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| Gifted and talented African-Americans in the Pittsburgh region from at least the pre-Civil War abolitionist era of Dr. Martin Delaney through that of Attorney Robert L. Vann (Publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier) ... always viewed Pittsburgh as a mission link in a chain of families and places dependent upon caring about each other across and beyond political and geographic boundaries. Even before graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, Nancy Lee subscribed to the notion of community building via advocacy and sponsorship of clubs, churches and schools for youth development (including music and sports). As espoused by Mary Church Terrell, she believed that women's/mothers club were the essence of beginning and holding the values of family and community among the mass African-American populations up from slavery, and direly in need of health, education and economic caring.
Gifted and talented African-Americans in the Pittsburgh region from at least the pre-Civil War abolitionist era of Dr. Martin Delaney through that of Attorney Robert L. Vann (Publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier) ... always viewed Pittsburgh as a mission link in a chain of families and places dependent upon caring about each other across and beyond political and geographic boundaries. Even before graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, Nancy Lee subscribed to the notion of community building via advocacy and sponsorship of clubs, churches and schools for youth development (including music and sports). As espoused by Mary Church Terrell, she believed that women's/mothers club were the essence of beginning and holding the values of family and community among the mass African-American populations up from slavery, and direly in need of health, education and economic caring.
Nancy Lee literally hated studies of African-Americans that were not therapeutic. She generally supported studies that were part of programs funded to improve conditions such as rodent control and building baseball fields for Black boys to play on. Even before the beginning of World War I in 1913 and ending of World War II in 1945, Nancy, Like most educated and enlightened African-Americans in the first half of the 20th century (the talented tenth of DuBois philosophy), ... perceived that community development required setting goals proven to be achievable by the inherent generation. The doctrine was handed down from the great Scot Presbyterians themselves (like Generals Armstrong and Howard and the great Andrew Carnegie), ... the provincial way up from slavery and ignorance was emulating the people whose ancestors, like the Hemings and Lees, had fought the good fight and remained faithful to the Booker T. Washington principle of "helping yourself by helping others." But Nancy learned by the end of America's depression years that social work had become a field for second generation immigrant families seeking good public employment jobs, ... rather than helping the least of us obtain good jobs or jobs outside the cultural parameters of cultural groups. In fact, Nancy had been denied admission to the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work, ... in theory training youth to understand and work with help to the poor? Nancy noted that in those days, even immigrants to America did not consider Black folks as Americans. With Pittsburgh in particular and Western Pennsylvania in general, ... Nancy Lee closely observed the attitudes and behaviors of Catholics and Jews she encountered and reasoned their sense of mission was worthy of consideration, but not emulation. Catholic immigrants and their community leaders were generally appalled at the living standards and values of African-Americans. They did not share her historical views of the problem observed, nor the social work approach she advocated... hands on intervention in homes and neighborhoods. Nancy was not a bigoted Methodist, but very skeptical about Catholicism in that it was viewed as an institutional top-down approach focused on pre-teenager children, not the parents or family who were not already Catholic. In her view up from the active Presbyterians and Methodists that helped free Blacks from bondage and worked tirelessly to uplift them after emancipation, ... Black Catholics were in a world unto themselves.
This fresco by Perugino from the Vatican's Sistine Chapel depicts Jesus giving Saint Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Catholic doctrine states that Jesus appointed St. Peter to be the first Pope, which established a link between Jesus and the office of the Pope. This link is known as Apostolic Succession, whereby the Pope is seen as the heir to the Apostles. Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City, Italy/Bridgeman Art Library, London, New York "Christ Giving the Keys to Saint Peter," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. Even before, during and after the Civil War, ... their Catholic theology was silent and still about laying on of hands with "the least of us," who were dirty, filthy, uneducated and certainly deemed not worthy of receiving communion. Yet, Catholics would indeed offer to feed the hungry and give to the Black poor distant and segregated from them in churches, neighborhoods and especially labor union halls (even for Black Catholics). But, she admired Jewish women dedicated to the uplift of impoverished and ignorant Jewish immigrants in the Pittsburgh Region but knew first-hand they all had intact families and a sense of being rooted in each other. Comparatively poor African-Americans, for the most part, were searching for an identity (other than skin color) taken for granted by Jewish immigrants.
Purim, a feast commemorating the delivery of Persian Jews from destruction, is celebrated in synagogues every year with the reading of the Scroll of Esther, called the megillah. This 18th-century megillah, in the Jewish Museum in New York City, New York, is from Persia (Iran). The Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource, NY "Scroll of Esther," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. She found both Catholics and Jews consistent with the gospels by both George Washington and Booker T. Washington ...... ... indoctrination and training of emancipated human beings in skills to earn a living to support one's family. But, both Catholic and Jewish social workers seemingly urged something different for African-Americans, even the children. Neither wanted the laying on of hands in the neighborhoods where African-Americans lived. In addition, the post-WWII years for American Jews in Pittsburgh and elsewhere was not about affirmative actions for lifting up African-Americans from poverty and ignorance but salvation of European Jewry devastated by Nazi Germany. Her disappointment in the process of helping African-Americans pouring in from near slavery conditions (share-cropping) in the south were made more painful by the fact that busy-body Jewish women were able to implement what she could only advocate to deaf ears. She marveled that they could organize an outpouring of participation and support by both governments and the private sectors that would avoid even meeting her to discuss schemes for addressing eyesores like the Hill District. Urban Renewal schemes in the 1950s-1960s led by Catholic and Jewish advocates, with Presbyterian support from people like the Mellon family, ... utterly displaced upwards of 35,000 of the over 50,000 Black residents of the Hill District. The process of helping to clear the slums was not unlike the attitudes and behaviors of slum clearance in Johannesburg, South Africa and Birmingham, Alabama in the same time frames.
Urban renewal often involved demolition of slum housing and construction of better, more expensive housing. Critics of the program claimed that it was a method of evicting low-income residents because the costs and improvements made to certain neighborhoods increased rental rates. Currently, housing rehabilitation is the favored form of dealing with rundown housing, and city planners take the environmental and neighborhood concerns into account. These photographs show South Street Seaport in New York City before and after urban renewal. Ray Ellis/Photo Researchers, Inc.;Rafael MaciaPhoto Researchers, Inc. "Urban Renewal of South Street Seaport," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99.
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