WEBVTT 00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Frankie W. Pace: Telephone might ring while you're talking. 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:23.000 Gary Walters: Any time--any time that we have to-- Pace: Here I'll shut it, shut it off. 00:00:23.000 --> 00:01:18.000 Pace: Well, I was--I was born in Louisiana in a little town called Clinton out from Baton Rouge. But I left there at a very early age and went to Chicago. And I stayed in Chicago and went to finish high school there. And I entered the University of Illinois. But I became ill and had to drop out of college. And then I came back and I did one semester--little college work in the evening at a college, then was known as Crane Junior College. I don't think that that college is there anymore. Now, after that, in 1935, I got married and we came to Pittsburgh the next year, in July '36. 00:01:18.000 --> 00:02:57.000 Pace: And I've been here in Pittsburgh ever since. The first 14 months I was here, I lived on the North Side on on two streets, Brighton Road, and I forgot the name of the other little street was up off of Urban Avenue, but I can't remember the little street. Then I moved to Centre Avenue within the vicinity of where I am now. See, I live at 2310 Centre, which is just a block from here. But when we first moved over here, we lived at 2346 Centre and that's where we started our first store, my husband was living then. And we moved from 2346 to 2330. We still operated a business there. And then in 1945 we moved the business to here because it was a better location. Then we bought a house at 2310 in 1940. So I have been here within the vicinity of these two blocks for 35 years, in the Hill District. When I moved here, when we moved over here, this was a White settlement, predominantly Jewish and all of the businesses along here, with the exception of a few undertakers, was all White businesses in this establishment. And in the block where I live now, that was residential section, apartment houses and homes, and most of them were older Jewish family. Later on they moved out and the houses, some were rented and some were sold to the--to Black people. 00:02:57.000 --> 00:03:02.000 Pace: And that's where that--that as it stands right now. 00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:26.000 Pace: But of course, many changes have been made here in the Hill. And since I've been here these 35 years, when I first came over here, the most astounding thing about the whole of Pittsburgh to me was there was so few Black people in anything. 00:03:26.000 --> 00:05:11.000 Pace: And I had come from Chicago where Black people were doing not everything, but doing many more things. I had graduated from high school where most of the teachers were Black. We had Black principals, deans and so forth and so on. Many, many Black professional people. And when I came here and asked where are the teachers, there was no Black teachers here. Not at all. None was in the school. I think to my knowledge, the first Black teachers came into this school right here on the corner of Centre and Soho, the Leo Weil, that was in 1940. I think it was '40, between '39 and '40 anyway. And it was only two. And I think two was in Herron Hill and one was doing music probably in one of the other elementary schools, I think McKelvey one of those. And then after that I could see a little progress, but very, very slowly. But we--we got a few more teachers. Then we finally got a Black person elected to city council. But the main thing here was when about, I think it's been maybe about 14 or 15 years ago when they demolished the Lower Hill, where is now the Civic Arena and Washington Plaza and and Chatham Center, this was the thing that began to deteriorate the Hill worse than what it is now, because most of there were a lot of there was a heavy populated Black and Italian community down in there. 00:05:11.000 --> 00:06:17.000 Pace: And then the people had nowhere to go but to Homewood. And this is what made Homewood a ghetto, which it is now. I mean, it's thickly populated. It was a very--Homewood was a very nice neighborhood when I came here 37 years ago. There were big homes, of course, that had been a White neighborhood originally, too. They had moved out and sold their homes to people. And you see, the thing of it was what happened here in the Hill as well as in Homewood, when the people bought these homes, they were old and you were trying to pay a mortgage and many of them couldn't pay their mortgage and keep up repair and some of them depreciated because there were so many things had to be done to them. And of course, we got very little city service. City service was very poor. We--we couldn't get our streets swept and get them watered. And it was only about, and we organized a group then known as the Home Owners and Tenants Association. That was in 1957. 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:20.000 Walters: 1957? Pace: 1957, yeah. 