PA Books: World of Trouble

Historian Richard Godbeer presents a richly layered and intimate account of the American Revolution as experienced by a Philadelphia Quaker couple, Elizabeth Drinker and the merchant Henry Drinker, who barely survived the unique perils that Quakers faced during that conflict. Spanning a half‑century before, during, and after the war, this gripping narrative illuminates the Revolution’s […]

PA Books: Stolen

“Stolen” tells the story of five young, free black boys who fall into the clutches of a fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in Philadelphia in 1825. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drive […]

PA Books: She Came To Slay

Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. As a leading abolitionist, her bravery and selflessness has inspired generations in the continuing struggle for civil rights. Now, National Book Award nominee Erica Armstrong Dunbar presents a fresh take on this American icon blending traditional biography, illustrations, photos, […]

The African American Experience: The Great Migration and Pittsburgh

This week on The African American Experience, Samuel Black, the director of African American Programs at the Heinz History Center, joins us to talk about how the Great Migration influenced Pittsburgh. During the Great Migration more than 6 million African Americans moved from the South to the North and West with many thousands settling in […]

The African American Experience: The Pittsburgh Courier

Founded in 1907, The Pittsburgh Courier would rise to become one of the most important African American newspapers in the country. Under the leadership of Robert L. Vann, the paper covered politics, sports, business, the Civil Rights Movement, and international affairs in the 1930s. During World War II, it championed the “Double V” campaign to […]

The African American Experience: William Chester Ruth, Inventor

William Chester Ruth was born in 1882 and was an African American inventor, blacksmith, entrepreneur, and lay minister in Gap, PA. By the 1950s he had been granted more than 50 patents for inventions such as a baler feeder, a cinder spreader, and a farm elevator. In this episode of the African American Experience we […]

The African American Experience: The Dennis Farm

In 1793, the family of Prince Perkins, free African Americans from Connecticut, settled on a farm in northeast Pennsylvania. The farm has remained in the family into the 21st century and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In this episode of The African American Experience, we talk with Denise Dennis, President & CEO […]

PA Books: “Blue-Collar Conservatism”

The postwar United States has experienced many forms of populist politics, none more consequential than that of the blue-collar white ethnics who brought figures like Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump to the White House. “Blue-Collar Conservatism” traces the rise of this little-understood, easily caricatured variant of populism by presenting a nuanced portrait of the supporters […]

“Smokin’ Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier”

Sports writer Mark Kram gives a full-bodied accounting of  Joe Frazier’s life, a journey that began as the youngest of thirteen children packed in small farm house, encountering the bigotry and oppression of the Jim Crow South, and continued with his voyage north at age fifteen to develop as a fighter in Philadelphia. Tracing Frazier’s […]

PA Books: “Pennsylvania Scrapple”

An essential food in Mid-Atlantic kitchens for hundreds of years, scrapple is the often-overlooked king of breakfast meats. Developed by German settlers of Pennsylvania, the slow food byproduct was created to avoid waste in the day’s butchering. Pork trimmings were stewed until tender, ground like sausage and blended with the originating broth, cornmeal and buckwheat […]