Pittsburgh. Seldom is a white-headed Negro seen on the street; but
rather the man on the sand cart hard at work. That with every year
there is an increasing migration from the South to our northern cities
is known in a general way; but if our estimate of these newcomers is
to be worth anything, it should be based upon something more than
impressions gained from those we notice on the street-cars (the best are
too well-behaved to be conspicuous), from loafers at saloon doors, and
from newspaper accounts of Negro crime. Here, too often, the knowledge
of white people ends. Of the industrious, ambitious Negroes, they know
little; and of the home life of those who are refined, nothing at all.
As a man who officially comes into daily contact with the criminal
Negro said to me, "All must bear the reproach for the doings of this
police-court ten per cent." Anyone who is sufficiently interested to
desire more accurate information as to Pittsburgh's Negroes than may be
gained by a walk down Wylie avenue will readily find signs enough of
the differentiation that is rapidly taking place among the members of
this race. While with the increasing influx a class of idle, shiftless
Negroes is coming, who create problems and increase prejudice, a far
larger number are taking advantage of the abundance of work and of
the good wages, and are rapidly bettering themselves. There is here a
chance, such as perhaps few northern cities give, for the industrious
Negro to succeed, and he is improving his opportunity.
There was a considerable Negro population in Allegheny county before
the Civil War. Both Pittsburgh and Allegheny were important stations of
the "underground railroad" and many a man and woman sought refuge here
from the nearby slave states. In Allegheny a school was founded for them
before the end of the half century. The growth of the Negro population
is shown by the following chart:
YEAR | NUMBER
-----+-------
1850 | 3431 ====
1860 | 2725 ===
1870 | 4459 =====
1880 | 7876 ========
1890 | 13501 ==============
1900 | 27853 ============================
These figures show a steady increase except from 1850 to 1860, gradually
reaching the point where the Negro population doubles in a decade. The
marked increases from 1870 to 1880 and 1890 to 1900 are probably due to
the fact that in those periods more Negroes were able to get work in the
steel mills. The percentage of Negroes in the total population of the
county was 2.2 per cent in 1880, 2.4 per cent in 1890, and 3.6 per cent
in 1900. Three-quarters of the Negroes in the county live in Pittsburgh
and Allegheny City. Since 1900, the migration of Negroes to Pittsburgh
has been greater than before. It is estimated that there are not less
than 50,000 in Allegheny county and at least 35,000 of these are in
Pittsburgh and Allegheny. In 1900 considerably more than half of these
were males, and Pittsburgh was one of three cities in the United States
(the others were Chicago and Boston) with a population of 10,000 or more
Negroes, to have an excess of males.
In general this migration has been from the middle southern states.
The greater number, fully one-half, has come from Virginia and West
Virginia; others have come from Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, with a
few from Ohio and states further west. Some of those from Alabama and
Tennessee have already been "broken in" in the new mill districts of
those states.
As in the migration to other northern cities most of these people, when
they come north, are in their best working years,--between eighteen
and forty. According to the census of 1900, over seventy per cent of
the Pittsburgh Negroes were between fifteen and fifty-four years of
age; less than five per cent were over fifty years, while but fourteen
per cent, about 2,400, were children of school age, between five and
fourteen. Many of the children remain in the South, and many of the old
people go back there, so that the city of Pittsburgh is under little
expense for educating the children and less for caring for the aged.
* * * * *
The principal Negro street is Wylie avenue. This leads up to the "Hill
District" which, forty years ago, was a well-conditioned section. Now it
is given over largely to Negroes and European immigrants. Forty-eight
per cent of the Negroes in Pittsburgh live in wards seven, eight, eleven
and thirteen. In 1900, sixteen per cent were in the thirteenth ward, and
the number has increased since then. They constituted fourteen per cent
of the total population of the ward in that year. How fast this movement
into the thirteenth ward is taking place is indicated by what a colored
woman told me who keeps a grocery store on Wylie avenue near Francis
street. When she opened there three years ago, there was scarcely a
colored family in the district. Now there is another grocery store, a
shoe store and two confectionery stores, kept by colored people. Horton
street near by is filled with colored people who have recently come from
the South. There is a tendency on the part of the Negroes, however, to
get out from the center of the city, and fully a quarter of them lives
further out in wards nineteen, twenty and twenty-one. In all, sixty-two
per cent of the Negroes lived in 1900 in six wards.