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:47.000 Pace: That's the charter up there. And because we were so disgusted with poor lighting, dirty streets and most of the people, we had absentee landlords who owned hundreds of apartments who wouldn't do anything about fixing them up or anything. And through this organization, the homeowners and tenants, we made a survey [telephone rings] [sound of footsteps and the tape cutting out] 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:51.000 Pace: Let me see if-- Walters: You were talking about the owners and tenants association. 00:06:51.000 --> 00:07:58.000 Pace: Well, we organized under a fellow who now lives in in Homewood, George Leban. He called a group together and he said, we've got to--we had a lot of we had a lot of dirt streets up on Obin and up there on the Hill. I don't know if you've been up there. And he lived on one of those streets. And we had been fighting with city council and things so long for some lighting and some cans on the street and to pave some of the streets up here and especially to get rid of the dirt street. So actually the first march on city hall since I have been here in these 35 years to march right into the council chambers. Now, people were probably thinking, what is this organization? We didn't have any money, but we made us some little cardboard signs on sticks and it was 70 of us! I'll never forget. And we marched into city council with all those signs and went right into the chambers and they said, We want better lighting. We want our streets cleaned. Down with dirt streets, you know, and just the different complaints that we had. And at that time, council could give us a hearing. 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:00.000 Walters: Was this an all Black organization at this point? 00:08:00.000 --> 00:09:28.000 Pace: No, we weren't. We weren't. No, we weren't all Black. We had well, most of us were Black, but we had at that time when we made the march in there, we were all Black. Yeah, this is right. Because we were definitely from a nucleus right here on the Hill and we were all Black at that particular time. But in the home owners and tenants, we had a few White, like a couple of priests and things like that worked with us. Now later on we got some others, but in this particular one, I'll get up to that later on. In this particular group, the home owners and tenants, we had this one--why we named it home owners and tenants because we wanted people who who had homes and people who were renting who needed services. This is why we call it a home owners and tenants organization. And we went around and solicited and we got enough funds to pay, I think it was--I believe it was Leroy Irvis at a very minimum fee if I'm right, I think I'm right, I'm not sure. Got the charter for us. I'm not exactly sure who it was now. But anyway, under Judge Sarcone and he recommended--he was very complimentary of us trying to do something to help ourselves. At that time, Lawrence was the mayor of the city and, you know, he was a big, powerful politician. And he had a city council at that particular time, which I call these are my terms, a rubber stamp council, which we had ever since I have been here. 00:09:28.000 --> 00:10:45.000 Pace: Until Mr. Flaherty became the mayor, we had a rubber stamp council. Whatever the mayor wanted, it was just this is it, and that was stamped by council. There was never no rebellion or nothing. It just was a go along. And well, we we went down and marched on. So they promised us. That they would try to do something to help us. And well, we waited. So we did. We was able to get several streets paved up here. And this was the beginning of the fluorescent lights that you see on the street, although you'll hear many, many other organizations take credit for this, which we don't care. We didn't worry about credit. We were working. We weren't worried about getting pictures of things. And sometimes I run across some of these things and bring them out to show where it actually started. But we didn't bother the beginning of trash cans on the corners and everything. This was instituted through this small nucleus of people called the Home Owners and Tenants Association. We began by paying $0.50 a month in order that many people could come in and wouldn't be stopped by dues and we would give little affairs. We used to hold our meetings up in the basement of Saint Richard's church on Bedford Avenue, and the the minister that was there now is now a bishop. 00:10:45.000 --> 00:12:18.000 Pace: He's out in Greensburg. I can't call his name, but anyway, he was nice enough to loan us the church and we were there under him. Well after we had worked as a nucleus and we was just a small group. I then approached Mr.. Bray, who was then at what you call Soho, which was down on Fifth Avenue, Soho House. Then we had Anna B. Heldman Center. And we had the Kay Boys not, well we had the Kay Boys Club and then we had Hill City. Well, all these were different groups. So I went to Mr. Bray and I told him it was so necessary that we have some things done in the Hill. Could he bring all of the different organizations together where we would have a stronger bearing on the powers that be other than our one little organization as the homeowners and tenants that if we all the different organizations in the Hill, we'd come together under one umbrella, we'd have more strength. Out of this