black dance (142), but it’s one figure of the Black male body that Childish Gambino especially channels--the 1889 figure of The Original Jim Crow, a minstrel figure who danced with a knee bend, elbow bend and naive amusement. Lemesurier, a dancer herself, describes how uneven the position is in body weight and posture, how it “does not valorize linear pattern or gentle arcs” (144)--it is a stark and mocking other. As all of my listeners have now seen the video--RIGHT?!-- you know that in the video Childish Gambino transitions seamlessly between depictions of performance and violent. “The emphasis on dance,” Lemesuir writes, “is key to the critique of how Black embodiment serves white audiences” (145). “Gambino’s chorerographed performance of violence is a metaperformative moment that asks viewers to question the naturaizationof Black bodies as always dancing or shooting and the impact of such portrayals on  broader relations that are possible between racialized bodies” (146). Lemesuir ends by recommending that we in rhetoric continue studying moving bodies, “Rhetoric needs more clarity on how bodily hierarchies are always present, not only in visuals or discourses, but in the very steps we take through the world, toward or away from one another,” (149).   And there you have it! Those are the main articles from RSQ this quarter. I’m skipping over the book reviews, even though it includes a review by my Casey Boyle, one of my faves from the University of Texas at Austin (go Longhorns!), Dana Cloud and Steve Mailloux’s new book. But you, as they say, don’t have to take my word for it!    

Cumberland Posey began his career in 1911 playing outfield for the Homestead Grays, a local black team in his Pennsylvania hometown. He soon became the squad’s driving force as they dominated semi-pro ball in the Pittsburgh area. By the late 1930s the Grays were at the top of the Negro Leagues with nine straight pennant wins. Posey was also a League officer; he served 13 years as the first black member of the Homestead school board; and he wrote an outspoken sports column for the African American weekly, the Pittsburgh Courier. He was also regarded as one of the best black basketball players in the East; he was the organizer of a team that held the consensus national black championship five years running. Ten years after his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, he became a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame—one of only two athletes to be honored by two pro sports halls of fame.

