3. Keeping It Moving

Evelyn Rumph

“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.”

Louise Catherine Powe

“I seen the deed to [our] house, the Weinstein’s sold that house on Watt St to my grandparents for a dollar, back in the day. And that house is in my family as of today, and I’m living in it as of today. So my father’s side of the family originated from VA, and as far as I know my mother’s side of the family, from what I’ve been told, my great-grandmother was a German-Italian woman. She must have married my great grandfather and I guess they disowned her, and we know nothing about her side of the family at all. So we just know that my grandma, they were like biracial, and that’s about as far as I know about them.

So my dad worked at a place named Dravo back then, he worked in the mills. And my mom stayed at home and raised us, and then my father got kind of a heart problem and my mom had to go to work.  And she was hired I believe because they thought she was a white woman. Just, living where I am now, every morning I wake up and just thank the good Lord that I’m still here, and I just feel spirits all in the house. I can talk to my grandma, my aunt Louise, because I was named after my aunt, my mom, you know, so…I tell my kids, don’t take me off the Hill. I said if something happens to my memory, I wanna be on the Hill.”

Terri Bridgett

“We lived, actually, the rear of Junilla St. There was a alley, and so that alley was, we called it Skid Row.

We were there as renters. And it was a very impoverished place. But we didn’t realize it was all that until we moved out. And then we moved into one of the projects, up on Chauncey Drive. Oh gosh, that was like moving from hell to heaven. But it was like, we’re moving up there? The upper crust! Because the white people were up there. And they had flowers and the yards were beautiful and well-kept at the time we moved in. There were rules and people kept the hallways nice and clean, they’d have inspections and each apt would get inspected. And there were rules from the welfare people. They’d come out and you’d have to hide things. If we were treated with discrimination we didn’t recognize it at the time we moved up there. But of course gradually all the white people were moving out and the bulk of us just become a black neighborhood.

We felt safe. As I said, everyone—the parents or people who lived in the neighborhood looked out for each person’s child. And if your neighbor saw you they were able to correct you. You represented your family and we wanted to make sure we did that right. We learned to take care and appreciate where we lived. Of course coming from down behind alleyways and things like that, you do appreciate when you move up into the project element. I don’t think the kids now, they don’t even begin to understand what it was like. And later they didn’t appreciate and they didn’t keep them up. But that was years later.”