was then formed the home of the CCHDR--Citizens Committee for Hill District Renewal. And this is how it came into being. Well, at that particular time. Walters: When was this? Pace: This was--this has been about. Now, I don't have--I don't have. Walters: Just generally. Pace: But we. We're together. Yeah. It's been about eight years ago. Eight years or longer. Maybe a little longer. When we started it, I think we got the charter maybe back in that time. 00:12:18.000 --> 00:13:42.000 Pace: But anyway, then Mr. Bray told us at that time that was going to become a consolidation of agencies. They were not going to be separated. We were going to lose Anna B. Heldmann Center and we were going to lose Hill City, and all of this was going to be consolidated under one thing called Hill House Associations. All right. At that particular time, we had Anna B. Heldman Center, which you see is now built and called Hill House in the new building. And we in that building, it was a lot of space and we could hold meetings there. But when this was formed, we were out of doors and we had no place to meet because that was the place where we used to meet. That was the place where we used to meet. But we went out of doors, we were out of doors, and then we just kind of drifted from place to place. A church basement or wherever anybody would let us meet. And our organization built up very strong. We started then meeting down at the Hospitality House, Father Bassompiere let us in there. We outgrew that. We had such large meetings and went to Ozanam Center and we had a very large group there. Then came the poverty program, which was called the Poverty Program. OEO Commission, you know, OEO. And the people that we had brought into these organizations had little--had some community training. So here comes an organization, offering jobs and different things. 00:13:42.000 --> 00:15:12.000 Pace: So they took our people. They said, come over with us and, you know, you work here and you have a chance to be promoted. So they took most of our training people. You go down and get the people who started with Community Action, they had come under us, the Citizens Committee. So we were left with a small nucleus at that time, but we still kept going on because we weren't controlled. Then. You see, after they went into Community Action, they became under structure so many things. They didn't attend very regularly to our Citizens Committee meeting because they had to follow certain lines under the organizations under which they they were working. And this was, of course, where you could get a job, loaves and fish as they wanted. And they followed this because this was a chance for people. They were paying salaries, which some of the poor people had never been able to earn anything. Many of them was on on relief on a very low income and they was able to get some type of job. Now, I'm not--I'm not altogether, I'm not condemning OEO because I think it did some good things. And I was one of the first people to sit on the original board of OEO and I was the only layperson on the board when it started. There was not another one. Everybody else was some type of professional, and I was the only woman for more than two years and I was there. 00:15:12.000 --> 00:16:31.000 Pace: On the ad hoc committee when they were first getting it formed. So I know from the beginning how it started. And when I first went on, some of the people who said who when I when I don't know how I got on there, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't know how my name got there, how was recommended or anything. I don't know until this day. But I knew some of the people had said, what would she do on that board with judges and lawyers and the mayor and everybody and all. You think she can stay there and, you know, play a part? You know, I was just one layperson person really representing the only person, actually, although we had Byrd Brown, who was the president of the NAACP, He was a lawyer, Yale graduate, [??]. We had some ministers and we had the president of council and we had judges and we had vice president, executive vice presidents of Mellon Bank and Pittsburgh National. Well, you see, I was sitting with some very... Walters: Certainly. Pace: Right. But I made up my mind when I went when I was selected by the mayor, because the first board was selected by mayor--this was Mayor Bob. When I went in to him and I was interviwed, he said to me what he was trying to--what he was trying to do. 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:33.000 Unknown Person: [sound of car motor] Good morning, Mrs. Pace. Pace: Nothing today 00:16:33.000 --> 00:16:36.000 Speaker1: Okay, well, just so I stop. 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:37.000 Pace: Okay. 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:39.000 Unknown Person: I just want to want to get the business from you. [laughs] Pace: Okay. All right. 