This was the first interview I conducted for The Rutledge Perspective a couple of years ago now. Dina Clark embodies what it means to be living and working in your passion. And not just because you like it but because it is fundamental to who you are. Be prepared for her story, because the beginning of her journey has an event that is quite unbelievable, yet in our current environment, not necessarily surprising. You will leave inspired and ready to listen to what's in your spirit and take action to move into your purpose. About Dina Clark: In August 2015, Dina Clark began her role with Covestro LLC as the Head of Diversity & Inclusion at their North American headquarters based in Pittsburgh. In this role, Dina spearheads the development and implementation of diversity strategies and initiatives for Covestro across the United States, and in collaboration with Covestro's office in Mexico. This includes leading efforts to engage employees across the business as well as establish and manage the company's diversity councils and employee resource groups. Dina is also working in partnership with the company president and leadership team to align Covestro's diversity and inclusion goals with the business goals, which includes working in conjunction with the procurement department on Supplier Diversity. Dina also serves on Covestro's global diversity and inclusion council, as well as the global core team, currently based in Leverkusen, Germany. Prior to her role with Covestro, Dina served as the Senior Director of Equity & Advocacy with the YWCA Greater Pittsburgh, where she ran the YWCA's Center for Race and Gender Equity, which works to support the YWCA's focus on eliminating racism and empowering women through racial justice, community engagement and advocacy efforts. Prior to this position, she Show Notes Summary served as the first Executive Director of the Western Pennsylvania Diversity Initiative (WPDI), a not-for-profit economic development membership organization dedicated to promoting regional economic growth by providing resources to employers in the Greater Pittsburgh region to attract, hire, and retain employees from a variety of diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Dina also served as Regional Education Project Director for the Anti-Defamation League, which serves Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia. Based in Pittsburgh, she worked to provide educational resources and anti-bias training for school administrators, teachers and students, as well as colleges and universities, community based organizations and corporations across all four states. Dina's interest areas in diversity, equity and inclusion are complimented by her strong training background. Specifically she addresses such topics as equity, anti-bias education, diversity and inclusion strategy, employee and community engagement, and leadership development, and has been dedicated to this work for over 20 years. She has conducted several presentations nationwide including workshops for Family Communications Inc/Producers of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, Vassar College, University of Michigan, Magnet Schools of New York, New York State Department of Health, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In addition to training, in 2006 Dina was selected for a fellowship with the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. and was named as one of Pittsburgh's 40 under 40 leaders by Pittsburgh Magazine. In 2009, she was also named one of 50 recipients of the "Women of Excellence" award, from the Pittsburgh Courier, and in 2015 recipient of the Allegheny County Bar Association Homer S. Brown Spirit Award and in 2017 she was featured in the Women & Business section of Pittsburgh Magazine for the work she does in developing and strengthening D & I strategy. In 2018 Dina also was recognized at the City & State PA's inaugural award ceremony, Above and Beyond: Honoring Women of Public and Civic Mind in Philadelphia. Dina is very involved in the Pittsburgh community. She is a graduate of Leadership Pittsburgh Inc (Class XXIII), and she currently serves on several boards and advisory committees. In addition, Dina has also worked as a professional tester for housing discrimination for the Fair Housing Partnership of Pittsburgh and as a diversity/anti-bias trainer for the Anti Defamation League. In 2012, she was selected as a participant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Citizen's Academy, Class XIII and served as a board member of the FBI Citizen's Academy Alumni Association for six years. Dina has a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology/Child & Family Studies from Syracuse University, a Master's Degree from Duquesne University, with a focus on global leadership and she is currently working on her Doctorate in Education at Point Park University, with a focus on leadership and administration, and in 2019 Dina completed The Advanced Leadership Initiative, Executive Leadership Academy at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business. About Laurel: Laurel Rutledge's human-centered approach, empathy, and understanding of individual needs make her a top-notch personal advisor and women's leadership coach. Her care and compassion have made her an indispensable guide for countless women navigating the next phases of their lives and careers. Add to that her intimate knowledge of the HR landscape, and it becomes clear why her HR clients have had such transformative experiences. Just as Rutledge has helped countless others get out of their rut and off of the ledge, so too can she help you. After receiving her MBA, Laurel moved from accounting and consulting to human resources, driven by a desire to do good in a business environment. It quickly became apparent that the switch had been a good choice — she flourished professionally and became happier, satisfied with the difference she could make through her work. After a 30-year career, she left the corporate world, but her passion for HR and helping others has only grown. Now, she works one-on-one with clients, leveraging her experience in leadership and personal development to help them get the most of out their lives and careers. From her beginnings as a consultant at Deloitte to her time as VP of HR at Covestro, Laurel has seen more sides of the business world than most. She's achieved technical mastery of HR, with a deep knowledge of the rules and regulations that must be followed. She's also a people person, perceptive and outgoing, with a sixth sense for helping others to see the difference between what they want and what they need. The culmination of this is in her personal philosophy: “lead with your heart, act with your head.” Find out more at https://laurelrutledge.com Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. You can also subscribe from the podcast app on your mobile device. Leave us an iTunes review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on iTunes, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on iTunes.

The Double V Campaign was launched by a prominent black newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier, in 1942. The campaign came in response to buzz generated from a letter written by a young black man, James G. Thompson. His article, entitled, “Should I Sacrifice to Live ‘Half-American”, broke barriers and started a conversation nationally that many blacks had been having for generations.

Cue Perry is a local painting artist that is taking the Pittsburgh area by storm! He has been featured in the Pittsburgh Courier, and has displayed and sold well over 200 paintings. I got the chance to sit down with this talented brother on The #24HourHustle Show, and we got a chance to hear his story, struggles, and success.

After the Nixon and Carter families flee Georgia, they face terrible conditions. Discovered by the NAACP and The Pittsburgh Courier, they find a way to move forward.

