Download Smoketown AudioBook Free
The other great Renaissance of dark culture, impact, and glamour burst forth joyfully in what may seem to be an unlikely place - Pittsburgh, PA - from the 1920s through the 1950s. Today dark Pittsburgh is known as the environment for August Wilson's famed plays about commendable but doomed working-class strivers. But this community once experienced a direct effect on American history that rivaled the significantly larger dark worlds of Harlem and Chicago. It publicized the most extensively read black newspaper in the country, urging dark voters to change from the Republican to the Democratic Party and then rallying dark support for World War II. It fielded two of the greatest baseball clubs of the Negro Leagues and released Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Pittsburgh was the youth home of jazz pioneers Billy Strayhorn, Billy Eckstine, Earl Hines, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner; Hall of Popularity slugger Josh Gibson - and August Wilson himself. Some of the most glittering information of the period were changed permanently by the time they spent in the town, from Joe Louis and Satchel Paige to Duke Ellington and Lena Horne. Symbol Whitaker's Smoketown is a fascinating portrait of the unsung community and a essential addition to the story of dark America. It depicts how ambitious Southern migrants were attracted to a steel-making city on a proper river junction; how these were designed by its universities and a spirit of commerce with roots in the Gilded Age; and how their world was eventually destroyed by industrial drop and urban renewal. Whitaker can take listeners on a rousing, revelatory trip - and will be offering a well-timed reminder that Dark History is not all bleak.