00:16:39.000 --> 00:18:09.000 Pace: So when when I went in to interview him, I said to him, Mr. Mayor, I don't know how to be anybody but myself. And I said, you know, I always would speak out on what I thought. And I said, Now I'm not a person that's going to be controlled. But I'm realistic and I know that I can't have everything I want, but I am not here just to be used if I'm coming in this way. He said no. This is why we selected you, he said. But now you realize we're going to be working with many areas and I know you were interested in the Hill and you can't get everything for the Hill. I said, No, I realize that. I said, I know I can't, but I'm here to fight for these people, to do as much as I can. And I said, and I think we can get along with each other. This was our talk. And then we went on from there and I became a member. And I think I had no trouble with any of those people. I had no trouble getting along. I became very good friends with practically everybody on that board, some I had never seen before. And I did speak out a lot. Some things I said that many of them didn't agree with. That's what I wanted to do, because I think that this is what you have to do sometime to get people to thinking, because the type of people that we had, so many of them didn't know the problems of communities. 00:18:09.000 --> 00:19:22.000 Pace: And the only way that they can know it is by somebody being there who had deep roots and know exactly what happens in the Hill. So after about a couple of years, then Washington began to to say that we need lay people out of the community. So when they began to talk this-our director, who was then Dave Hill, decided he would beat them. So he recommended to our board that we would enlarge our board to bring on a representative from each of our neighborhoods, which we had eight here. And this would bring before this board exactly the problems of each neighborhood. And these people would have a voice in saying what it did. And that's how the power. So this was a very good thing. It brought people on a very local level into a policy making position that you could sit with the judges and lawyers, the mayor, and say, Mr. Mayor, I don't think this is the best thing for my community. I think we ought to have this or that. And this was a good thing. This is one thing that that organization gave to the people see. And and it helped many people. Who had never been--had anything. They were able to get jobs. 00:19:22.000 --> 00:20:42.000 Pace: They went into some training, and many of them have graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and others community college. And all of this was done through Community Action. Now so these are the good things about it. Now, I'm not saying everything, and this is why I have opposed. President Nixon's wanting to eliminate it completely. Now, I'm not saying that there were not faults because there were. But I don't think that because the thing has faults, you should do away with the program completely. You should root out the faults, if the people that's operating it are not doing a good job, remove them and put somebody else. If there are some programs that are not doing what they should, eliminate them. But don't eliminate everything that's doing something good because this is what seems to happen. The poor man, he gets hit the hardest, see? And you. And you don't care because we have many aged people who are being struck by these things. And this is what has happened. And now here in the Hill, one particular thing is housing. That have hit us very hard here. The people who've lived here their lifetimes. And they're close to the church which is dedicated to them. And they--if they don't have money, some of them can walk to town--downtown. Well, you see they being moved out. They're condemning houses. Tearing them down. They've been moved out into like East Hills and out. 00:20:42.000 --> 00:21:48.000 Pace: Well, they are very unhappy. And these are older people. I was just talking to a few of them just recently, and she said to me, I'm so unhappy out in East Hills. Although I have a good house, I'm away from everything. I don't have any money to get back in here to my church. I don't have the proper transportation. Now, these are the things that have been done to poor people. See who don't who. And then we were promised--they were promised when the housing was torn down that they were going to be able to come back when they built some others. But you see, the funds are cut off and there is no housing, just like you had this one, now, she probably wants to go in the projects so she can stay in the Hill and she wants to go on a project in the Hill. See, this is the big problem. She doesn't want to go on a project if I say maybe you could get a project on the North Side or you could get a project,--I don't want to go there. Everybody wants to be here or there because they remain in the Hill and they want to be either in Terrace Village or the Bedford Dwellings, which would keep them in the Hill. But they don't have enough housing but anything so I can stay here. 00:21:48.000 --> 00:23:12.000 Pace: In this particular community, there are people who like it as much as. You can see, it's depreciated, which you can see with the boarded stores and everything that we have here in the community. But now when I say this and I firmly believe this, when we had the disturbance in here and I hear the newspapers and the radio says millions of dollars of damage