Black Horizons; 2304; Wylie

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry... Hello! Welcome to Black Horizons! I'm Illinois Nefford. We have a special show lined up for you this afternoon and just a few minutes we'll find out more about one of the 1991 charity Randall Citation recipients and her visit to Pittsburgh. But first WQED's latest special received a standing ovation and its premiere screening two weeks ago and since then it's received rave reviews from the critics all over Pittsburgh. So unless you tuned in to WQED last Monday night you missed your chance to

step back into history and relive those good old days on Wiley Avenue. For those of you who never experienced life on the hill producers Chris Moore and Doug Bowlin took Pittsburghers back for a walk -down memory lane. Some Pittsburghers used to call this neighborhood little Harlem but most people have always called it the hill district or just the hill from the 30s through the 50s the hill thrived and part of it was one of the most lively prosperous and influential black neighborhoods in America. We had five theaters we had drug stores we had furniture stores whatever there was in the city we had in the hill. The hill district was for the Pittsburgh area what Harlem was to New York. It was a center for music for art for literature the hill was a thriving bustling safe

community. I thought it was the most exciting place I'd ever been in in my life. One street ran the entire length of the hill into downtown Wiley Avenue. Wiley Avenue was the center of all kinds of activity and it really ran 24 hours a day. It's the only street and a Metropolitan City in America that begins at a church and ends at a hotel. Wiley Avenue represented the heart and soul of the hill when the hill was in its heyday. This program is the story of those magic times what we're calling Wiley Avenue days. Joining me now to share some of more of their memories from Wiley Avenue days are Louise Evans and Frank Bolden. Thank you both for being here was very nice seeing you in the program and now I get to meet you in the flesh.

Louise Evans you were arriving here to Pittsburgh age of nine from North Carolina. Tell me some of your feelings or memories at that time coming into Pittsburgh seeing the bright lights the neon signs of Big City Pittsburgh. Well the one thing that I will never forget coming into the city we came in on a train. Most travel was by train in those days and I can remember there there at one time there was a beer a guy drinking a you know and neon lights a guy drinking a beer I can't remember which one it was but he was had the beer up and it was in lights and you know with the foam and everything on it and then as he drank it it was emptied I'm sure Mr. Bowling probably it was on the south side somewhere and I thought that was the most exciting thing I'd ever seen because I had never seen anything coming from a little small country town and that was the beginning of excitement for me just to see that not knowing not understanding the mechanics of it and what heavy but that stays in my memory

the first thing that I've seen coming into Pittsburgh that I wasn't used to. One of those first things that that you were rocked you seem to have vivid memories of the hill district was it so dynamic that you have all of these recollections and stories for me it was I was a youngster and a new environment and just a new way of life period with the narrow streets the cobblestone well our street was a cobblestone they call them cobblestones and they were so narrow and I was in use that I was used to open spaces and I mean you didn't holler at your neighbor your neighbors maybe two or three miles away and then they come to be just so close close quarter and living in buildings we lived on the second floor I never we just had one story house there was no upstairs and I just wasn't used to wasn't used to that. You know Mr. Bolden when we look at the program and we see there's a certain irony to the discrimination and the segregation of that time that since our communities were so separate it sort of forced

us to band together depend on one another support one another socially and economically you almost wonder you know there are some advantages and disadvantages and there's a certain irony to it. That's very true and it's something like William Dawson late Congressman William Dawson said let's start stop getting an argument let's start getting smart and we did that here we formed our own clubs our own social life we did our had our own businesses one of the largest most famous clubs it became famous nationally it was no underclub which of all places were located on fours and streets which is just two or three steps off of Wally Avenue and people today ask why would you have a club down there across my house of prostitution and right around the corner we're all kinds of what we call joints you see we had some good night clubs and we had some that passed for night clubs which I used to call up hosted sewers because they went off the street and went down

the cellar and underneath and haven't been a reporter at the courier we dug up our own stories but the Luanda club was a very to me it was a very unique club in that its membership consisted of waiters chauffers doctors lawyers many of the businessmen of the city like mr. Trier who had that fine dry clean establishing up the hill Joseph Robinson and Crawford Grill cramped in and bill good who had pharmacies nest but had the pie shop different mac avoids the jeweler we had them all and that was the center of our social life we gave formulas we gave dances for young people I was always proud of that we had dances on Saturday afternoon for the young people the boys had to wear jacks and coats and they had to respect the young girls and all of that and it was interesting that that mixture got along so well together finally we got to the point where we had something called frog week people from all of the United States used to come to that frog week we had a picnic we had a formal dance we had a golf tournament