From 1927 until his death in 1979, E.F. Joseph documented the daily lives of African Americans in the Bay Area. His images were printed in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, but not widely published in his home community. A graduate of the American School of Photography in Illinois, Joseph photographed the likes of such celebrities and activists as Josephine Baker, Mahalia Jackson, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Thurgood Marshall. However, what is perhaps more compelling within these pages are the countless images of everyday citizens teaching, entertaining, worshipping, working, and serving their community and their nation. Emmanuel Francis (E. F.) Joseph (1900-1979) was born on November 8, 1900 in St. Lucia, West Indies. After graduating from the American School of Photography of Illinois, he moved to Oakland, California in 1924 where he served as an apprentice in a photography studio. He was the first professional African American photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area operating a commercial and studio photography business in his home initially at 1303 Adeline St. and then at 384 50th St. in Oakland. In 1980, Careth Reid purchased Josephs collection of negatives and personal papers, and nearly four decades later, a labor of love comes to fruition with the publication of The Picture Man: From the Collection of Bay Area Photographer E. F. Joseph (Arcadia, 2017). Ms. Reid, a lifelong educator and champion of community service in the Bay Area, partnered with longtime friend Ruth Beckford, a dancer, teacher, choreographer, actor, and author. Ms. Reid, a native of Berkeley, was the recipient of San Francisco State University’s Alumna of the Year Award in 1990 and is also a member of the university’s Hall of Fame. Ms. Beckford is featured in a downtown mural of the community’s artists and was also celebrated as an Outstanding Alumni of Oakland Technical High School in 2015. Together, they tell the story of the Bay Areas African American community through the eye and lens of one of its own. Ms. Beckford and Ms. Reid live in Oakland, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From 1927 until his death in 1979, E.F. Joseph documented the daily lives of African Americans in the Bay Area. His images were printed in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, but not widely published in his home community. A graduate of the American School of Photography in Illinois, Joseph photographed the likes of such celebrities and activists as Josephine Baker, Mahalia Jackson, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Thurgood Marshall. However, what is perhaps more compelling within these pages are the countless images of everyday citizens teaching, entertaining, worshipping, working, and serving their community and their nation. Emmanuel Francis (E. F.) Joseph (1900-1979) was born on November 8, 1900 in St. Lucia, West Indies. After graduating from the American School of Photography of Illinois, he moved to Oakland, California in 1924 where he served as an apprentice in a photography studio. He was the first professional African American photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area operating a commercial and studio photography business in his home initially at 1303 Adeline St. and then at 384 50th St. in Oakland. In 1980, Careth Reid purchased Josephs collection of negatives and personal papers, and nearly four decades later, a labor of love comes to fruition with the publication of The Picture Man: From the Collection of Bay Area Photographer E. F. Joseph (Arcadia, 2017). Ms. Reid, a lifelong educator and champion of community service in the Bay Area, partnered with longtime friend Ruth Beckford, a dancer, teacher, choreographer, actor, and author. Ms. Reid, a native of Berkeley, was the recipient of San Francisco State University’s Alumna of the Year Award in 1990 and is also a member of the university’s Hall of Fame. Ms. Beckford is featured in a downtown mural of the community’s artists and was also celebrated as an Outstanding Alumni of Oakland Technical High School in 2015. Together, they tell the story of the Bay Areas African American community through the eye and lens of one of its own. Ms. Beckford and Ms. Reid live in Oakland, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From 1927 until his death in 1979, E.F. Joseph documented the daily lives of African Americans in the Bay Area. His images were printed in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, but not widely published in his home community. A graduate of the American School of Photography in Illinois, Joseph photographed the likes of such celebrities and activists as Josephine Baker, Mahalia Jackson, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Thurgood Marshall. However, what is perhaps more compelling within these pages are the countless images of everyday citizens teaching, entertaining, worshipping, working, and serving their community and their nation. Emmanuel Francis (E. F.) Joseph (1900-1979) was born on November 8, 1900 in St. Lucia, West Indies. After graduating from the American School of Photography of Illinois, he moved to Oakland, California in 1924 where he served as an apprentice in a photography studio. He was the first professional African American photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area operating a commercial and studio photography business in his home initially at 1303 Adeline St. and then at 384 50th St. in Oakland. In 1980, Careth Reid purchased Josephs collection of negatives and personal papers, and nearly four decades later, a labor of love comes to fruition with the publication of The Picture Man: From the Collection of Bay Area Photographer E. F. Joseph (Arcadia, 2017). Ms. Reid, a lifelong educator and champion of community service in the Bay Area, partnered with longtime friend Ruth Beckford, a dancer, teacher, choreographer, actor, and author. Ms. Reid, a native of Berkeley, was the recipient of San Francisco State University's Alumna of the Year Award in 1990 and is also a member of the university's Hall of Fame. Ms. Beckford is featured in a downtown mural of the community's artists and was also celebrated as an Outstanding Alumni of Oakland Technical High School in 2015. Together, they tell the story of the Bay Areas African American community through the eye and lens of one of its own. Ms. Beckford and Ms. Reid live in Oakland, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

