Greater Pittsburgh’s Black Communities and the 1931 Homestead Grays

From 1925 through 1948, the Greater Pittsburgh region was enriched by two major-league-caliber Black baseball franchises, led usually by the Homestead Grays, but temporarily surpassed by the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1932 through 1936. In the early twentieth century the region’s Black communities confronted challenges well beyond those of the Great Depression, principally the geographic fragmentation of the Black population, not only within Pittsburgh but among its far-flung industrial suburbs, and the decline of the dominant steel industry, which exacerbated the Depression. The Great Depression was most debilitating for Blacks from 1928 through 1935. The year of our primary focus, 1931, fell right at the Depression’s midpoint, years before the New Deal and World War II helped revive the region, and before Pittsburgh began diversifying its economy, restoring its environment, and laying the foundation for its future rebirth. These challenges had to be overcome for Black institutions, including its baseball teams, to thrive.

To fully understand the Grays’ community context, let us review (a) Greater Pittsburgh’s overall geography and history; (b) the pre-Depression evolution of the region’s Black population, emphasizing employment and labor, basic demography, and patterns of racial segregation; and (c) Greater Pittsburgh’s Black communities during the Great Depression, in a more comprehensive manner. Finally, (d) let us consider how the Grays’ independent, barnstorming scheduling strategy in 1931 enabled the franchise to thrive even during such problematic times.

Living and working conditions for Black Pittsburgh are presented in broad strokes, enough to provide a sense of the region’s characteristics that would foster success (or failure) and that would suggest optimal business strategy for the 1931 Grays. Endnotes cite essential bibliographic resources that can lead to a deeper understanding of the story’s diverse aspects.

GEOGRAPHY AND GENERAL HISTORY

Any history of Pittsburgh starts with its four principal rivers. The Allegheny River flows southwestward from New York State, turning more westward towards its end. The Monongahela River runs north from West Virginia before its final westward turn; its northernmost tributary, the Youghiogheny, runs parallel to and east of the Monongahela, before joining the Monongahela at McKeesport, southeast of Pittsburgh. The confluence of the Allegheny and the Monongahela serves as the start of the generally westward flowing Ohio River. The city of Pittsburgh lies in the acute angle formed by, and east of, that confluence, with the angle itself popularly called The Point; the former Allegheny City, across the Allegheny River from The Point, was annexed by Pittsburgh in 1907. As an early “gateway to the West,” Pittsburgh benefited economically from river trade linking much of the region. That advantage declined in the nineteenth century as trading centers further down the Ohio River, such as Cincinnati, grew.1

Steep topography characterized the area, with plateaus dissected by waterways great and small. That landscape rendered transportation difficult, even within the city of Pittsburgh, necessitating many bridges and, over time, smoothing the topography to facilitate larger-scale building and easier transportation. The only sizable flat areas were found on the insides of rivers’ curves, especially along the major rivers, facilitating large-scale industry. But the steep riverbanks created challenges for stable buildings, roads, and railroad tracks.

An advantage enjoyed by the region was a band of coke fields, running southwest to northeast, centered on the town of Connellsville on the Youghiogheny River, southeast of Pittsburgh. Coke is a porous coal that is particularly suited to smelting iron ore, so its nearby availability made the region ideal for low-cost production of iron and then steel. (Similarly, abundant natural gas made large-scale glass works cost-effective, although that was hardly peculiar to that region.) But that advantage for steel declined when a new process was devised to process the more common bituminous coal into coke, so proximity to natural coke deposits no longer conferred significant cost savings.

The construction of large-scale steelworks began in 1875, with Andrew Carnegie’s opening of the Edgar Thompson works in Braddock, and concluded with the 1911 opening of the Midland Works of Crucible Steel in 1911. In 1901 many companies were merged to create the United States Steel Corporation. One of its primary strategies was cost reduction, to which end U.S. Steel adopted new technologies that lowered overall labor costs largely by reducing the need for skilled workers. Greater Pittsburgh’s preeminence in steel production began declining markedly in the 1920s, especially after the elevated need for steel lessened with the end of World War I.

With the increasing scale of industrial operations the eight-county Greater Pittsburgh region became characterized by scattered, discontinuous industrial settlements on and around flat areas along the major rivers and/or in proximity to mineral and other resources. Relatively isolated industrial suburbs, mostly supporting steelworks, glassworks, and resource extraction, were many and diverse in size. The largest included Homestead and Braddock on the Monongahela River southeast of Pittsburgh; McKeesport at the Monongahela/Youghiogheny confluence; Aliquippa, on the Ohio River northwest of Pittsburgh; and Washington, southwest of Pittsburgh near oil and natural gas fields.2