and bribery and everything, not one--I would just want somebody to tell me--not one good building in this Hill was destroyed. Now if it is, I would like for somebody, I've been here 35 years to take me to the spot and show it to me. That was destroyed. What was destroyed? Now I would not do it. Don't misunderstand me. I'm a--I consider myself a militant person, but not a militant person to throw bombs or to set fires. I believe in doing it in other ways. But the people here had been robbed by the people here. Don't let nobody kid you. The merchants had taken the people, many of them, had taken them for a ride. We had markets up here, meat markets who sold the worst type of meat at a high price and they would run--people could run a credit account. You understand what I'm saying? And they would go there and deal because you can put it on the book. And they were being robbed. 00:23:12.000 --> 00:24:30.000 Pace: Sometimes you had $2. They'd put three. Many of them couldn't read and write and didn't understand how to keep it. Put it down on the book, Mr. Garner. Mr.. Whatever it is. And we didn't get first quality. The only first quality market we had here was the market on the corner there, which was [??] and I think down on Wylie we had a a couple of Jewish markets that carried kosher meat because some Jewish people was up here and they would they would buy there. The stores, they never fixed them up. They didn't care about the community except to get the money and take it away. They didn't do anything for the community. This is why it's depreciated like it is. Don't you know if these buildings had been kept up? Now look at that building across the street. Bomb didn't touch it. No fire was thrown in there. That's rotted down. Isn't that right? You go down the street here and look at all these boarded up. They were rotting. Now, absentee landlords charging people, rents, living in pieces of houses and doing nothing for them year after year, year after year. That's why now a lot of them have to be torn down. They're beyond repair. This is what happened in the Hill. After they moved out there, it changed to a to a complete Black community. So many absentee landlords didn't give a darn about what happened to the people up here. 00:24:30.000 --> 00:25:43.000 Pace: But the people live here. The city didn't care. This is how vice came in here. I'm telling you what I know, not what I think. I've been here. I've lived in it. Vice came in here when you ran in a politician. What did he give you after the election? You can operate a dive or we'll let numbers run loose and we'll let gambling and. And I don't care what anybody say. The police knew it and the police were being paid off. They'll deny this. I can't prove it because I wasn't there. But I. I remember a man across the street, he's deceased now, and he operated numbers and they used to raid him. And one day he became enraged and they came down there and raided this place. And he came out and he says, I'm paying you. I'm paying big money to operate here and I'm going to operate because you're taking my money. We had another man right down the street on this side. He ran a gambling--right in this block! He ran a gambling joint and he said, I'm untouchable. And this is why it upsets me when I hear him talk about which probably you may not know. Schlosser was such a good superintendent of police and everything, certainly because they was getting loads of money. And the man that was the president of the FOB, he's gone out. 00:25:43.000 --> 00:26:52.000 Pace: His name was I can't think of his name, but you know who was before this O'Keefe came in, The man before him, He was, in other words, what you would call. I guess, a bag man. In other words, he would pick up the money. But, you know, you see, I don't have this and this and people who actually know this and who would see him, he would go right in and get his money and sit down at the table and drink with these people. And you see these are the things that just tear me to pieces. And then when I hear them get on the radio and this fella across there that I told you that used to operate numbers. At Christmas time, the police would be lined up, ask anybody this in this community. They would be lined up. Almost a half a block. Lieutenants, captains, or whatever their rank is with brass and white hats and everything. And he was paying them all the way from $500 down to $5. They would be lying. One man was sitting here one day when they was getting, he said, Oh, I wish I had a camera so I could just go out there and take this and take it down there and show it to them. This is absolutely what has happened in this hill, and this is why we have got the problems that we have today. 