In these wards there is a large foreign element. In the seventh, eighth
and eleventh wards there are many Russian Jews. A Negro church in the
eighth ward was sold last fall for a Jewish synagog, and the Negro
congregation is building in the thirteenth ward. In the twelfth ward
where many of the Negroes live who work in the mills, they have for
neighbors the Poles and Slavs. The well-to-do Negroes of the city are
moving out towards the East End.
Two or three apartment houses have been built especially for Negroes,
but in general, though living in certain localities, they are not
segregated. This does not mean that there are not some Negro streets,
but very often a row of from three to seven houses will be found in
which Negroes are living, while the rest of the street is filled with
white people. Again, a single Negro family may live between two white
families. When Negroes gain a foothold in a new street in any numbers,
the Americans move away; but the Jewish immigrants do not seem to object
to living near them, sometimes in the same house. And this is true of
more than the poorest of them.
In a way the Jews have been a help to the Negroes, for they will rent
houses to them in localities where they could not otherwise go. In
many cases the Jews have bought or built houses, filled them with
Negro tenants at high rents, and thus paid for them. But the Negroes
have learned from these experiences and many of them have started to
buy homes. They have decided that they might as well buy houses for
themselves as for the Jews.
The poorer Negroes live in a network of alleys on either side of Wylie
avenue in the seventh and eighth wards. For years the conditions here
have been very bad from every point of view. There are respectable
people living here, but the population consists chiefly of poor Negroes
and a low class of whites. As a result, there is much immorality in this
section,--speak easies, cocaine joints and disorderly houses abound.
I think I never saw such wretched conditions as in three shanties on
Poplar alley. Until a year ago many of the landlords had not complied
with the law requiring flush closets, and I found old fashioned vaults
full of filth. Where the flush closets had been put in they were in
many cases out of repair. In some alleys there were stables next to the
houses and while the odor was bad at any time, after a rain the stench
from these and from the dirt in the streets was almost unendurable.
The interiors of very many of the houses in which the Negroes live were
out of repair,--paper torn off, plastering coming down, and windows
broken. The tenants told me they had complained to the landlords and
had tried to get something done, but without success.
The twelfth ward near the mills also has some bad conditions. In Parke
row and Spruce alley, on the day of my visit, the rubbish, which is
removed only every two weeks, was piled high. On top of one pile was
an old dirty mattress. The houses I visited in Parke row were so dark
that it was necessary to use a lamp even at midday. There were also
depressing conditions among the Negro homes on Rose, Charles and
Soho streets. While some of the more ambitious are moving out from
these unhealthy localities, many who would like to move have not the
opportunity. One of these said to me, "The only place where there is
plenty of room for Negroes is in the alleys."
Yet even the very poorest Negro homes are usually clean inside and have
a homelike air. It would surprise one who has never visited such homes
to see with what good taste they are furnished. There is always some
attempt at ornamentation, oftenest expressed by a fancy lamp, which is
probably never lighted. Almost every family except the very poorest has
a piano. The best Negro houses,--usually not in Negro districts,--are
what people of the same means have everywhere. I was fortunate enough to
visit at least a dozen of these comfortable, well-furnished, attractive
homes and in them I met courteous, gracious and refined women. Only
in Spruce alley and Parke row did I find disorder and a general
indifference to dirt and there were some exceptions even there. The
hopelessness of keeping clean in such a location may have had something
to do with these conditions.