Pittsburgh’s population grew aggressively from 1890 (344,904) to 1920 (588,343) and its ethnic distribution changed dramatically. Native-born Whites increased constantly, as did Blacks in the Great Migration that ramped up in 1915; but the foreign-born population saw steep declines in German, Irish, and English immigrants (Germans especially during World War I) with concurrent increases in Poles and Italians, although the Polish segment dropped somewhat during WWI.3 The absolute numbers do not reflect the high turnover of inhabitants, especially among Black migrants who sought the most advantageous situations among Northern industrial cities. Many Europeans returned home to fight in the war and did not return when the United States erected legal barriers to immigration in the 1920s. Many native-born Whites returning from war service resumed their old higher-paying jobs, sometimes displacing European immigrants and Blacks who had held those jobs during the war.4

Labor unions of unskilled and semi-skilled workers—primarily southern and eastern European immigrants—usually were violently suppressed, most famously in the Homestead strike of 1892 and the great steel strike of 1919. Black migrants from the South usually were denied membership in unions, so their initial employment often was as strike-breakers. A significant barrier to working-class solidarity and strength was increasing enmity between European immigrant and Black unskilled workers.5 As the newest European immigrants initially were looked down upon by native-born Whites, immigrants improved their standing by making longer-term commitments to particular locales and by courting favor with native-born White bosses by adopting their disdain for Blacks, which was aggravated by competition for declining numbers of industrial jobs. Native Whites’ notion of White supremacy was dominant and supported by widely read pseudoscientific publications, so it took little effort by employers to polarize their workers.6 The divided semi- and unskilled labor pool, and consequently weak to nonexistent unions, had little power to combat large-scale employers’ low wages, lengthening work week, unsafe working conditions, and poor company housing.7

 

 

After the turn of the century, some industry and community leaders realized that poor working and living conditions were not only inhumane but also inimical to long-term, sustainable economic health. They contracted with an organization that became known as Survey Associates to conduct a comprehensive review of the region in 1907-1909. The results of their studies, known collectively as the Pittsburgh Survey, were published in various places and presented widely in public forums, and assembled in six summary volumes published in 1909-1914. Among the most influential publications were John Finch’s The Steel Workers (1910), Margaret Byington’s Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town (1910), Crystal Eastman’s Work Accidents and the Law (1910), and Elizabeth Beardsley Butler’s Women and the Trades, 1907-1908 (1909).8

One consequence of this new and well publicized knowledge was the establishment in 1911 of the City Planning Commission to deal with all the pressing issues in a rational, integrated manner. But the Commission had merely research and advisory functions, with no regulatory authority, so municipal government carried on in its normal fragmented manner, and principal employers continued to operate with little regard for public health and welfare.9

The widely disseminated Survey studies helped launch active advocacy for reform, especially regarding poor housing. The efforts were led by volunteer organizations of business and professional leaders and their spouses, such as the Civic Club, City Commission, and Chamber of Commerce, as well as service institutions such as Kingsley House, a settlement house. Major employers paid greater attention to their workers’ welfare, even establishing neighborhood parks, building recreational facilities, and sponsoring and organizing athletic teams and leagues, both White and Black; but that declined as the economy worsened in the late 1920s. Government agencies created to enforce new housing codes and to protect workers’ safety usually were characterized by lax enforcement. Environmental quality also began to be a concern, with unchecked air and water pollution emanating from industrial operations, although the darkened skies also were a source of pride, as evidence of an economically thriving metropolis meriting the nickname “Smoketown.”10

EVOLUTION OF GREATER PITTSBURGH’S BLACK POPULATION

Black Migration Before It Was “Great”

Nineteenth century northward migration often began as seasonal forays by men, during relatively slack times in the southern agricultural calendar, to engage in paid labor to supplement their families’ farming income. They did so either in southern industrializing cities, such as Birmingham, Atlanta, and Richmond; or further north to Washington D.C., New York, or even Pittsburgh. Eventually, armed with information about potential opportunities to better themselves (the “pull” of migration), they often moved permanently north to escape the South’s discriminatory practices and mistreatment up to and including lynching (the “push”).11

Today we can accurately characterize the life and employment of pre-World War I Black migrants, largely via two studies from the Pittsburgh Survey—Helen Tucker’s “The Negroes of Pittsburgh” (1909) and R.R. Wright Jr’s “One Hundred Negro Steel Workers” (1914)—both directly and as interpreted and augmented by recent authors.12

Popular lore has held that ignorant and naïve Black farmers were lured by recruiters for industrial labor, flashing free train tickets north. That did occur to a degree, especially in the 1920s, but mass interviews reveal a different picture, of well-informed families paying their way northward in a rational, organized manner, often in stages (called “chain” migration) in which the first migrants established themselves before summoning the rest of their families. Another common practice has become known as “stepwise” migration, in which Blacks moved from one to another industrial city, parlaying their increased acculturation and education into improved financial status and quality of life.13