00:26:52.000 --> 00:28:04.000 Pace: Had it been taken care of years ago, it never would have developed. It's just like a cancer. If you go to the doctor or any type of disease and if you can catch it in the beginning, you may not completely be cured, but you live a long, long time. But if you let it become serious or cancer become malignant, nothing can be done. And you see they allowed vice to run rampant up here. It's a Black community. They allowed dope to run rampant out here. It's in the Black community and bother nobody but the Black folks let it go until it began to move out into suburbia and into better White neighborhoods and people became involved in it. Then we began to get some type of service. You see, this is this this is what has happened. And this is why I say that we can and right now. But you see, you've got to be in order to press for these things, Bob Lavelle and myself, we're probably the most outspoken people up here. Mr. Lavelle works for himself. He's got a real estate business. I don't have anything. I have this little store, but at least I'm not hungry and I'm never going to sell myself. They don't have enough money to buy me. I would never I'm going to always be able to speak. And this is why I didn't take a job. 00:28:04.000 --> 00:29:05.000 Pace: I could have taken a job. I've been offered jobs and I felt that I was far more qualified than some of the people who took them because I had community experience. But I don't take they would have been glad to give me one to shut my mouth, but I wanted to speak out. I'm like Dr. King. I might not--when I'm gone, I might not have nothing to show for it, but if I help somebody, then my living haven't been in vain. So this is my theory. And people look at me, even my own daughter, and say, Momma, you're so foolish. You just work, work, work. You never get nothing to other people. But this. This is what I want. I don't ever want to be controlled. And I can step today as hard as they say Mr. Flaherty is to get and Bruce Campbell and everybody's the boss and everything. I bet you today, if I wanted to get into that office and talk to that mayor, I could talk to him if he's there and I could talk to Bruce Campbell, because they know when I come to speak, I'm speaking for the community. I'm not asking for no special favors for myself or anything. I'm working for the community and the people know that I can call down to the police department if I don't get the service. 00:29:05.000 --> 00:30:14.000 Pace: I want them down here at the station, which we don't get. I called downtown and I said, Now I want this traffic moved from here. It's too much up here. All right. We'll send somebody up in this place because I know when you call on him, it's for the benefit. But in order for you to do that, you've got to not be tainted with things that they can wash in your face. And Bob Lavelle and myself, we don't have to. This is the thing. But now many people come to me and say, Mrs. Pace, will you call him? I say, Why don't you call him? Well, I can't call them because--you understand. And these are the things. And I said, Well, you see, you need more than one person. All of us need to get together as a unit. But if I'm doing a little something on the side and you're doing a little something, these are the things and people are just afraid now. I'm afraid to give my name. I'm afraid somebody will come after me if I say--and when you call and you're going to register a complaint, you got to say who you are. And a lot of people don't want to give their name. They are afraid of reprisal or something like that. But if you do the right thing and you have nothing to hide, you don't have to be afraid of reprisal. 00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:18.000 Walters: Let me go back a little ways because we've covered. Pace: Yeah, right. 00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:37.000 Pace: I know. [speaking simulataneously] Walters: This is very good. But I'm thinking now, say, after World War Two, when the Pittsburgh Renaissance or whatever we want to call it, was really, really beginning. And before the Hill Project or anything. What was your impression of of the Renaissance? What was going on in Pittsburgh? 00:30:37.000 --> 00:32:02.000 Pace: See, when the Renaissance, when the Renaissance began here, that began under Mayor Lawrence. Walters: Right. Pace: Because the Mellons gave them money. But the Renaissance didn't mean anything to the people in the community. The Renaissance was for downtown. And--and I was working then on this on a on a committee and small groups. We had just block clubs then. And I never will forget. This is why I have--so I don't have--I just doubt the sincerity of Mr. Mauro, who is now the president of PAT, although I think he has changed somewhat. He was then I think he was an executive director--he was something to the mayor, I don't know. But he had over this thing. And we went down to a meeting and one of the first buildings they were building that when they put those buildings in Gateway Center, building up and then they was going to build this this Mellon Park, you know, and everything there. And they was talking then about putting this in Washington Plaza and they were going to take--you see did Mr. Lavelle said to you, you know, one time they had a plan for this Hill with the Renaissance to take this all the way. Centre Avenue was going to be a high speed boulevard. Well, anyway, we went down to a meeting. At that time, it was just a few of us down there. And I said to Mr. Mauro, I said, Mr. Mauro, what are you going to do with the people in the Hill when you put up all these elaborate buildings? Well, we're not saying you can't live there. 