Out of the Crucible: Black Steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania, 1875-1980

Dickerson, Dennis C.

doi:10.2307/25143221

Cited by 7 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…During the Great Migration, from about 1910 to 1930, African Americans moved in massive numbers from the South to the North. In Pittsburgh, on the other hand, large-scale African American migration began around 1875 (Epstein 1918;Dickerson 1986). Prompted initially by continual labor strikes, steel companies in Pittsburgh began to actively recruit African Americans from the South to fill positions and maintain the productivity of the mills (Dickerson 1986;Glasco 1996).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Pittsburgh, on the other hand, large-scale African American migration began around 1875 (Epstein 1918;Dickerson 1986). Prompted initially by continual labor strikes, steel companies in Pittsburgh began to actively recruit African Americans from the South to fill positions and maintain the productivity of the mills (Dickerson 1986;Glasco 1996). The number of African American migrants continued to grow into the twentieth century, swelling in the late 1910s and 1920s as the United States entered World War I and the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924 was passed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even after immigration from Europe had ceased due to the war, in 1930, eastern European immigrants composed 30% of the steel workforce in Pittsburgh (Hinshaw 2002). Figure 7 illustrates the distribution of steelworkers in Pittsburgh from 1890 to 1930 (compiled from Dickerson 1986).…”

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The Low-Back Merger in the Steel City: African American English in Pittsburgh

Eberhardt¹

2008

American Speech

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This article investigates the status of the low-back vowels in African American English in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where the vowels have been merged since at least the late 1800s. The low-back merger is currently spreading across much of the United States, but to date, its incidence in African American speech has been found to be limited. This article draws from a sample of 34 African Americans native to Pittsburgh. Using data from a word list along with an acoustic analysis of the low-back vowels in conversational speech from sociolinguistic interviews, this article shows that African Americans in Pittsburgh have merged the low-back vowels, thus sharing in this feature of the local phonological system. The article also explores the sociohistorical conditions that facilitated the spread of the merger from white to African American speech in the region.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Low-Back Merger in the Steel City: African American English in Pittsburgh

Eberhardt¹

2008

American Speech

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“…For a recent and brilliant historiographic alternative to what I call “scientized historiography” vis-à-vis the WASP/White-ethnic racial-caste skewed acculturation-parity alliance against African-Americans' quest for American acculturation, see the Princeton University historian Nell Painter's Creating Black Americans (2006). For an equally brilliant but earlier historiographic alternative to “scientized historiography” regarding the WASP/White-ethnic racist-skewed acculturation-parity alliance against Black people, see the Vanderbilt University historian Dennis Dickerson's Out of the Crucible: Black Steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania, 1875–1980 (1986). Dickerson's pioneering study of the struggles surrounding the settlement of urban Black working-class communities in the industrial cities and towns of Western Pennsylvania offers detailed characterization of a century of vigilante-cum-bureaucratic violence against African Americans, executed by the WASP/White-ethnic alliance.…”

Section: Putnam's Analysis Neglects the History Of Racismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thinking About Robert Putnam's Analysis of Diversity

Kilson

2009

Du Bois Rev.

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The article evaluates Robert Putnam's discussion of two differing concepts of the role of the diversity perspective toward inter-ethnic/inter-racial relationships in American society since the 1960s—namely, the “contact theory” and the “conflict theory.” The former was initially formulated by Harvard social psychologist Gordon Allport in The Nature of Prejudice (1954). Putnam's analysis—published in the comparative politics journal Scandinavian Political Studies (Vol. 30, No. 2, 2007)—favors the “conflict theory,” which holds that diversity sharpens “us-against-them” inter-ethnic/inter-racial interactions. Putnam's view opposes diversity-influenced public policies. By contrast, “contact theory” holds that diversity erodes “us-against-them” interactions and thus eventually democratizes such interactions, and thereby American society generally. “Contact theory” influenced the NAACP-led civil-rights movement's quest for desegregation public policies during the 1950s, 1960s, and onward.

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“…Federal discrimination lawsuits over unfair employment and promotion practices in the steel industry placed employers in southwestern Pennsylvania under close federal scrutiny over their dismal track record on racial inclusion. Dickerson (1986) described this as a Pyrrhic victory for African-Americans in southwestern Pennsylvania because gains from the decades-long legal struggle, resulting in a small step toward parity with whites, were lost during the 1980s.…”

Section: Impacts Of Employment Shiftsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Industrial Restructuring and Urban Change in the Pittsburgh Region: Developmental, Ecological, and Socioeconomic Trade-offs

Haller¹

2005

E&S

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This article traces the steel industry's restructuring during the 1980s and its consequences for older industrial regions tied historically to steel production. These regions contained large workingclass communities that declined because of deindustrialization and restructuring. This article first examines the transition of the steel industry from its roots in extractive and primary manufacturing to a scrap-recycling industry that minimizes labor and raw material inputs. This transition parallels the structural changes in other industries addressed by political economic perspectives, such as the new international division of labor and globalization of production. The article then focuses on the socioeconomic and structural changes, using the Pittsburgh region as an example, including the employment and land-use consequences of deindustrialization and the relationship between losses in manufacturing employment and increases in persistent joblessness and poverty associated with growth of the urban underclass.

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Out of the Crucible: Black Steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania, 1875-1980

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

The Low-Back Merger in the Steel City: African American English in Pittsburgh

The Low-Back Merger in the Steel City: African American English in Pittsburgh

Thinking About Robert Putnam's Analysis of Diversity

Industrial Restructuring and Urban Change in the Pittsburgh Region: Developmental, Ecological, and Socioeconomic Trade-offs

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