we had the shows the minstrel shows used to bring lino horn guilliacs nine all of these to come there to sign and they performed for us and that club was located in that one section we left it there for one reason in those days Negro Americans were not permitted to buy property in other residential areas of the city so that's why you find the man like Robert L van publisher the courier member you find John Jones who was a plumber a member you found a lawyer who was a member and we kept that club there because we couldn't find another place to have a club and to this day it was a very reputable place to go what happened to the Lewandah club well when urban renewal came we Negroes called urban renewal meant Negro removal we had to move and it was hard to find another spot for it they finally found a place a little further up up off of Wally Avenue but it wasn't like down and down on the forts and because

all the action was on lower Wally and it finally just I would say it withered away for two reasons one bad location transportation was poor there was see once the trolley's left you had to depend on buses and no bus routes went up that way number two many of our people at that time were able to move to other sections of the city home with brush and east liberty and later to the suburbs as a result your membership dwindle and the young people had no interest in trying to keep it going so it just died died of slow death like many other things that happened on Wally Avenue sometimes you can say one might say that urban renewal was good it was not good for numbers of my race in Pittsburgh because there may no plans to relocate us and we had to shift for ourselves once the bulldozers went in that was it and the housing projects in the beginning were integrated

but once the federal government said anyone making over $4 ,000 a year had to move the whites moved out and left them to us and of course once they left them to us the city didn't really care they didn't care for it you know Mr. Bolden one of the speakers in Wally Avenue day said that the downtown development the urban renewal the buildings are monuments to the destruction of the hill district neighborhood is that too simplistic that that urban renewal caused the decline or was there a slow decline like you were saying about the Lewin die club it's slowly declined well it started with that see the two things one was the once the band was lifted and we could move elsewhere that but once you took away the lore while you have a new there was no need to go down there because there was no nightlife see when we were when Lewin the club in its beginning was down there around the corner was Crawford Grill and four doors up was I mean five doors up on center was the Roosevelt theater and imagine having Billy X -Dine, Lena Horne,

Maxine Sullivan and Billy Holiday all on one show for a dollar and a half what a bargain and right around the corner you had stand these lounge a very fine lounge you men had to wear coats and ties Helen James sang there I can hear her singing them say it isn't so now and after our formal dances and so forth in the city we would go down on the hill because the state opened all night long well once you tore down the lore hill and that fine musicians club were Tommy Dorsey and Count Basie and Jimmy Lunsford and all of them used to come after hours there was there was just no nightlife at all then the two the two facets caused the Denise of the hill you see the lore hill gone and many of our people moving to the suburbs and let's face it economics got a little better for some of us and we began to have our own bars and private things in our home we didn't need no end to cup but it's certainly hurt because we didn't have anywhere to have our own dances and parties then once they lifted segregation

discrimination we were able to rent the ballrooms downtown and all that see keep in mind at one of the clubs that is hey day you couldn't rent those places so the two things together you have a captive audience just if we had a captive audience also what you didn't have we didn't have a strong middle class in this city you must keep in mind we didn't have college Negro school teaching in 1937 so once we began to get better jobs more money we spread out so to speak and when the club died just like some of our businesses there's no nesbush pie shop there's no wonderful Gus Greenley's food there's no Crawford grill up the hill that would bring Oscar Peterson and Billy Eckstein and Chico Hamilton and Joe Williams to sing there would be no need for Irving Johnson to have Willamina Cooper at the Flamingo and the other thing too don't don't forget that that camaraderie between professional men and middle class people and we never called

them and the paper we never call them number writers I always call them digitarians we didn't we didn't use the word pimping prostitute we call them personal shepherds we call the girls members of the nocturnal sisterhood all that was going all that night life where people used to come from Stubanville Washington P .A. and all that all that left what we call the the nightlife just left us so let's take a look at a clip from Wiley Avenue Days in which playwright August Wilson talks about growing up on the hill and Louise Evans talks about names well it's a prize winning playwright August Wilson grew up on Bedford Avenue I guess my earliest memories the third fourth grade coming home from school and as I got over there I gradually came to understand that we lived in a mixed neighborhood in neighborhood there was a lot of Syrians a lot of Italians blacks it was in every sense of the word a neighborhood people with names at hard times and

