Blacks help drive steel revolution in Pittsburgh

Histories rich with joy and sadness

SEE ALSO: Hill District residents remember the way… Histories rich with joy and sadness

SEE ALSO: Hill District residents remember the way that things used to be

Pittsburgh’s location and flourishing coal deposits helped give the city an industry and its nickname – the Steel City – in the early 19th century.

As steel mills slowly took over the city and its surrounding areas, the jobs they created became major places of employment.

Though long hours and harsh conditions were dealt to all, blacks were faced with an especially steep climb, as they made their way through the steel industry.

“Before unionization around the 1930s, during the earliest period, African-Americans were excluded for the most part from the industry,” said Joe Trotter, a history professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

Because steel mills were dominated by white labor, strike breaking became one of the only avenues for blacks to enter the industry. From the days of the Civil War, many blacks – who would often come north from Southern mills – were hired to take the place of white strikers. But often, black workers were only used until the whites came back to work and the strike was settled.

“Striking white workers would be resentful toward anybody breaking the strike, but if you can demonize them because they were a different race, it made it more intense,” said Robert Ruck, a history professor at Pitt.

During the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, the lack of unions made conditions in steel mills hard for all workers. Jobs were dangerous, hours were long and pay was low.

“But blacks were pretty much at the bottom of the heap,” Ruck said. “They’re the last to get hired and the first to get let go.”

The major problem for blacks became the way in which they were hired. There was a system of seniority that placed workers into certain jobs – often based on race – and from there, men were able to be promoted only within that area.

Whites were placed in the sects that promised the most mobility, Ruck said.

“If you get stuck in a particular line of progression, that’s your job ladder,” he said. “And you climb that job ladder and if it doesn’t go very high, you don’t go far.”

The issue didn’t disappear with the emergence of unions, but black steelworkers were slowly making their way into the industry.

In 1936, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee was formed from its parent union, the Congress of Industrial Organization. The SWOC eventually became the United Steel Workers in 1942.

“With unionization comes a degree of self-respect for workers,” Ruck said. “It gives them the power to bargain collectively.”

And with the overcoming of divisions, taking on the management became more feasible.

But at the outset, blacks weren’t necessarily admitted to the unions, Trotter said. And if they were, segregation was not uncommon. But by the time of the establishment of the USW, blacks were slowly becoming integrated.

“I think this was a watershed in the experience of the blacks in the steel industries,” he said.

Though the system of seniority still didn’t function equally between blacks and whites, blacks were now less likely to lose their jobs based solely on race. Membership in a union provided an increasing sense of stability, though it was never guaranteed.

As the steel industry picked up during World War I, more workers were needed because supplying Europe with ammunition and supplies was based in the production of steel, and many white workers joined the military, Trotter said.

According to John Hinshaw, associate professor of history at Lebanon Valley College, though blacks were a minority both in the industry and unions, their gains were enormous considering the time.

“This is a time when it was legal to exclude Jews and blacks from places like country clubs and even neighborhoods,” he said. “The steel workers were without a doubt one of the most integrated and progressive institutions.”

After World War II, as integration continued, blacks still faced grievances that had been an issue all along – their were paid less, their jobs were less desirable and “consequently they lived in worse neighborhoods and had more occupational health problems,” Hinshaw said.

Cancer became a problem because of the exposure to certain gasses that became prevalent in jobs assigned to blacks.

With the ’60s and ’70s came two events – the Civil Rights Movement and the eventual decline of the steel industry. In 1974, the Consent Decree was designed to put a stop to racial discrimination and establish a standard policy for seniority, Hinshaw said.

“This changed the balance of power and it got easier for blacks to shift into better jobs,” he said.

It became more difficult for mill supervisors to hire based on race.

But even by the disintegration of the steel industry in Pittsburgh in the ’70s and ’80s, blacks never gained full equality, Hinshaw said.

“It’s worth remembering that when [the SWOC] is founded in 1936, it’s pretty amazing that blacks and whites were voting in the same organization and both votes were counted. That’s 30 years before the Civil Rights movement,” he said. “But blacks were always the minority and their position was almost always worse than whites.”