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The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance
by Mark Whitaker
The other great Renaissance of black culture, influence, and glamour burst forth joyfully in what may seem an unlikely place - Pittsburgh, PA - from the 1920s through the 1950s.
Today black Pittsburgh is known as the setting for August Wilson's famed plays about noble but doomed working-class strivers. But this community once had an impact on American history that rivaled the far larger black worlds of Harlem and Chicago. It published the most widely read black newspaper in the country, urging black voters to switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party and then rallying black support for World War II. It fielded two of the greatest baseball teams of the Negro Leagues and introduced Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Pittsburgh was the childhood home of jazz pioneers Billy Strayhorn, Billy Eckstine, Earl Hines, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner; Hall of Fame slugger Josh Gibson - and August Wilson himself. Some of the most glittering figures of the era were changed forever by the time they spent in the city, from Joe Louis and Satchel Paige to Duke Ellington and Lena Horne.
Mark Whitaker's Smoketown is a captivating portrait of this unsung community and a vital addition to the story of black America. It depicts how ambitious Southern migrants were drawn to a steel-making city on a strategic river junction; how they were shaped by its schools and a spirit of commerce with roots in the Gilded Age; and how their world was eventually destroyed by industrial decline and urban renewal. Whitaker takes readers on a rousing, revelatory journey - and offers a timely reminder that Black History is not all bleak.
"Whitaker shines a well-deserved and long-overdue spotlight on this city within a city." - Publishers Weekly
"[T]horoughly researched ... with the diligence of a seasoned anthropologist, Whitaker spotlights the city's stunning feats of black achievement and resilience through the lens of his extensive cast of influencers and icons." - Booklist
"An expansive, prodigiously researched, and masterfully told history." - Kirkus
"The fascinating and never-before-told story of Pittsburgh's black renaissance...Thank you, Mark Whitaker." - Gail Lumet Buckley, author of The Hornes and The Black Calhouns
"Mr. Whitaker is so riveting a storyteller that the reader even wonders if Belle Epoque Vienna had the equivalent of a Billy Eckstine, Mary Lou Williams, Billy Strayhorn, Joe Louis, or an August Wilson." - David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of W.E.B. Du Bois
"Mark Whitaker has given Pittsburgh's wondrously rich black culture its due at long last. Smoketown is illuminating history and an absolute delight to read." (David Maraniss, author of Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story
"Who knew that Pittsburgh had an African American renaissance as vibrant as Harlem's and arguably more consequential? Mark Whitaker knew, and he rescues from unjust obscurity an American episode that continues to reverberate." - George F. Will, syndicated columnist
"This is a story of strength, pride, and achievement, where racism is never absent but also never more powerful than the strong will of his large, fascinating cast of characters." - Nicholas Lemann, author of The Promised Land: The Great Migration and How It Changed America)
This information about Smoketown was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Mark Whitaker is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, My Long Trip Home, and Smoketown. The former managing editor of CNN Worldwide, he was previously the Washington bureau chief for NBC News and a reporter and editor at Newsweek, where he rose to become the first African-American leader of a national newsweekly.
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