Q&A: Pittsburgh’s little-known role in the Great Migration

A Pitt-Greensburg professor is uplifting a little-known chapter of Pittsburgh's history - its role in the Great Migration.

Starting over 100 years ago, a mass movement of approximately 6 million Black southerners relocated north in pursuit of better jobs and to escape Jim Crow racial segregation and discrimination. While large cities like New York, Chicago and Philadelphia attracted the greatest share of Black migrants, the promise of work in Pittsburgh's steel mills also made Southwestern Pennsylvania a desirable destination. From 1910 to the 1930s, Pittsburgh's Black population more than doubled, growing from about 25,000 to more than 55,000.

The Black working-class migrants who moved to Pittsburgh didn't leave behind written records, but you can hear some of them tell their stories via Migrant Voices, a website created by Adam Cilli, assistant professor of history.

"The Great Migration is an indispensable part of Pittsburgh's rich racial and ethnic history," he said.

When researching his latest book, Cilli discovered a trove of 50 oral histories of Black men who settled in Pittsburgh as part of the Great Migration. Those recordings, along with primary sources, make up the Migrant Voices website.

"The oral histories I uncovered were held at different archives and recorded on janky cassette tapes. I knew that few people outside of a handful of scholars were aware that these collections existed, and I wanted these recordings to be accessible to everyone," he said.

"The Migrant Voices website is a powerful entry point for learning about [migrants'] lived experiences - their lives in the South, their journey north and their time working in Pittsburgh," Cilli added.

This Black History Month, Pittwire asked Cilli to share insights into the challenges Black migrants faced in Pittsburgh and the lasting impact they have had on the city. Plus, he took us on a tour of significant sites around the Steel City.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Company agents from the major northern steel mills would fan out across the South to recruit workers. There are oral histories available on the Migrant Voices website that describe agents coming around with pockets full of money, saying, "I can buy train tickets for anybody willing to go to Aliquippa or Pittsburgh."

While part of the draw for migrants was to make more money than they could as sharecroppers, they were also reaching for greater freedom than they could in the Jim Crow South.

The Pittsburgh Courier, an African American weekly newspaper with national circulation, also provided vital information to would-be Black migrants. At its peak, The Pittsburgh Courier was the largest black-owned and operated newspaper in the country, with a circulation of more than 200,000, which meant readership was around 600,000. Sometimes northern Black newspapers were shipped in secret to the South through Pullman porters, African American men who worked in railroad sleeping cars.

Another way migrants gathered information was through letters from friends who had already moved north.