The first Pittsburgh migrants typically did not encounter as much racial animosity as did those who arrived decades later. Consequently, some achieved such great success that they comprised a Black aristocracy; one prominent example was Cumberland Posey Sr., who as a youth worked on riverboats and then created a lucrative shipbuilding and coal-mining empire.14

The preferred mode of migratory transportation was by rail. The busiest lines in the south ran eastward from Alabama and Georgia, then northward through the Carolinas and Virginia, to Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, with two branches westward to Pittsburgh and beyond and northward to New York. Migrants from Mississippi rode north up the Mississippi to St. Louis, from which they might proceed north to Chicago or east across to Pittsburgh.15

Early migrants to Pittsburgh encountered a more diverse economy than the heavy industrial concentration that was evolving. Some Blacks found employment in heavy industry but more in various secondary endeavors throughout the city. Incomes usually did not suffice to completely support their families, so women often worked as well, and many households rented to boarders as Black arrivals increased.16

Labor unions seldom served Black workers, as they usually were for skilled craftsmen at that time. Blacks were hired only occasionally for those jobs even if they had held them in southern industries. The unsuccessful Homestead strike of 1892 crippled the unions, in any event, as did big steel’s increased automation that reduced the need for skilled workers.17

Early unskilled Black migrants competed with immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, mostly Polish and Italian. The Europeans were perceived as more docile and stable, compared to Blacks who more likely sought improved conditions of pay, workplace safety, and quality of life. Thus, the two groups, despite sharing financial and workplace objectives, remained divided to the detriment of both.

Initially, residential racial segregation was relatively slight, with small (5-10 houses) racially or ethnically defined “clusters” located among one another.18 But the housing shortage (both quantity and quality) that intensified later was an issue from the start. Externally decrepit-appearing buildings often had Black family households that were well-furnished and decorated; even pianos were not uncommon.19

Settlement houses and other service organizations assisted many new arrivals, as of course did family members who already had established themselves. The migration rate had not yet overwhelmed their capacity to serve.20

Black Pittsburgh in the 1910 Census

The 1910 United States Census was the last before the Great Migration took off and therefore quantifies Pittsburgh’s Black population derived from early arrivals from the south. Pittsburgh’s total population was reported as 533,905, including a Black segment numbering 25,623, or 4.8% of the total. For context, the Black population of Washington, D.C. ranked first with 94,446, and New York second with 91,709. Pittsburgh ranked 14th overall in Black population, and seventh among northern and border-state destination cities (the other seven were southern cities, which subsequently fell further down the list).21

In 1910 the city’s Black population was not heavily segregated. Wards 5 and 3, comprising “The Hill,” had 25.1% and 17.4% Black populations, compared to most other cities having political wards with far higher Black concentrations, such as Philadelphia’s Ward 7, with 42.1%. Pittsburgh’s racial and ethnic segregation was more fine-grained, with several-house homogeneous “clusters.” Significant Black populations were found in six other wards, but all were under 10% Black.22

Relatively few Blacks lived and worked in Greater Pittsburgh’s industrial suburbs. Only two, Uniontown (1,280) and Washington (1,471), topped 1,000 Black residents, with Homestead third with only 867 Blacks.23

Occupations of Black residents were broken down by State, but the Pennsylvania numbers are consistent with other contemporary descriptions and small surveys of Pittsburgh. Of 79,647 total Black males aged 10 or above, 68,515 (86.0%) were gainfully employed, of which the largest subset was unskilled laborers of various kinds (26.8%), followed by deliverymen, draymen, and the like (8.3%). Of the 81,749 Black women in the state, 39,671 (48.7%) worked; 61.2% were servants and 18.1% were independent laundresses.24

Coal miner waiting to go underground at Pittsburgh Coal Company‘s Montour no. 4 mine, 1944. (Library of Congress)

 

Greater Pittsburgh’s Great Migration

The pace of northward Black migration exploded in 1915 as World War I began, which required increased steel production, and the departure of many native Whites and recent European immigrants to take part in the war. Expanded steel production temporarily reversed the overall downward trend for Pittsburgh steel and created unprecedented opportunities for Black employment.

Abraham Epstein, more renowned for his later research that helped lay the foundation for Social Security, in 1918 published a study that provides a thorough account of the first two years of Black Pittsburgh’s transformation by the Great Migration. Through surveys and interviews of five hundred recent migrants, Epstein identified the most pressing problems in housing, employment, crime, delinquency, health, and morbidity, noting that “It is not sufficient that we bring these people here, give them a ‘bunk-house’ or a basement to sleep in, and a job in our mills for twelve hours a day … We must see that they become part and parcel of our community.” Stated more forcefully, “the community ultimately pays the price for its stupidity.”26

Epstein generalized many Black migrants’ problems as “his social and industrial maladjustment, his lack of organization, and absence of intelligent guidance.” He lauded the National League of Urban Conditions (known since 1920 as the National Urban League) for tasking itself to engage newcomers on arrival to inform them about their new environment and its helpful resources; to work with employers to ensure apt job placement; and to work with schools to improve students’ long-term success.27 His recognizing those issues as extremely widespread and urgent suggests that a high proportion of Pittsburgh’s recent migrants had traveled directly from a southern agricultural life, with little or no prior industrial-urban experience along the way.

