"New Women, Steel City: The Aurora Reading Club in Pittsburgh, PA, 1890-1940"

• In Event: Race, Activism, and Social Movements from the 18th century to the 20th century

Abstract

During the early to mid-twentieth century, Pittsburgh’s African Americans created a complex and richly layered cultural and community life. Existing in the shadow of the larger white community, black Pittsburgh constructed a reality that was marked by the stress of living in two worlds. These African Americans, buffeted by norms and standards not of their own making, accepted some of these measure, syncretized others and created still more out of their own experiences. This accepting, combining and creating resulted in tensions of moderations or militance in race; of traditional or non-traditional in gender expectations; and of Negroid or European in appearance. Indeed, even class differences caused black Pittsburgh's to pull away from each other, while together they pushed against a racial and segregated system.

Through a wide variety of sources including oral histories, dissertations and masters thesis, and archival manuscript records, I saw how race, class, and gender shaped the experiences of Pittsburgh’s black community by examining the Aurora Reading Club, founded in Pittsburgh, Pa, in 1894. I also show how African Americans, despite substantial internal conflicts, forged bonds across intra-racial class lines and resisted racial discrimination in the larger social, economic, and political life. I examine how African American women not only faced crucial class conflicts but gender cleavages as well.

My research contributes to the body of historical community studies by using gender as a lens to analyze a community’s development. I show that women have substantial different experiences than men. And though these experiences have often gone undocumented and unnoticed, they were crucial to the community’s formation. In addition to showing how black women supported their community, I examine how they pushed the boundaries of gender expectations and created alternative and acceptable ways of behavior. I also show that Pittsburg’s African Americans were not as passive in accepting their social and political fate as historians have sometimes suggested Rather, they sough to define themselves in ways that were uniquely their own.

Author

• Y'hoshua Murray, Edinboro University of PA