Edith Oresick (b. 1930s)
“My father was from Romania, my mother was from Poland…They met here. I think they all came as teenagers. When they married, they lived on Milwaukee St. I lived very close to Schenley Field, so in summertime everyone used to go there. Everybody. And we’d play together. That I remember. When I was younger we lived in that block where I think all the parents were immigrants, spoke Yiddish. I understood Yiddish because my mother spoke it. She didn’t speak English when she came, and she wanted to get her citizenship papers because she had family in NY that she wanted to bring over, this was during the 30s.
I used to go to school with her at night, at Herron Hill, for immigrants to learn English so they could get their citizenship. That was quite a diverse crowd there! (Laughs) From all over. From Italy, from Greece, from all over. Most of the immigrants did not talk much about Europe. And now I regret not asking about that. You know my grandmother and her two sons died in the Holocaust. My mother’s mother. My father’s family from Romania, they didn’t suffer that much. Most of them left to go to Israel. My father ran away, like people ran away from the south, the Jewish boys ran away from the army because they were really not treated well.”
Welzetta Hardeman (1936-2017)
“In 1941, they began to tear down where the Waterfront is in Homestead, that’s where I lived. And we had to find a place to go. When we left Homestead my father had died about a month or two before then. I remember coming in this house, I never saw so many beds. So many rooms, in all my life. When we moved up here, of course it was 1941. There was white people every other house. And you were told, you’re in a white neighborhood now, don’t come here acting up. And people began to buy homes, although everybody worked. I felt we were poor, poor. I did (laughs).
My mother had bought the house but my mother wasn’t but 21. She bought the house off the man and, he owned a bar down the hill. Seventeen dollars a month. She used to go down the Hill and used to take us down with her. Jews had many little shops in the Hill, and she’d go down in the little store, and she’d pay the mortgage there. And it’d be about four or five old men sitting in a little room in the store, sitting by a fire. And umm, yeah she had the house but it wasn’t easy.
I know about the rough times. I know about the plumbing. I know about the roof when it was leaking, here and there, everywhere. [The living room] was our living quarters, and the kitchen of course was the living room. We had a radio--the radio was right there in that corner. And when the family came, even holiday time when they all came, everybody came in here just the same. And you had plenty of food. I still think to myself, you ain’t never been cold. You ain’t never been outdoors. So I, I have a lot of thanks to give. That I feel very deeply. It wasn’t as fashionable as it is now, but it was home. It was home.”
Ardelle Vivienne Robinson (b. 1949)
“I know my grandfather’s family was from Abbeyville [South Carolina]. And they knew of a gentlemen that lived in Abbeyville who was a very influential black man. Who was in the process of—he was tryna do business with some white people in the community who he thought respected him, I guess. And they kept insisting that he was trying to cheat them. One thing led to another, this man ended up dead, [and] my family said we gotta get outta here. And they packed up and came straight to Pittsburgh. I think they settled on Junilla St actually, where we have people in our family who still live in that very same house. But the house that they lived in that we all grew up in, including my mother and all her kids, was on Anaheim St, which is in Schenley Heights. But he had that house built for her. And it still stands today.
My grandfather Douglas Robinson was a Pullman Porter. That’s all he ever did his whole adult life. He loved his job as best he could under the circumstances. I hear…it was a good job, for black men at the time. But of course, it was the times. And he did well, financially. The Pullman Porters did well. They did better than most. My grandmother like I said, she was born in Red House, VA, she came to Pittsburgh when she was a young woman. She belonged to a lot of different ladies clubs, she went to teas, bridge clubs, card parties, all that kind of stuff. And she was very active in the community with other lady groups.
I used to get in the middle of the bed in the morning and just wait for them to wake up. I was in the middle of the bed one morning and she said to him, ‘Douglas put the light on.’ She didn’t go to bed blind, but she woke up blind. When the light went out that morning, that’s the same switch that made everyone stay away from her. She never wanted much but it didn’t matter. Anything she mighta asked for he made sure she had it…I thought he was a great guy.”