The city’s Black population remained geographically fragmented, with its primary concentration on the Hill augmented by Black communities in Garfield-East Liberty (northeast of the Hill), Homewood-Brushton (on the city’s eastern edge), Beltzhoover and the Southside (across the Monongahela River south of the Point), and Manchester (on the north bank of the Ohio River just west of the Point). As a result, Pittsburgh’s Blacks lacked the collective unity that would foster political power and citywide support for Black businesses.28

The 1931 Grays, however, engaged the entire city by playing in seven different Pittsburgh locations other than their “home” in Forbes Field and they embraced Greater Pittsburgh by visiting 12 industrial suburbs elsewhere in Allegheny County and 11 more in the surrounding seven counties (see below).

From World War I through the early 1920s, the city’s amateur and semi-professional baseball scene matured with industry-sponsored teams, leagues, and well-built ballfields. Sandlot ball thrived also when premier White and Black players sought employment in war-related industries in response to the nation’s “Work or fight” mandate. Black, White, and even a few integrated teams were sponsored also by the City and by private service organizations such as settlement agencies and the YMCA.29

With the late-1920s’ economic downturn, industry sponsorship—as well as municipal support as tax revenue declined—decreased to where Black teams had to provide their own support and leadership to survive. Among the many neighborhood-based Black sandlot clubs were the 18th Ward team (based in Beltzhoover), the Garfield Eagles, and the Crawfords, the so-called “Kings of the Hill” who began play in 1925.30

After the war ended and the 1920s proceeded, steel production resumed its downward trend. Wages dropped, workdays decreased, and competition (and enmity) increased among native whites, remaining European immigrants, and Black workers.31 As recent Black migrants’ fortunes declined, class distinctions intensified among Blacks, with early Black migrants’ descendants, now middle- and upper-class, looking askance at recent arrivals.32 As Blacks’ progress stalled, many looked elsewhere for better opportunities, such as the newly booming Black communities in Detroit and Cleveland. Thus Pittsburgh’s increasingly-sizable Black population slid into the Great Depression, which would not recover until New Deal programs were initiated by Franklin Roosevelt after he took office in 1933, and then the economic boost from the nation’s engagement in what became World War II.

GREATER PITTSBURGH’S BLACK COMMUNITIES IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION

Black Pittsburgh in the 1930 Census

The 1930 United States Census reflected Greater Pittsburgh’s wartime acceleration of migration and then its subsequent resumption of pre-war economic decline leading directly into the Great Depression. Comparisons with 1910 Census figures are particularly enlightening, so often they are included in parentheses.

Pittsburgh’s population had climbed to 669,816 by 1930, including 54,983 Blacks (increased by 115% since 1910), with the Black proportion climbing to 8.2% (from 4.8%) of the city’s total. Pittsburgh still ranked 14th overall, dropping to ninth among northern and border-state migration destination cities, passed most dramatically by Detroit’s 120,066 (up from 5,741 in 1910) and Cleveland’s 71,899 (up from 8,448). New York City took the lead, with 327,706, followed by Chicago with 233,903.33

Residential segregation in Pittsburgh evolved to a broader scale, with Hill District Wards 5 (15,695, or 53.8% of total population, up from 25.1%) and 3 (8,873, 40.1%, up from 17.4%) leading the way. Black concentrations elsewhere in the city also enlarged, with four other wards topping 10% Black proportion, compared to none in 1910.34

Similarly, many of Greater Pittsburgh’s industrial suburbs also developed sizable Black communities, led by Homestead (3,367 Black residents), Aliquippa (2,592), Braddock (2,224), Washington (2,029), and McKeesport (1,893). In 1930 the top ten suburbs housed 18,204 Blacks, compared to 7,224 in 1910, for a 152% increase, which outstripped the City’s 115% increase.35

Black male Pennsylvanians at least 10 years old numbered 178,804 in 1930, of which 148,288 were gainfully employed, or 82.9% (comparable to 86.0% in 1910). Unskilled laborers climbed to 35.1%, but skilled and semi-skilled operatives also increased to 7.5%. Chauffeurs and delivery men stayed fairly constant at 7.4%. Of the state’s 172,476 women, 66,031 were gainfully employed, or 38.3%, down significantly from 48.7% in 1910. Servants were most common, at 65.8%, consistent with 1910; but semi-skilled operatives climbed to 5.9%.36