From 1927 until his death in 1979, E.F. Joseph documented the daily lives of African Americans in the Bay Area. His images were printed in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, but not widely published in his home community. A graduate of the American School of Photography in Illinois, Joseph photographed the likes of such celebrities and activists as Josephine Baker, Mahalia Jackson, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Thurgood Marshall. However, what is perhaps more compelling within these pages are the countless images of everyday citizens teaching, entertaining, worshipping, working, and serving their community and their nation. Emmanuel Francis (E. F.) Joseph (1900-1979) was born on November 8, 1900 in St. Lucia, West Indies. After graduating from the American School of Photography of Illinois, he moved to Oakland, California in 1924 where he served as an apprentice in a photography studio. He was the first professional African American photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area operating a commercial and studio photography business in his home initially at 1303 Adeline St. and then at 384 50th St. in Oakland. In 1980, Careth Reid purchased Josephs collection of negatives and personal papers, and nearly four decades later, a labor of love comes to fruition with the publication of The Picture Man: From the Collection of Bay Area Photographer E. F. Joseph (Arcadia, 2017). Ms. Reid, a lifelong educator and champion of community service in the Bay Area, partnered with longtime friend Ruth Beckford, a dancer, teacher, choreographer, actor, and author. Ms. Reid, a native of Berkeley, was the recipient of San Francisco State University’s Alumna of the Year Award in 1990 and is also a member of the university’s Hall of Fame. Ms. Beckford is featured in a downtown mural of the community’s artists and was also celebrated as an Outstanding Alumni of Oakland Technical High School in 2015. Together, they tell the story of the Bay Areas African American community through the eye and lens of one of its own. Ms. Beckford and Ms. Reid live in Oakland, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From 1927 until his death in 1979, E.F. Joseph documented the daily lives of African Americans in the Bay Area. His images were printed in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, but not widely published in his home community. A graduate of the American School of Photography in Illinois, Joseph photographed the likes of such celebrities and activists as Josephine Baker, Mahalia Jackson, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Thurgood Marshall. However, what is perhaps more compelling within these pages are the countless images of everyday citizens teaching, entertaining, worshipping, working, and serving their community and their nation. Emmanuel Francis (E. F.) Joseph (1900-1979) was born on November 8, 1900 in St. Lucia, West Indies. After graduating from the American School of Photography of Illinois, he moved to Oakland, California in 1924 where he served as an apprentice in a photography studio. He was the first professional African American photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area operating a commercial and studio photography business in his home initially at 1303 Adeline St. and then at 384 50th St. in Oakland. In 1980, Careth Reid purchased Josephs collection of negatives and personal papers, and nearly four decades later, a labor of love comes to fruition with the publication of The Picture Man: From the Collection of Bay Area Photographer E. F. Joseph (Arcadia, 2017). Ms. Reid, a lifelong educator and champion of community service in the Bay Area, partnered with longtime friend Ruth Beckford, a dancer, teacher, choreographer, actor, and author. Ms. Reid, a native of Berkeley, was the recipient of San Francisco State University’s Alumna of the Year Award in 1990 and is also a member of the university’s Hall of Fame. Ms. Beckford is featured in a downtown mural of the community’s artists and was also celebrated as an Outstanding Alumni of Oakland Technical High School in 2015. Together, they tell the story of the Bay Areas African American community through the eye and lens of one of its own. Ms. Beckford and Ms. Reid live in Oakland, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From 1927 until his death in 1979, E.F. Joseph documented the daily lives of African Americans in the Bay Area. His images were printed in the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, but not widely published in his home community. A graduate of the American School of Photography in Illinois, Joseph photographed the likes of such celebrities and activists as Josephine Baker, Mahalia Jackson, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Thurgood Marshall. However, what is perhaps more compelling within these pages are the countless images of everyday citizens teaching, entertaining, worshipping, working, and serving their community and their nation. Emmanuel Francis (E. F.) Joseph (1900-1979) was born on November 8, 1900 in St. Lucia, West Indies. After graduating from the American School of Photography of Illinois, he moved to Oakland, California in 1924 where he served as an apprentice in a photography studio. He was the first professional African American photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area operating a commercial and studio photography business in his home initially at 1303 Adeline St. and then at 384 50th St. in Oakland. In 1980, Careth Reid purchased Josephs collection of negatives and personal papers, and nearly four decades later, a labor of love comes to fruition with the publication of The Picture Man: From the Collection of Bay Area Photographer E. F. Joseph (Arcadia, 2017). Ms. Reid, a lifelong educator and champion of community service in the Bay Area, partnered with longtime friend Ruth Beckford, a dancer, teacher, choreographer, actor, and author. Ms. Reid, a native of Berkeley, was the recipient of San Francisco State University’s Alumna of the Year Award in 1990 and is also a member of the university’s Hall of Fame. Ms. Beckford is featured in a downtown mural of the community’s artists and was also celebrated as an Outstanding Alumni of Oakland Technical High School in 2015. Together, they tell the story of the Bay Areas African American community through the eye and lens of one of its own. Ms. Beckford and Ms. Reid live in Oakland, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As we kick off Women’s History month we are joined by Arlinda Moriarty, President and CEO of Moriarty Consultants, Inc., a multi-million dollar healthcare business.  Arlinda shares how she manages her multi-million dollar business and ADHD.   Arlinda Moriarty is the President and CEO of Moriarty Consultants. Moriarty Consultants, Inc., a multi-million dollar healthcare business, provides non-medical, in-home care services that give clients, family members and their caregivers peace of mind. Arlinda was diagnosed with adult ADHD before she started what is now one of the top women-owned and top minority-owned businesses in Pittsburgh; with other offices in Connecticut and Georgia.  Her generosity extends to the community as well as to her employees who she also encourages to step out on their own by offering them financial assistance to help with their ventures. Her advice and hands-on guidance has resulted in several of her employees pursuing their own entrepreneurial endeavors. Her philanthropic outreach has touched the lives of many who would otherwise not have had access to the wealth of empowering opportunities that her outreach provides. She was recently celebrated as a nominee for the Athena Awards. The Pittsburgh Courier selected her to receive an award honoring her as a Woman of Excellence. In addition, Onyx Woman magazine selected her as their 2009 Business Woman of the Year.  She is the proud mother of a son. Want a FREE audio book? Go to Audible.com and you can get one. Listen to today’s podcast to find out which book I recommend for you. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/janetmtaylor/message

