Housing in Black Pittsburgh: Community Struggles and the State, 1916--1973

This dissertation examines the changing relationship between African Americans, the housing market, construction work, and the federal government. Analyzing housing in the black Pittsburgh community explains how this city played a part in the larger black freedom movement from the late 1910s into the early 1970s. While stretching chronological boundaries reinforces the idea of a "long black freedom movement," this study underscores important changes by illuminating how housing shaped the community's development and how it informed larger political struggles.;At the broadest level, this dissertation argues about the centrality of housing---both in its sheltering and employing capacities---and the federal state in the development of class relations and its influence on the black freedom movement. More specifically, this dissertation demonstrates how the vehicle of housing can unpack a variety of dynamics within the community and explains how African Americans struggled to control their destinies to address issues of discrimination and economic inequalities.;Focusing on the black experience with housing in Pittsburgh, this study explores how interactions with various structures, ideologies, and institutions within larger society had differing consequences to individuals and groups within the black community. It shaped various manifestations of discrimination over time and influenced the methods African Americans used to challenge these social and economic inequalities. These exchanges, in the end, reshaped the internal dimensions of the community.;Examining these developments pushes our understanding of black urban life in the twentieth century into new directions by providing four major contributions to historical scholarship. First, by extending chronological boundaries, this dissertation explains how African American use of community resources changed over time to challenge the varied obstacles they faced to secure housing and construction work. Second, this study shows how the introduction of federal housing programs reinforced segregation, created tools to confront discrimination, and shaped class relations in the community. Third, by focusing on building tradesmen and public housing residents, this dissertation illustrates how federal housing programs contributed to class formation. Finally, this study suggests that by the mid-1960s forces from within the community pushed the black freedom movement into substantively new directions.