Black home ownership actually improved from 1910, as the ratio of Black city residents per Black-owned home decreased from 39 to only 26. Almost all other northern and border-state destination cities improved as well, such as Philadelphia (28, down from 93), New York (77 from 168), and St. Louis (a remarkable 13, from 71). Birmingham (21 from 22) and other southern cities remained fairly constant. It would be interesting to know how much the improvement in home ownership reflected continued progress by descendants of early migrants, versus success by more recent “Great Migration” arrivals.37

The Hill District in 1930, A Comprehensive Assessment

In 1930, the General Committee on the Hill Survey published its study, directed by National Urban League research director Ira DeAugustine Reid, entitled Social Conditions of the Negro in the Hill District of Pittsburgh. There has been no study of Black Pittsburgh that is as comprehensive and insightful; happily for our purpose, it falls in the midst of the Great Depression when we are concerned with the societal context of the 1931 Homestead Grays.38

Chapters IV through XIII concerned different aspects of Pittsburgh’s Black community—from population characteristics to social agencies—focused primarily on the city’s primary concentration of Black residents, the Hill District. In chapter III, Reid presented a set of recommendations organized along the same lines as the body of the book. An important caveat is that the Hill appears to have had the least desirable living conditions, so this study cannot be regarded as representing the whole of Black Pittsburgh (although some sections of the report appear to have a citywide scope).

Population. This study did not benefit from the 1930 U.S. Census but did present available information and estimates through 1929, which showed rapid increases from 1920 through 1925, then slowing to 1929. Black and native White numbers were shown increasing in the Hill, while foreign-born Whites were staying more-or-less constant.39

Environment and housing. Neighborhoods in the Hill ranged from “nice” to “thoroughly disreputable,” with key variables being houses’ conditions, sanitation, and property care by owners and tenants. Cheap rents appeared to be the main attraction. Black residents were perceived as ranging from “degraded” to “industrious.” Reid recommended enforcing housing and sanitation laws, conducting home rehabilitations, educating residents, and making community improvements from rubbish removal to street lighting.40

Health. The report drew attention to high death rates from pneumonia and other diseases, due largely to poor sanitation; high infant mortality; insufficient hospital capacity; scarcity of Black doctors and nurses; and lack of convalescent facilities. Work by YMCAs, the Urban League, Irene Kaufmann Settlement, and two Black private sanitariums was recognized. Recommendations included enforcing sanitation laws, providing training opportunities for Black doctors and nurses, and increasing public health education.41

Industry and employment. While Blacks gained in unskilled employment, they were seldom afforded opportunities for training and promotion to skilled and semi-skilled positions. Advancement opportunities were rare for women. Industrial training programs needed to increase, following the leads of the Urban League and the YMCA. Employers hired inconsistent proportions of Black employees, reflecting varying knowledge versus misconceptions regarding strengths and weaknesses of Black workers.42

Delinquency and crime. Pittsburgh reported few credible crime statistics, but information about arrests in the 1920s showed an annual Black average of arrests at 21%, compared to Black population proportions of 6-9%, with drunkenness, “suspicious persons,” and “keeping and visiting disorderly and bawdy houses” topping the list of reasons. “Numbers” lotteries were described as flagrant, with no efforts to curtail them. Over half the Black arrests were discharged, suggesting a racial element in arrest decisions. Reid recommended more policemen, especially Black police; no longer tolerating conspicuous illegal activities; and increasing preventative and social rehabilitation programs, such as the Big Brother and Big Sister movements.43

Recreation. Public recreational facilities and programs were described as mostly racially integrated, although the Hill appeared to have fewer than their share. Private agencies – such as the YMCA, churches, and settlement and community houses – offered diverse programs for athletics, music, arts, crafts, and the like. Industries sponsored community and industrial athletic leagues, focusing primarily on basketball. In general, facilities were too few to adequately meet the community’s needs, so Reid recommended increasing their number.44

Public schools. Public schools had been integrated since 1874, but Blacks accounted for only 4.7% of high school and junior high enrollment, compared to 11.6% in elementary schools. Of thirteen elementary schools, only two received what was considered an acceptable minimum “Educational Efficiency Rating;” that was attributed primarily to ambient social conditions. Hiring Black teachers was recommended. Trade schools faced the challenge of targeting training in skill areas where Blacks had access to jobs.45

Community and its organizations. Women’s clubs were recognized as being most societally impactful. The men’s Loendi Club, founded in 1897 for “fostering the cultural life of the Negro in Pittsburgh,” had a membership derived primarily from the city’s Black elite descended from early migrants. The Pittsburgh branch of the NAACP focused, as it does today, on advancing Black civil rights. Over 250 social clubs existed among the city’s Black residents.46

Negro churches. Pittsburgh’s churches had traditionally focused on their congregants’ spiritual well-being, but some were launching social programs, which the report recommended continue. Of the 45 churches in the Hill District, 17 were Baptist. Small store-front churches were deemed to have “dubious value,” and should be “handled” by legitimate church organizations.47