The Total Tutor Neil Haley will interview Former Sports Editor of The Pittsburgh Courier Eddie Jefferies. Jefferies joined the Courier in the mid-'70s as a sports writer and was with it for several years as sports editor and copy editor before leaving to work for the Census Bureau in the mid '90s.

In this episode April Sims will discuss in detail the 2nd Each One Teach One Music and Radio Seminar, she recently attended, with Christopher L. Fields and the listening audience of A & E Radio from 7:00PM – 8:00PM EST at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/aprilsims. About 2nd Each One Teach One Music and Radio Seminar The 2nd Each One Teach One Music and Radio Seminar took place at University Center, Carnegie-Mellon University, located in Pittsburgh, PA on January 16, 2010 from 9:00AM – 5:00PM EST. The 2nd Each One Teach One Music and Radio Seminar was organized and hosted by Kevin Amos, who is the producer for “One to One”, a Sunday morning radio program aired on the Internet from 6AM – 12:00PM EST. “One to One” can also be heard in the Pittsburgh, PA area on WRCT 88.3FM, the student run radio station located on the campus of Carnegie-Mellon University. The 2nd Each One Teach One Music and Radio Seminar was moderated by Bob Davis, CEO and Co-Founder of Soul-Patrol.com. Kevin Amos assembled panels for the seminar surround music genres such as Jazz, Blues, R&B, Reggae/World Music, Hip Hop, Rock as well as panels regarding Radio Past, Present and Future; Promotion and Marketing; Independent Artists; Developing Community Voices and more. Some of the panelists for the seminar included, but were not limited, Emmai ALaquiva, Owner of Ya Momz House; Liz Rueger, President of Independent Artist Representatives; Christian Nowlin, Owner of Out of the Dark Records; Bob Davis, CEO and Co-Founder of Soul-Patrol.com; Jonnet Solomon-Nowlin, President of National Opera House; Mena and Vocalist; Stephan Broadus, Assistant to Publisher of Pittsburgh Courier.# # # About WAGTi: WAGTi stands for “WE are GREATER than i” and was created by indie artists and entrepreneurs to promote, educate, motivate and inspire indie artists and entrepreneurs. # # #