Fluvanna I never didn't know what Fluvanna meant but there was a man named Fluvanna when he was sober he started and you can hardly understand him but when he got drunk he sounded like a English lord with there was a man that they called death he was very skinny and it was obviously he was not well but people called him death church the one -legged man with all the keys on his belt and he was an electrician and I don't know why they call him church because he was the most profane man I've ever heard just every other word that came out of his mouth was a cuss word Mrs Evan since the show aired what kind of reaction have you been getting from the community since you've been on and you were talking about the names and some of your stories some of your memories about Wiley Avenue Days well I tell you I got so many calls that evening a girl called me I hadn't heard from in 15 years she used to be our PTA leader and she called just to tell me she had seen this show

and how many memories it brought back to her because she had gone to a dentist a doctor cold I believe it was on center avenue and she could remember going upstairs to the dentist and how frightened she was but I just want to comment on listening to the other people talk on this show I was young I never get to go to these clubs but at the time I got old enough to go to these clubs that he's talking about I was getting courted and getting and got married and didn't get a chance to go to them but I mean it was just the plate you wanted to go to the Washington Club the Lowendai Club and it was just fantastic and getting back to the names there were just so everybody it seems had a nickname and it was part of creativity of the neighborhood and that was it yeah I mean you just gave somebody a name and and no one seemed to mind no one seemed to mind these nicknames that you gave did you have a nickname no how did that happen no nicknames were that was Wiley out the nicknames were really Wiley Avenue yeah yeah

chitlinchoon Charlie from Charleston white child back -to -back coast regret the horse player and I'll pay you Tuesday which meant you never would get paid I'll pay you Tuesday that was the slow let's take a look at another clip from Wiley Avenue days this one features Frank Bolden talking about the Lowendai Club Frank Bolden a reporter for the courier remembers one night the Lowendai earned its place in the history of jazz Duke Ellington you sit in that one night he was in their plane and we had gumdrops there with us and we call him gumdrops that's Earl Garner where his nickname was gumdrops you get him to play all night for a bag of gumdrop then later we went around the Lowendai Club and Duke sat there until seven in the morning he finished the composition I let a song go out of my heart he finished it right there in the lowendai club Mr. Bolden you sort of coined a lot of these phrases I remember the the digitarians the now these were numbers

right right but digitarians sounds dignified yes very dignified well you see they were they were dignified to us they were our bank but they were illegal numbers not to us no because we could not go downtown to a bank in bar five or ten thousand dollars we had doctors and lawyers who came here wanting to set up in business they financed them they gave literally the churches they took care of the poor and you could get a loan from them without interest so while we looked with this favor upon crap shooters and other forms of gambling but not the numbers so I coined the term digitarian to give them some class and it gave them social standing because some were members of lowendai club because they could pay their dues regularly and some of the others couldn't pay them regularly but actually as as Evans just said we knew each other better by nicknames goody picnic white child for instance was one of the most handsome six foot four black men I ever saw in my life that don't ask me where he got the nickname

white child rotation slim was the best pool shooter around a patch place whenever he went down he didn't ask for George Johnson and we smith you ask for for maybe rotation slim regret and one of our my favorite characters we have and he was seaface Ford the most arrested man an aligainy county at the time I did the story on him he'd been arrested 119 times and never been sent to jail why not because his organization was known as the checkers club it moved the crap game from night to night around all over the police never didn't know where they were going to play and to seaface credit he used to give heavily to charities I myself got money from seaface to give it the NAACP I got so much money for that I got the citation little gold button from the NAACP for being a heavy contributor and I know he he doesn't mind me saying this but the first money we got for and remember this the churches and so we got the Bethel

Church and the Joyce synagogue and all that so we it's history is rooted in good times faith and as you just said the without the digitarians we would have been in trouble yes well I thank you both for coming on the show and sharing even more memories of Wiley Avenue days with us thank you Frank Bolden and Louise Evans you're welcome in case you missed it in the first time Wiley Avenue days will be repeated again this evening at seven o 'clock you won't want to miss it in Detroit amid the unemployment and crime that plagues many neighborhoods there is a 38 block area known as Ravendale where families are working together to fight poverty and drugs Ravendale is 90 % black with an unemployment rate of 33 % and most households there receive some type of government assistance however despite these statistics the crime rate is dropping unkept houses are being repaired and

many of the neighborhoods wayward residents are beating the odds by getting back on course on the next DMZ program a neighborhood redeemed profile several residents who've spearheaded the revitalization effort and our prime examples of its success let's take a look what happens to a dream pursue can it deliver a Detroit neighborhood from despair and ruin this city is a good city and the problem is that we just got to take it back and do it right what happens to a dream pursue okay this is what we're going to do next you know you hear so many programs where you know they that we offering all this help and we come that's why it doesn't last because the people aren't doing the people have to get involved in the process let's face it we're moderate low and no income that's