Social agencies of the community. The report reviewed the objectives and strategies of a rich diversity of impactful service and government organizations – most of whose missions were evident in their names – such as the YMCA, YWCA, the Urban League, the Afro-American Brotherhood (dedicated to children in institutions or foster homes), the Pittsburgh Association for the Improvement of the Poor, the Family Welfare Association, the Legal Aid Society, the Travelers’ Aid Society, the Department of Public Welfare, the State Employment Office, the Public Health Nursing Association, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and the Boys’ Club. Reid recommended that some agencies revise their missions and strategies; that no new agencies be instituted that would further dilute available funding; and that related agencies cooperate more closely.48

Day nurseries. Increased need for women to seek outside employment to fully support their families necessitated more available day care services for their children. Reid recommended that day care collaborations among neighbors be facilitated by relevant agencies.49

Mid-Depression Pittsburgh

Black Pittsburgh experienced the absolute nadir of its early-twentieth century health and vitality during the midst of the Great Depression. Most of its challenges also characterized other northern industrial cities, e.g., declining openings for employees, lower wages and reduced weekly work hours, lax enforcement of building and workplace safety codes, insufficient and poor housing, a degraded environment, poor public health, racist and weak (or nonexistent) labor unions, and little or no Black political power. One advantage was Pittsburgh’s relatively flexible residential segregation, although that was trending in the wrong direction. Pittsburgh’s relative disadvantages included over-concentration on few industries and types of employment, so a decline in one area could not be offset elsewhere, and geographic fragmentation of its Black population, resulting in an almost complete lack of political power. High wartime need temporarily compensated for the ongoing reduction in Pittsburgh’s dominance of steel production, due to new technologies for mill processing and for utilizing bituminous coal instead of the region’s rarer coke deposits. In short, this was a difficult time to own and successfully operate a first-class Black baseball franchise in Pittsburgh.

HOW THE 1931 GRAYS THRIVED AS NON-LEAGUE BARNSTORMERS

Despite Pittsburgh’s Depression-era hardships, the Homestead Grays survived financially by reducing its dependence on Pittsburgh proper, and playing a non-league, geographically far-flung barnstorming season ranging west to Kansas City, north to Cleveland and Buffalo, east to the Atlantic coast, and south into West Virginia.

The 1931 Grays played their 161 documented games, recounted elsewhere in this volume by Thomas Kern, in 67 different municipalities and, if one counts all eight locations in the City of Pittsburgh, a total of 74 sites. Forbes Field generally is considered the Grays’ home field, but they played only 22 games, or just 13.7% of their season, there.

Reviewed geographically and ordered from Pittsburgh outward, Homestead played 34 games in the City of Pittsburgh, 18 games in 12 locations elsewhere in Allegheny County, and 16 games in 11 locations in the other seven counties (Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Lawrence, Washington, and Westmoreland) that comprise Greater Pittsburgh. That region also encompassed 16 municipalities of substantial size (total population at least 10,000 and/or Black population at least 400 in 1930) that the Grays did not visit, most notably Aliquippa (total population 27,116 and Black population 2,592); Rankin (total 7,956 and Black 1,556); and, curiously, Homestead (total 20,141 and Black a robust 3,367).

The Grays also played 15 games in nine locations in central and eastern Pennsylvania, nine games in five locations in southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia, eight games in six locations in northwestern Pennsylvania, five games in four locations in New York State, eight games in five locations on the Atlantic coast, 34 games in 11 locations in Ohio, and 14 games in three locations in Illinois and Missouri. Even a cursory examination of Kern’s game log shows that the Grays’ travels were seldom geographically efficient, as they crisscrossed their playing territory to maximize revenue.

The Grays played 82 games, just over half their season, against local White teams, mostly in single visits of just one-to-two games each to 54 of their total 74 locations. Proud local boosters sought to test their hometown heroes against the renowned Grays. For many fans, a visit by the great Homestead nine was a special, once-a-year occasion, to attend even when discretionary dollars were in short supply. The Grays’ visits graced towns of even modest populations, including company towns devoted to steel, coal mining, or other industries.

Of their other 79 games, Homestead played 63 against top-tier Black teams, as reviewed by Kern: the Baltimore Black Sox (23 games in four series); Kansas City Monarchs (nine games in two series); St. Louis Stars (nine games in two series, the first of which was a preseason series for St. Louis); Hilldale (seven in two); Cleveland Cubs (four in two); Cincinnati Tigers (three in one); Cuban House of David (three in one); Pittsburgh Crawfords (only three games, each a stand-alone); and one game each against the Bacharach Giants and Dayton Marcos.

