Category: Local left history

Students of left-wing history may have heard of the “Pittsburgh Manifesto” — the 1883 statement that launched the American anarchist and syndicalist movements. The document, drafted by renowned anarchist-socialists including Albert Parsons, Johann Most and August Spies, would set the scene for the bloody Haymarket repression three years later.

What’s less well-remembered is exactly where in Pittsburgh the anarchists met. There are no markers or plaques to remind visitors where the conference took place. In fact, the anarchists met at two locations: one on the North Side and the other directly under today’s PPG Paints Arena. It was there, at a German hall near today’s David McCullough bridge and a saloon along Fifth Avenue, that American anarchism first took shape.

When Finns first migrated to Western Pennsylvania en masse, they brought with them a strong socialist culture — a culture that competed with the Christian church and made them a key constituency for the American left for decades.

There aren’t many Finns left in the Mon Valley, where most of the early arrivals settled. There are even fewer physical remnants of their socialist and Communist movements, although for a time they controlled several imposing “red” halls and a network of cooperative businesses. But, for a time, the Finns of Glassport, Monessen, McKeesport and Beaver County were among the region’s most active radicals.

When police raided a gathering of Woodlawn Communists on Armistice Day, 1926, they kicked off a five-year legal battle that would draw national attention and end with one organizer dead.

Police in Woodlawn, Beaver County — later part of Aliquippa, and home to many Jones & Laughlin Steel workers — carried out the nighttime raids on Nov. 11, the eighth anniversary of World War I’s end. Initial reports from the American Civil Liberties Union suggested a dozen workers were snatched from three homes, one of which was host to a birthday party.

The stone building at 6328 Forbes Ave. has borne several names in its history: the Baal Shem Tov Shul, the Labor Zionist Educational Center. In the 1940s and ’50s — before crusading right-wing activists and politicians shut it down by government edict — it was the Jewish Cultural Center.

Sitting in the heart of the modern-day Squirrel Hill Jewish community, the center was a refuge for left-wing Jews during the Communist movement’s heyday. Just nine years into its existence, however, the center came under attack, with anticommunists claiming it was the site of Soviet indoctrination and guerrilla warfare training. Two years later it was nearly gone, and before long it would be all but forgotten.

Scores of police stood guard on Aug. 22, 1948, as a crowd of white and Black bathers made their way to the Highland Park pool. Bottles rained down as hundreds of white opponents circled to attack. Fistfights broke out; a Black police officer was kicked in the chest and sent to a hospital. When the battle cleared, several would-be bathers lay injured or sat handcuffed. Some conspicuously wore “Henry Wallace for President” buttons.

The incident was the worst yet in the ongoing campaign to desegregate the Highland Park pool, a flashpoint in Pittsburgh’s 1940s civil rights struggle. The push to open the pool has been well covered, including by University of Montana Professor Jeff Wiltse — but it’s worth noting the key role of Communists, left-wing unionists and Progressive Party activists in the fight. While Red Scare-era reports would blame radicals for the “race riot,” Communists themselves later took credit for launching the struggle. After years in the courts and the headlines, they would finally open the pool to Black bathers.