Compared with certain of the foreigners, the Negroes do not overcrowd
their houses, but they do often shelter too many people for comfort or
decency. I visited a house of three rooms where a man and wife, five
children and a boarder were living. In another house, also of three
rooms, there were a man and his wife, her mother, two children and a
lodger. These I think are not unusual cases. I also found a family of
ten in four rooms, and another family of seven and a boarder in three
rooms. Where a house of four rooms is taken by two families, they do
not often take lodgers, but if one family takes such a house it usually
cannot meet the expense alone. What is more serious than the number
of people in a house, is the carelessness in allowing young girls to
sleep in the same room with men lodgers. Such a case was that reported
by a probation officer of the Juvenile Court, of a girl of fifteen who
slept in the same room with her father, two brothers and a lodger. It
was "nothing," she told the court; the man was "an old friend of the
family." The suggestion that she occupy the vacant room in the house
plainly surprised her.
* * * * *
The low ebb of living conditions in a Negro neighborhood is illustrated
by Jack's Run, a narrow, deep ravine leading down to the Ohio river
between Bellevue and Allegheny. Here, during the past six or seven
years, about one hundred and seventy-five colored people from the rural
districts of North Carolina and Virginia have found lodgement. Engaged
chiefly in domestic service and common labor, they have settled here
because the rents are cheap. Mixed in with them is a class of low
whites, and the standards of civilization are sucked down by immorality
and neglect, for the run is practically isolated from the rest of the
world. A mission Sunday school connected with the white Presbyterian
church in Bellevue has been held there for about five years. The
superintendent of this mission, who is a colored man, has endeavored
to reach the children of the run. As he feels the Sunday school alone
cannot do this, he is working to get a day school there. To be sure, the
children are enrolled in Bellevue or Allegheny, but he says they really
do not attend. A long climb up the hills shuts them off, and the white
children pester them when they show themselves. It is hard to know what
could be done to better the conditions in a place like Jack's Run, but
up to the present time, with the exception of this one man, few people
have tried to find out. The run has few visitors, and these are not
altruists. "I have seen a politician here," the superintendent told me,
"and an insurance collector; but never a preacher."
One of the most encouraging signs of the economic progress of the
Pittsburgh Negroes is found in the variety of occupations in which
they are engaged. In 1900, 146 were engaged in professions: actors,
artists, clergymen, dentists, engineers, lawyers, physicians and
others. Domestic and personal service, house servants, barbers,
janitors, hotel and restaurant keepers, soldiers, policemen, etc.,
employed 6,618; while in trade, and transportation, clerks, teamsters,
merchants, railway employes, telephone operators, etc., there were
1,612. Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits employed 1,365. There was a
total of 10,456 Negro wage earners: 8,382 males and 2,074 females. The
proportion of those engaged in professional pursuits is small,--only
a little over one per cent; and, with one exception, the number does
not seem to be increasing. In Pittsburgh and the vicinity there are
now eighteen Negro physicians, about three times as many as in 1900.
Six were graduated from Harvard University, five from the Western
University of Pennsylvania, two from Shaw, and one each from Ohio State,
Medico-Chirurgical, and Western Reserve. Four of these men took also
the degree of A. B. Ten have practiced five years or less. Among the
five practicing lawyers is one graduate of the Harvard Law School, one
from New York University Law School and one from Harvard University Law
School. Two of these lawyers were admitted to the bar in 1891. They were
the first Negroes to be admitted in Western Pennsylvania, as all who
had applied up to that time had been turned down. There are four Negro
dentists.
Most of the men in these three professions have some practice among
white people. A young physician who has been in Allegheny about three
years, and who at first had such difficulty in renting an office in a
suitable location that he almost gave up in despair, has now a number of
white patients. One of the first was a German girl to whom he was called
at the time of an accident because he happened to live near by, and
through her family he has been recommended to other white people.
Newspapers conducted by Negroes have not flourished in Pittsburgh but
last year there were two,--the _Pioneer_, a small sheet run in the
interests of the Baptists, and the _Progressive Afro-American_, a weekly.
Twenty per cent of the men follow manufacturing and mechanical pursuits.
Because of the abundance of work good Negro mechanics have no difficulty
in keeping busy, though they have made little headway in the unions.
An occasional Negro is a union member, as, for instance, four or five
carpenters, a few stone-masons and a few plasterers. Here, as elsewhere,
they gain admission easily only to the hardest kinds of work. The Negro
hod carriers indeed make up the greater part of the hod carriers union.