Homestead’s 1931 season contrasted markedly with that of the St. Louis Stars, who doggedly stuck to a Negro National League schedule and achieved easily the league’s best record, until the NNL disbanded after August 11 with four weeks remaining in the season. Stars owner Richard Kent amassed so heavy a debt he was forced to sell Stars Park and to terminate the franchise. The relatively favorable economic conditions of past years, which enabled the St. Louis community to generously support a Black team playing over half its games at home, was no more.50 In contrast, Kansas City Monarchs owner J.L. Wilkinson recognized in 1930 the implications of the contracted economy, and in the second half practically abandoned league play and switched to barnstorming with the team’s vaunted portable lighting system. Kansas City stuck to its non-league barnstorming practice until 1937, when the economy had improved enough that playing a league-dominated schedule again was economically feasible.51

Did Homestead boss Cum Posey share Wilkinson’s appreciation for the economic advantage conferred by maintaining a barnstorming strategy in difficult economic times? Unfortunately not, as Posey was intent on showing the world how well he could run a league and founded the East-West League for the 1932 season. That enterprise lasted less than half a season and was so costly that the rival Crawfords, who continued to barnstorm, could usurp leadership of top-tier Black baseball in Pittsburgh. The Grays did not return to prominence until 1937 when they began a 12-season dynasty that saw them regain some geographic breadth in 1939 by adopting both Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., as dual home cities.52

CLEM HAMILTON is a retired professor of horticulture and botany, and CEO/administrator of botanic gardens in Seattle, Claremont (California), Chicago, and Cleveland. Now living in St. Louis with his wife Karen, Clem conducts research primarily on Jim-Crow-era Black baseball and presents at each year’s SABR Jerry Malloy Conference. He also works for the St. Louis Cardinals as a part-time tour guide, museum docent, photographer, and instructor of energetic third- through sixth-graders. In 2022 he won the Jim Rygelski Research Award from SABR’s Bob Broeg (St. Louis) chapter.

 

NOTES

1 Roy Lubove, Twentieth Century Pittsburgh: Government, Business and Environmental Change (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 1-6. Edward K. Muller and Joel A. Tarr, “The Interaction of Natural and Built Environments in the Pittsburgh Landscape,” in Devastation and Renewal: An Environmental History of Pittsburgh and Its Region, ed. Joel A. Tarr (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), 11-33; also in Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern: Environment, Landscape, Transportation, Energy, and Planning, ed. Edward K. Muller and Joel A. Tarr (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2019), 11-35.

2 Edward K. Muller and Joel A. Tarr, “Pittsburgh’s Industrial Corridors,” in Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern, 49-61; and Edward K. Muller, “Industrial Suburbs and the Growth of Metropolitan Pittsburgh, 1870-1920,” in Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern, 65-87.

3 John Bodnar, Roger Simon, and Michael P. Weber, Lives of Their Own: Blacks, Italians, and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900-1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 30.

4 Bodnar, Lives of Their Own, 119-120.

5 Richard Oestreicher, “Working-Class Formation, Development, and Consciousness in Pittsburgh, 1790-1960,” in City at the Point: Essays on the Social History of Pittsburgh, ed. Samuel P. Hays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), 111-189.

6 I.A. Newby, Jim Crow’s Defense: Anti-Negro Thought in America, 1900-1930 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965), 8-13.

7 John Hinshaw, Steel and Steelworkers: Race and Class Struggle in Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 26-29; Muller and Tarr, “Pittsburgh’s Industrial Corridors,” 56-61.

8 Maurine W. Greenwald and Margo Anderson, ed., Pittsburgh Surveyed: Social Science and Social Reform in the Early Twentieth Century (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996).

9 Lubove, Twentieth Century Pittsburgh, 53.

10 Mark Whitaker, Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018), xvi.

11 Peter Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way: Southern Blacks’ Migration to Pittsburgh, 1916-30 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 12-33; Bodnar, Lives of Their Own, 31-35.

12 Helen Tucker, “The Negroes of Pittsburgh,” in Wage-Earning Pittsburgh, ed. Paul U. Kellogg (New York: Survey Associates, 1914), 424-437; R.R. Wright Jr., “One Hundred Negro Steel Workers,” in Wage-Earning Pittsburgh, 97-110; Laurence A. Glasco, “Optimism, Dilemmas, and Progress: The Pittsburgh Survey and Black Americans,” in Greenwald and Anderson, Pittsburgh Surveyed, 205-220.

13 Bodnar, Lives of Their Own, 59, 122.

14 Laurence Glasco, “Double Burden: The Black Experience in Pittsburgh,” in City at the Point; Essays on the Social History of Pittsburgh, ed. Samuel P. Hays (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), 71, 74; James E. Overmyer, Cum Posey of the Homestead Grays: A Biography of the Negro Leagues Owner and Hall of Famer (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co., 2020), 7-18; Tucker, “The Negroes of Pittsburgh,” 430.

15 John F. Stover, The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American Railroads (New York: Routledge, 1999), 50-51, 66-67, 72-73, 76-81; Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way, 42. Primary lines for Black migrants included the Southern Railway, Atlantic Coast Line, Seaboard Air Line, Pennsylvania Railroad, and Illinois Central Railroad.

