Erased and Forgotten Sports History in Pittsburgh’s Crossroads of the World

Editor’s note: In anticipation of the Urban History Association’s 2023 conference being held in Pittsburgh from October 26 – October 29, The Metropole is making the Steel City its Metropolis of the Month for January 2023. The CFP remains open until February 20, 2023. See here for details. By David S. Rotenstein Introduction Pittsburgh is […]

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Living in White Spaces: Suburbia’s Hidden Histories

By David S. Rotenstein In 2009 I learned about one African American woman who briefly lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, a Washington, DC, suburb. She worked for a white physician’s family. Lucille Walker’s story as a Black domestic worker survives in bits and pieces in the memory of the physician’s daughter, Ann Scandiffio. In 1939 […]

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“They Cleaned Me Out Entirely”: An Enslaved Woman’s Experience with General Sherman’s Army

This piece is the sole entrant into the Sixth Annual UHA/The Metropole Graduate Student Blogging Contest. We invited graduate students to “tell a story about any time, topic, person, or place in urban history that foregrounds sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch,” and this essay depicts the sensory experiences of a woman exercising her agency […]

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Leading the Afro-American Realty Company—A Review of “Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem”

McGruder, Kevin. Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021. Reviewed by Carla DuBose-Simons In his latest work, Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem,  Kevin McGruder continues to explore the processes by which Harlem became the “Culture Capital” for African Americans. This book, which follows his first book, Race […]

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Digital Documentary History of Police Violence in Detroit—A Review of “Detroit Under Fire”

By Matt Guariglia and Charlotte Rosen The purpose of the Disciplining the Nation project is to make the history of policing, incarceration, and criminalization in the United States more accessible and teachable by highlighting the documents which shaped it. In addition to looking at specific documents, we also want to highlight specific public history projects […]

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An Ode to the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League Collection

By Julius L. Jones The history of African Americans on the Chicago Police Department (CPD) begins in 1871. The same year the Great Chicago Fire destroyed approximately three-and-a-half square miles of the city, leaving 100,000 people unhoused, James L. Shelton was appointed the first African American member of CPD. Since then, African Americans have served […]

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Black Broadway in Washington, D.C.

The Metropole Bookshelf is an opportunity for authors of forthcoming or recently published books to let the UHA community know about their new work in the field. By Briana A. Thomas Writing my debut history book, Black Broadway in Washington, D.C., felt like traveling through time. Navigating through the past three centuries of rich, vibrant, […]

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Rise and Fall of a Movement — A Review of “The Young Lords: A Radical History”

Fernandez, Johanna. The Young Lords: A Radical History. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Reviewed by Leo Valdes In 1969 activists convened at the first Chicano Youth Liberation Conference. Among them were New York Puerto Ricans excited to learn about a group of Chicago activists who wore purple berets and carried a […]

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