Martin Delany Pittsburgh history begins with a remarkable fact that most people, including most Pittsburghers, have never heard. In February 1865, President Abraham Lincoln personally commissioned Martin Delany as a Major in the Union Army, making him the first Black field officer in the history of the United States. The two men met in the…

The Pittsburgh Crawfords of the early 1930s were, by most informed assessments, one of the greatest baseball teams ever assembled. Their roster included five players who would eventually be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Their pitcher was Satchel Paige, the most dominant and theatrically gifted hurler of his era. Their catcher was Josh…

Josh Gibson Pittsburgh career ended on January 20, 1947, when he died of a stroke at the age of thirty-five. He had been in declining health for some time, his body worn down by years of catching, by a brain tumor, by the specific grief of a man who understood what was being withheld from…

Isaly’s Pittsburgh: Chipped Ham, Klondike Bars & a Lost Legacy Chipped ham Pittsburgh style is one of those foods that is almost impossible to explain to someone who did not grow up with it. Order it at a deli counter anywhere outside western Pennsylvania and watch what happens. The person behind the counter will look…

Somewhere in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in the late 1960s, a young man with no formal medical background beyond a rigorous training program was doing things in the back of a moving ambulance that had never been done outside a hospital. He was managing airways, starting intravenous lines, monitoring cardiac rhythms, and making clinical decisions that…

On the morning of February 11, 2001, thousands of Pittsburgh residents gathered on bridges, riverbanks, and rooftops before sunrise to watch a building die. Three Rivers Stadium Pittsburgh had stood at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers for thirty years, and at seven in the morning a series of precisely placed explosive charges…