16 Bodnar, Lives of Their Own, 61, 71, 108; Tucker, “The Negroes of Pittsburgh,” 428-429.

17 Bodnar, Lives of Their Own, 16; Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way, 153; Wright, “One Hundred,” 106-108.

18 Bodnar, Lives of Their Own, 69.

19 Tucker, “The Negroes of Pittsburgh,” 427; Wright, “One Hundred,” 102.

20 Tucker, “The Negroes of Pittsburgh,” 433.

21 Negro Population, 1790-1915 (Washington: Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1918), 93.

22 Negro Population, 1790-1915, 107

23 Negro Population, 1790-1915, 773.

24 Negro Population, 1790-1915, 520, 522.

25 Negro Population, 1790-1915, 472.

26 Abraham Epstein, The Negro Migrant in Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh: School of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, 1918), 66.

27 Epstein, The Negro Migrant, 68-69.

28 Rob Ruck, Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 13-14.

29 Ruck, Sandlot Seasons, 14-33, 42-44.

30 Philip Klein, A Social Study of Pittsburgh: Community Problems and Social Services of Allegheny County (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), 60, 63-64; Ruck, Sandlot Seasons, 33-36, 44-46.

31 Hinshaw, Steel and Steelworkers, 33-41. That dynamic was portrayed powerfully in novel form, by William Attaway, Blood on the Forge (New York: Doubleday, 1941).

32 Bodnar, Lives of Their Own, 71-72; Ruck, Sandlot Seasons, 11-12.

33 Negroes in the United States, 1920-32 (Washington: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1935, reprinted New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 54-55.

34 Negroes in the United States, 1920-32, 68-69.

35 Negroes in the United States, 1920-32, 63-64.

36 Negroes in the United States, 1920-32, 308.

37 Negroes in the United States, 1920-32, 279.

38 Social Conditions of the Negro in The Hill District of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh: General Committee on the Hill Survey, 1930).

39 Social Conditions of the Negro in The Hill District, 11, 20-26.

40 Social Conditions of the Negro in The Hill District, 11-12, 27-38.

41 Social Conditions of the Negro in The Hill District, 12-13, 39-51.

42 Social Conditions of the Negro in The Hill District, 13, 52-57. Cf. also Joe William Trotter Jr., Pittsburgh and the Urban League Movement: A Century of Social Service and Activism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2020), 71-91.

43 Social Conditions of the Negro in The Hill District, 14, 58-70.

44 Social Conditions of the Negro in The Hill District, 14-16, 71-81. Cf. also Ruck, Sandlot Seasons, 14-38.

45 Social Conditions of the Negro in The Hill District, 16-17, 82-94.

46 Social Conditions of the Negro in The Hill District, 95-98.

47 Social Conditions of the Negro in The Hill District, 17, 99-106. Cf. also Kenneth J. Heineman, A Catholic New Deal: Religion and Reform in Depression Pittsburgh (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 1-10.

48 Social Conditions of the Negro in The Hill District, 17-18, 107-113.

49 Social Conditions of the Negro in The Hill District, 18-19, 113-114.

50 James Neal Pimm, Lion of the Valley: St. Louis, Missouri, 1764-1980 (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 3rd edition,1998), 439-445. The demise of the St. Louis Stars and of the first Negro National League is often mischaracterized, as if it were the Stars’ fault for maintaining the league’s only remaining strong team; cf. Lonnie Wheeler, The Bona Fide Legend of Cool Papa Bell: Speed, Grace, and the Negro Leagues (New York: Abrams Press, 2020), 97-99.

51 William A. Young, J.L. Wilkinson and the Kansas City Monarchs: Trailblazers in Black Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co., 2016), 68-86, 98.

52 Overmyer, Cum Posey, 119-122, 203; Jim Bankes, The Pittsburgh Crawfords (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co., 2001), 21-25.

53 Carter G. Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration (Washington: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1918, reissued New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1969); Emmet J. Scott, Negro Migration During the War (1920, reissued New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969); Charles S. Johnson, Patterns of Negro Segregation (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943); E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1949); Florette Henri, Black Migration: Movement North, 1900-1920 (Garden City, New York: Anchor Press, Doubleday, 1975); James M. Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2017).

54 Lorenzo J. Greene and Carter G. Woodson, The Negro Wage Earner (Washington: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1930); Sterling D. Spero and Abram L. Harris, The Black Worker: The Negro and the Labor Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931, reissued New York: Atheneum, 1974); Carter G. Woodson, The Negro Professional and the Community, with Special Emphasis on the Physician and the Lawyer (Washington: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1934, reissued New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1970); David Brody, Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960); Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969); Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1973 (New York: International Publishers, 1974); Paul D. Moreno, Black Americans and Organized Labor: A New History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006); Joe William Trotter Jr., Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019).