On election day October 10, 1871, a 32-old African American man named Octavius Catto was murdered on the streets of Philadelphia. Catto was a teacher, militia officer, baseball player and civil rights activist. In this episode of the African American Experience, we talk with Daniel Biddle and Murray Dubin about the life of Octavius Catto. […]

In the 1830s a free Black community was established in Hinsonville, PA located in Chester County. Over the next several decades, members of the community established a church, participated in the Underground Railroad, helped found what would become Lincoln University, and fought in the Civil War. In this episode of the African American Experience we […]

This is the first book that tells the story of how a small slice of eastern Pennsylvania became the cradle of the American Industrial Revolution. Pennsylvania was America’s powerhouse in the nineteenth century, supplying the hot-burning, high-energy anthracite coal that ignited the iron and, later, steel industries that transformed the United States. This revolution began […]

In the episode of the African American Experience, we talk to Wilberto Sicard about how state and local government policies contributed to residential segregation in Allentown and its impact on the city’s African American community. Sicard is a J.D. candidate at Yale Law School and the author of the paper “City with Limits: An Untold […]

In this episode of the African American Experience, we talk with Todd Mealy about the history behind the black student uprising on May 22, 1969 at Franklin & Marshall College. Mealy is the author of “This Is the Rat Speaking: Black Power and the Promise of Racial Consciousness at Franklin and Marshall College in the […]

During WWI, a group of African American soldiers from the Pittsburgh area waged a campaign to serve in a combat unit rather than a service battalion. They would later be organized into the 351st Field Artillery Regiment at Camp Meade, Maryland. In 1918, the regiment deployed to France where it served in combat during the […]

Gen. David McMurtrie Gregg (1833–1917) was one of the ablest and most successful commanders of cavalry in any Civil War army. Pennsylvania-born, West Point–educated, and deeply experienced in cavalry operations prior to the conflict, his career personified that of the typical cavalry officer in the mid-nineteenth-century American army. Gregg achieved distinction on many battlefields, including […]

In order to be a truly effective leader, it is necessary to learn as much as possible from the examples of history—the disasters as well as the triumphs. At Gettysburg, Union and Confederate commanders faced a series of critical leadership challenges under the enormous stress of combat. The fate of the nation hung in the […]

From his early work as a lawyer on the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to his days as Philadelphia’s district attorney to his thirty-year career as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter found himself consistently in the middle of major historical events. During his five terms as senator, […]

Pittsburgh’s contributions to the uniquely American art form of jazz are essential to its national narrative. Fleeing the Jim Crow South in the twentieth century, African American migration to the industrial North brought musical roots that would lay the foundation for jazz culture in the Steel City. As migrant workers entered the factories of Pittsburgh, […]