In McKeesport there are but two white hod carriers. In Pittsburgh
and the vicinity there are over a thousand colored hod carriers. The
colored stationary engineers and firemen have a union of their own,
the National Association of Afro-American Steam and Gas Engineers and
Skilled Laborers, incorporated June, 1903. It was once a part of a white
organization. It has three locals in Pittsburgh and it has been allied
with other labor organizations and represented in central labor bodies,
but it is yet rather weak. Three or four colored contractors hire
plasterers and masons.
Early in the seventies a few colored men found work in some of the
mills. One of the first to employ Negroes was the Black Diamond Mill
on Thirtieth street. There were a few here before 1878. In that year,
through a strike, Negro puddlers were put in, and since then the force
of puddlers has been made up largely of Negroes. About the same time
Negroes were taken into the Moorhead Mill at Sharpsburg, and also
through a strike, Negroes got into the Clark Mills on Thirty-fifth
street. Since 1892, there have been Negroes in the Carnegie Mills
at Homestead. It is the prevailing impression that numbers of Negro
strike-breakers were imported at the time of the "big strike," but I
have been told by an official of the Carnegie company, by a leading
colored resident of Homestead, and by a Negro who went to work in
the Homestead Mills in 1892, that this was not so. Word was given out
that anyone could find work who would come, the Negroes with the rest.
Negroes were brought up from the South at this time to take the place
of strikers in the Clark Mills. But Negroes already worked there and
some of them who went out at that time eventually went back to work.
Unquestionably Negro strike-breakers have been brought to Pittsburgh,
but I judge not in any large numbers. When the mills were last running
full there were about one hundred and twenty Negroes at the Clark Mills;
one hundred and twenty-six at Homestead, and about 100 in the other
mills of the Carnegie company, making in all the Carnegie works three
hundred and forty-six colored men. A conservative estimate would put
those at the Black Diamond and Moorhead Mills as at least three hundred
more. Many of these mill men are unskilled, but at the Clark Mills
two-thirds, and at Homestead nearly half are skilled or semi-skilled. It
is possible for a man of ability to work up to a good position.
A small but increasing number of Negroes are on the city's payroll.
On the date of my inquiry there were in the employ of the city of
Pittsburgh 127 persons of Afro-American descent, or one out of every
237 of the Negro population, while a total of 635 directly profited by
the $91,942 paid annually in salaries to colored persons. These city
employes include laborers, messengers, janitors, policemen, detectives,
firemen, letter carriers and postal clerks, and their salaries range
from $550 to $1,500 a year.
* * * * *
The first Negroes to set up establishments of their own, dating back
twenty years and more, were the barbers and hairdressers. Formerly these
had much of the white patronage, but they are gradually losing it. With
a few exceptions, notably the Negro barber in the Union Station, their
shops are now found on Wylie avenue and in other Negro localities, and
are patronized by Negroes.
A partial list of Negro business enterprises,[10] with the number
employed is as follows:
_No. of Persons_
_Firms Employed_
Barbers 20 78
Restaurants and hotels 12 66
Groceries, poultry, etc. 8 9
Tailors 7 19
Pool rooms 6 6
Hauling and excavating 5 170
Saloons and cafés 3 15
Printers 3 19
Pharmacies 4 8
Undertakers and livery 3 14
Confectioners and bakeries 3 2
Caterers 3 6 to 30
Miscellaneous 8 105
-- --------
85 514-547
[10] Furnished by R. R. Wright, Jr., of the Armstrong Association,
Philadelphia, who investigated the Negro in Business in Pennsylvania for
the Carnegie Institution.
The number employed does not include the proprietors, so that over six
hundred persons are earning a living from these shops. Not counting
the barber shops, saloons or restaurants, there are certainly over one
hundred small stores kept by Negroes and until the financial depression
new ones were opening each month. Three or four drug stores were opened
in 1907. One of the Negro hotels doubled its capacity in a year.