00:32:02.000 --> 00:33:46.000 Pace: I said, You're saying we can't live there [telephone rings] when you put the price. [sound of footsteps and the tape pausing] I said to him, I said, Mr. Mauro, where are you going to put these people? And he said. Uh, you said you were going to build apartments up there. You will have nothing cheaper than $50 a room or more from that on up. I said, where will the poor people go? That's in the Lower--that was in the Lower Hill. He said, I don't care where they go because we are looking to put up buildings where the city can get tax money. And if we build these kind of buildings, we can get big tax money for the city. We not get nothing off of those shacks and things up there. This was his attitude! And that was his attitude for many, many years. He treated you as though you were dirt! This is true. This is--he knows, I told him this to his teeth and he has changed somewhat now. And I met him one day and I said, Well, I'm glad to see you smile. Because you used to just be like a bulldog when people would come to talk to you. And this is the attitude and this is what we had. And the Renaissance didn't give a darn about us because we are going to take the Hill. We don't care what become of those people up there and the and you know, down where the Melody tent site they call there. See this was where they was going to put a symphony hall, $46 million symphony hall. Mr. Heinz had already paid $50,000 and had the plan drawn and this was going to be named with his name on it like he was going to give $16 million toward the building of that other than this and four blocks up where that church sits there. Saint---? 00:33:46.000 --> 00:34:55.000 Pace: I'll think of it in a couple more. They were going to move four blocks and this was going to be a park for them to look out through that all that glass they were going to have up there in the symphony hall. Well, we got a wind of this. All of this was being done. Nobody in the community was consulted or anything. But we got a wind to this. So our organization formed a committee. We were not the citizens, we were this group small yet we hadn't got. We went and we set up a meeting to meet with Mr. Heinz and we had a fellow named. Oh, mercy...West--Troy West, who was an architect who had worked with us, Citizens[unintelligble]. And Troy and a group of his people, had made a drawing and a study of putting a symphony in Oakland. And so, Troy, we went out there. Troy said, I can go with you, and I have a plan. We have the slides and everything to show where this could be put in Oakland. And so we set up a meeting with Mr. Heinz. He gave us an audience and we went--now this is all see, this is the this is what they were going to do with this renaissance. We are not bothered about these poor people. We are going to take the Hill. 00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:58.000 Walters: So the justification was to increase the tax base-- Pace: Right! Walters: --not to work with the people. 00:34:58.000 --> 00:36:18.000 Pace: And not--it wasn't concerned with human people, just like Mr. Irvis said, that without people you don't have a community and people are human beings and this is what we ought to think about. But we they wasn't thinking about this. Now, this when they said when they say to me that Lawrence was such a great mayor and the Renaissance and everything, you know, I just bubbles over because he didn't give a darn about people, you understand. And of course, the Mellons, this was their home base and they wanted to furnish this money. And this is how I that's called Mellon Park. And all this was given and things was toned down. Good building people was put out to build up this renaissance downtown, but it didn't move any further. And what did it do for the community? Why would you want a place as close as the Hill is to downtown to be in the in the condition it's in now? We are the closest area to downtown. And in most cities you can go, even if they have built up downtown, the the buildings are down there. They would do something for this community and all these politicians. This is the thing that gets me. Lawrence, all of them came from right out of this Hill, the lower part of the Hill. This is where Lawrence lived. He got wealthy after he became a politician, but he came out the very lower part of the Hill. 00:36:18.000 --> 00:37:18.000 Pace: All of the old politicians, this is where they came from. And this was--the Renaissance mean nothing to us! So as far as I'm concerned, there has been no renaissance. You know, I mean, as a for us it was in the city and they talk about what they have done and everything, but the only thing they were to do here was to run us, I don't know, in the river or where we were going to go. But they didn't make any plans for you. They were going to take this for high powered people and we didn't know where we were going, they never told us. So all you had, all you would have had up here would have been the projects. And we as this organization formed the base and we just went down there and told them we will form a human wall. You're going to stop at Crawford Street. We will not let you take any more of the Hill if you come with with those shovels for redevelopment. Now we will agree to renewal. That's why we were called Citizens Committee for Hill District Renewal because we knew we needed. But we are not going to let you level it like you did the Lower Hill. You scoop us up in those shovels and that was when we got some actions. 