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A review by jessferg
Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance by Mark Whitaker
4.0
This is such a great example of why I love reading - sometimes you just can't tell what you're going to get out of a book. I picked this one up because of its Pittsburgh theme but the stories turn out to be absolutely global.
Centered around the Pittsburgh Courier, an early 20th century African-American weekly newspaper, the reader goes where the reporters go and that turns out to be not only the local clubs of the Hill where Billy Strayhorn, Lena Horne, and Billy Eckstine played and the ballgames of the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, but also the Detroit boxing ring of Joe Louis, spring training with Jackie Robinson in Florida and New York, road building with World War 2 crews in Burma and a lot that I'm not even remembering right now.
Meanwhile, the story of the Courier is woven throughout; its financing issues, the publication rivalries, the reporters and editors who made the paper happen every week.
This is an incredible historical portrait of some truly remarkable Americans with a focus on their achievements despite the well-known obstacles in place throughout most of the 1900s.
I have to comment on the "sports" part of this - I am not a fan in any way, shape, or form, but the history of the Pittsburgh Negro Leagues and the heavyweight fights of Joe Louis were absolutely fascinating. These aren't chapters of play-by-play games but an intense study of the personalities and the politics surrounding baseball and boxing (and how it speaks to the overall climate) at that time. Completely absorbing.
I'd recommend this for any 20th c. history fan - you're bound to learn something new.
Centered around the Pittsburgh Courier, an early 20th century African-American weekly newspaper, the reader goes where the reporters go and that turns out to be not only the local clubs of the Hill where Billy Strayhorn, Lena Horne, and Billy Eckstine played and the ballgames of the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, but also the Detroit boxing ring of Joe Louis, spring training with Jackie Robinson in Florida and New York, road building with World War 2 crews in Burma and a lot that I'm not even remembering right now.
Meanwhile, the story of the Courier is woven throughout; its financing issues, the publication rivalries, the reporters and editors who made the paper happen every week.
This is an incredible historical portrait of some truly remarkable Americans with a focus on their achievements despite the well-known obstacles in place throughout most of the 1900s.
I have to comment on the "sports" part of this - I am not a fan in any way, shape, or form, but the history of the Pittsburgh Negro Leagues and the heavyweight fights of Joe Louis were absolutely fascinating. These aren't chapters of play-by-play games but an intense study of the personalities and the politics surrounding baseball and boxing (and how it speaks to the overall climate) at that time. Completely absorbing.
I'd recommend this for any 20th c. history fan - you're bound to learn something new.