right I see changes already our crime has went down to zero that's the truth zero join Aussie Davis and discover a neighborhood redeemed don't miss a neighborhood redeemed on the next DMZ Tuesday night at 10 o 'clock right here on WQED at the top of the show I mentioned that one of the 1991 charity Randall citation recipients would be coming to Pittsburgh one recipient is poet Lucille Clifton and the international poetry forum will be presenting her next week joining me now to tell us more about the poetry forum and Miss Clifton's visit is the forum special project director and Burnham thank you and for being here oh it's a pleasure Elaine first tell me something about Louise Lucille Clifton well we're delighted to say that Lucille Clifton's visit to the international poetry forum is a return visit because she had first read for the forum in

1971 back when the forum was only what five years old and now we're in our 25th season as an international poetry forum and we're honoring Lucille Clifton this year and the British poet named Charles Cosley with an award we call the charity Randall citation and we're in I think our fourth year of this charity Randall citation it's an honor that we give to poets who take the art of speaking their poems as seriously as they take the art of writing their poems we exist as a forum because we believe that poetry is a spoken art form it's an oral form of expressing oneself and that a poem doesn't really live until the poet has stood up and said it to the eyes of an audience and for the past 25 years are you getting the message across I sometimes I think people think poetry might be a little intimidating or a little stuffy that you that in order to understand it you might need a PhD I know I know it's the common misconception and I don't know where that starts perhaps it's in

English class where teachers maybe don't give students the right the right introduction to poetry or they make it difficult and really what poetry is is learning to say in the best possible way what one feels most deeply and it's finding the kind of language that's suitable to our emotions in our our fears our joys our sorrows all of the things that make us human and not just in our own personal lives but also in our lives as citizens and as members of a community so poetry is central in a sense it's not moons in june and violets and roses sort of floating out there and some wafting cloud it's it's about us as human beings and a good poet can get across those ideas and can get across those feelings without any without I wouldn't say without any difficulty because some poets are are very deep it's like mining

a a gold mine in a sense you have to work to get the meanings in their their poems but poets like Lucille Clifton or poets that are understandable at first hearing their poets who just come alive and when you come to hear them and you understand right away what they're talking about and you sort of say gosh yes I felt that too and and you feel a sense of recognition in an emotion shared and and that makes you feel more human I think well you've given me a book of Lucille Clifton's poems so we're going to put this to the test and maybe understand why she's okay selected now at first I thought I shouldn't try this because I think that you have to have something special to reportry and so but I'm going to give it a try and do what you say now this is her poem called Miss Rosie when I want you wrap up the garbage sitting surrounded by the smell of two old potato peels or when I want you in your old man's shoes

with the little toe cut out sitting waiting for your mind like next week's groceries I say when I want you you wet brown bag of a woman who used to be the best looking gal in Georgia used to be called the Georgia Rose I stand up through your destruction I stand up yeah did I do this just you did it beautifully but but the point is what it feels something that each person has to feel their have their own interpretation that there's no right or wrong way well I I think there is no right or wrong way to interpret a poem but a good poem will let you feel the emotion that he or she has felt in writing it and I certainly in that poem feel such a sense of sadness and such a sense of regret that a good life has come to this that this beautiful woman is reduced to this condition but also a sense of anger that it has come about and I share that anger when I hear it I hope did you and it moves

I like the way it flows there's something lyrical about it and I think when something is well written and it moves that's my feeling about it but I guess that's it to have your own feelings but it doesn't have to rhyme some people think that unless you have you know four lines of the same length and you've got a everything rhymes and everything's got a meter to it that it's not a poem but a poetry is really something that excites the imagination I mean so many things in life can be a poem it isn't just words on a page although this perhaps is the best possible expression of something poetic thank you Anne for coming on the show this afternoon and we look forward to hearing Lucille Clifton come and read her own words but that's the best don't forget that the international poetry forum is presenting Lucille Clifton this Wednesday February 6th at 8 p .m. at the Carnegie lecture hall for more information please call 621 9893 that number again is 621 9893 well that wraps up yet another black

horizons thank you for joining me this afternoon please make a note that black horizons will not be seen next week as WQED will be airing the Civil War series I hope you'll join us then for all of us here at Black Horizons I'm Elaine Effort from 1410 KQV News Radio have a good week and don't forget to watch Wiley Avenue Days so long