00:37:18.000 --> 00:38:19.000 Pace: And I think then the city said when they was going to build this symphony and thing and they began to study and 46 million and the poor little children down there. And I said to Mr. Heinz--when we met with him, I said, Mr. Heinz, if you want to do something in the Hill, why don't you build some apartments for poor people? You can say the Heinz Apartments. Your name will be there and you will be remembered by little children who had a decent place to stay. And you want to put a symphony, in the houses across, the people are sitting in there with umbrellas to catch the rain because it's raining down through the roofs. And you mean to tell me you're going to put. And we knew this was the one thing we knew. If that symphony went there, you know, they weren't going to put a $46 million building and let across be some shacks. Not common sense tell anybody that. We're not going to bother--now, don't you know we knew that. And you see, this is why we have to stop this, because if you come back when you got that, I'm going to take the rest and we have nobody else. So this is this is what the Renaissance done for us. Yeah. 00:38:19.000 --> 00:38:25.000 Walters: What was the sequence of events then that, that, uh, kind of changed the direction of what was happening? 00:38:25.000 --> 00:39:46.000 Pace: Well the sequence of events we began, they began, URA--which Mr. Pease was then a director. They began meeting with us in the Hill, and they brought up some drawing. Mr. Bond, who still, I think he's with--I don't know who he's with now, but he still was somebody connected with the city or county. They was showing us some houses they wanted to put up here and do this the way they wanted, but we didn't agree with that. We didn't want what they were showing us. And we told them that we thought any plan that was going to come up here on the Hill, we should have something to say about it and we should be there with them to plan. So we--they saw that we just wasn't going to accept certain things. And this happened then shortly after we had had these these particular meetings, they in the meantime, they had closed down the Anna B. Heldman Center. They had put this all together. And then we really, to tell you the truth, when we really got some sort of action, was after we had the disturbance, after Dr. King's death, then Pittsburgh began to think, we've got to recognize the people. So that's it. And you see today, even with the Hill, the most of the properties up here that you see boarded up, they either owned by the absentee White landlords or they have let them go and they're now owned by the city. 00:39:46.000 --> 00:40:40.000 Pace: Let them go for taxes. I understand down here most of these have they just let it go after they left and for taxes. Now, in order for you to get a place here, you'd have to be able to build something. It takes a lot of money. Where are you going to get the money from and to to stock the place? You know, you have to have a working capital. And this is the trouble when you start a business here. We got to be it's got to be some kind of way where the people can get working capital because you're not going to make a profit right away. And then they now there was a little business here next door to me. The boy had a little store there, but he was paying exorbitant rent. He had to hire help and he just had to close. He wasn't making it. You know, everything is slow now. People are laid off and folks are going where they can get the most of the dollar. And for that reason, he had to close. So this is this is what is happening. 00:40:40.000 --> 00:41:51.000 Pace: You got to be very dedicated to sacrifice and you can't pay the rent, light, telephone unless you got a moving business. And everybody is just not dedicated to stick it out and and do without. But I think that we have probably if we can get some of these younger people who have been trained and who has more knowledge about operating, and if we can get some type of money in here where we can build up some of these things, I hope--because I'm not a young person--that I'll see the Hill come back to be a very thriving community because it's a nice--it's near the town, it's centrally but traffic and I wouldn't want to live anyplace else but on Centre Avenue because it's convenient for me. I don't own a car and I can step right out. I live in a community where people look after each other. We're neighbors and now if I go off in an apartment where I know nobody, die up there by myself, and I would rather live here. But I do want a decent community and I want to see taken care of just like other communities. And I think we can do this if we can get the proper cooperation. 00:41:51.000 --> 00:42:51.000 Walters: Let me interrupt just a second and flip this over.
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