The nine business enterprises listed under "miscellaneous" include an
insurance company, a stationery and book store, a men's furnishing
store, a photographer's gallery, a real estate company, a loan company,
a shoe store and repairing shop, and a manufactory of a hair growing
preparation, which has sent out sixty-five agents. The insurance company
has twenty-eight agents, all of whom are colored. Several of the barbers
have laundry agencies and boot-blacking stands and some have baths.
There are at least a dozen men who own their horses and wagons and
take contracts for hauling and excavating. One of the largest of these
Negro contractors was employing 135 men. Another employs thirty men for
hauling and also works 100 to 200 men on asphalt paving. There are many
more men who own a horse or two and do general expressing. One of these
told me that he spent his first one hundred and fifty dollars saved
after coming to Pittsburgh for a horse, which left him with a capital of
seventy-five cents. He now owns four horses. A Negro has had one of the
stalls in the Allegheny Market for many years and there is another in
the Diamond Market.
One of the most successful Negro business men lives in Homestead. As
a small boy he moved from Virginia to Ohio, and came to Homestead in
1879. Up to 1890 he was an engineer on the river, the only Negro to hold
a chief engineer's license. Then he went into boat building and built
twenty-one river steamboats. Five years ago he organized the Diamond
Coke and Coal Company, in which he is now master of transportation.
There are ten men in this company; the others are white. They own a
mine, docks, and steamboats, and employ about a thousand men. This
colored man owns considerable property. He lives in a large comfortable
house and owns one on either side which he rents. His older son entered
Penn Medical School last fall. His younger son was captain of the
Homestead High School football team. His daughter, who graduated from
the high school and had an additional three years at the California
Normal School, is teaching in the South. She could not get a school in
Homestead.
It is noticeable that the Pittsburgh Negroes show an encouraging variety
in their independent business enterprises as well as in their general
occupations. Of course they have usually been able to go into only those
that require small capital. The Negro who comes to Pittsburgh or any
northern city with no capital, no business experience and no business
traditions, and succeeds even in a small way in the midst of such
competition as he must face, is doing remarkably well.
But the mass of the Negroes in Pittsburgh are found in the same
occupations that are open to them in most northern cities with perhaps
fewer men (fifty-eight per cent) and rather more women (ninety per
cent) in domestic and personal service, and more men in manufacturing
and mechanical pursuits than is usual. This shifting of the men's
activities is due to the nature of the industries in Pittsburgh, to
the fact that the city is rapidly growing and consequently that there
is much building going on in which labor can be utilized, and to the
fact that Negroes gained a foothold in some of the mills during the
strike periods. While the largest and best hotels no longer have colored
waiters, many are still employed in hotels, restaurants and cafés.
Comparatively few Negroes are employed as porters and helpers in stores
while large numbers are employed as teamsters, probably more now than in
1900, as most of the sand wagons and other hauling carts are driven by
them. There are also many coachmen and chauffeurs.
* * * * *
While the Negro men find a varied field for their labor, comparatively
few occupations are open to colored women. There is one woman who has
conducted a very successful hairdressing establishment for twenty years
and a half dozen others have opened little shops. A dozen or so find
work as clerks and stenographers in offices and stores of colored men,
but most are working as maids or laundresses. There are about a hundred
dressmakers and seamstresses. That there is not a greater variety of
openings for colored women works a great hardship. There is no hospital
where they can be trained as nurses; there is no place for them in the
department stores, except for a few as maids; they can look forward to
no positions in the public schools. Many who would stay and graduate
from the high school drop out because they see nothing ahead. They are,
of course, unwise in doing this, for more than most girls they need
to take advantage of every educational opportunity. A woman who is a
stenographer in a Negro insurance office, said her father thought she
was very foolish to study stenography as he was sure she could never
get a chance to use it. She went into this office to write policies.
When the agent found she was competent to do the higher work, he let his
white stenographer go and gave her the place. Another woman told me that
her daughter seriously objected to going to the high school; she said
she could never use what she would learn there. But her parents felt
able to send her, and insisted that she graduate. She is now employed
in the court house at a salary of $600 a year.
* * * * *