Evelyn Rumph (b. 193?)
“I’m the daughter of Lucellar, they call her Ms. Lucy, Curry. She had a restaurant on Wylie Avenue… And all the people in the Hill, when it was really in its heyday, went to eat at my mother’s restaurant. Now to start with my mother, she came from Alabama. She was on her way to Chicago to visit, and she stopped off in Pittsburgh. She never made it to Chicago (chuckles). My dad got a job at the steel mill, because back in those days in Pittsburgh the steel mill was up and booming. He said I think we’ll do better here in Pittsburgh. She worked domestic. That’s what most blacks did in those years, they worked domestic for Jewish people who had dominated the Hill. But she cooked so well, her and my aunt, that my aunt said why should we be cooking for other people, why don’t we open up a restaurant and see if we can make a go of it ourselves?
They opened up a restaurant on Centre Avenue. She didn’t hire nobody but her family and friends that she knew. But if you needed a job and wanted a hard day’s work, come to Lucy. So that’s how it all began. My mother did pick cotton in Alabama. And she came up here to make a better life for herself. She was able to go into food because everyone loves to eat. And she made a better life. And she was described as the best soul food on the Hill. But she wanted more for her five children. She wanted us to have the best life possible, and in those days you could have a very good life.”
Elizabeth Ann Haley (b. 193?)
“I was actually born in Alabama. A place called Letohatchee, which is about 30 miles from Montgomery. My parents were there, both were uh, grew up in Alabama. At six months of age they moved to Pittsburgh. My mother’s sister and her family lived here, the Moncrief’s, and of course my dad was young with two young children, so the job opportunities were to be better here in Pittsburgh. So that’s when they moved here. So I actually grew up here on Morgan Street first, I remember that. And then my family purchased a house on Francis, which was up the street from the Centre Avenue Y.
[There is] just so much history in the Hill of people who’ve done well, and mainly because of the neighborhood. All the houses were [kept] with pride. And people were homeowners. Which doesn’t mean that if you weren’t a homeowner that you couldn’t prosper. But that Francis St and Centre Avenue, those were all homeowners so they took the leadership and pride into the Hill. So you know when people say, “Where are you from?” I say, “Oh I grew up in the Hill.”
Charlene Foggie-Barnett (b. 1958)
“I guess my basic connection is my mother (Madeline Sharpe-Foggie) was married to my father in the Hill, and they produced me (laughs). But my mother was raised in the Hill on Junilla St. And her family was raised in the Hill, her extended family, cousins and what not. They had come from Abbeyville, SC, and eventually ended up as a family in the Hill District. My father was actually born in Sumpter, South Carolina, but he had to go north because his father was almost lynched. So he was born in South Carolina, raised in Boston, MA, and he became a minister and a Civil Rights leader here in the Pittsburgh area. But I was raised on Ewart Dr. It’s in the “Sugartop” area, which in some circles can get you into kind of a sticky mess because at one time it was considered an elitist area. It was and it was not—but there were some people that had made some advantages economically and socially and politically and educationally and what not—and they seemed to congregate in this area. Attorneys, physicians, business owners, ministers, educators lived in Sugartop, as did other people.
My dad was close with Thurgood Marshall and a lot of the national civil rights people. And I remember them being in the house different times,even Dr. King before his death. These people were sitting in each other’s living rooms, planning things. As we do now. But their outcomes were very much chronicled and pinnacled because big things were happening.But it was like a neighborhood and it felt so…if you fell down and got hurt, your neighbor would take you in and clean up your cut. It just seemed like—it was really like Cheers almost. Everyone really knew your name. Or they knew where you were supposed to be. And um, and it didn’t matter if you lived in the Lower Hill or Upper Hill or Middle Hill or whatever, people got along. [We] would play with friends. I know I’m making it seem like a utopia but it felt like that. And I’ve never had that feeling again.”