Making History Blog
Book Review: “Banished from Johnstown: Racist Backlash in Pennsylvania”
Banished From Johnstown: Racist Backlash in Pennsylvania By Cody McDevitt History Press, 2020 224 pages Paperback, $23.99 Reviewed by Samuel W. Black, Director, African American Program, Heinz History Center…
Book Review: “Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob”
Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob By Russell Shorto W.W. Norton, 2021 272 pages Hardcover, $26.95 Reviewed by Bill Keyes, former museum division director at the…
Fred Lenn: The Battling Boxer
Fred Lenn fought in two arenas—as a Marine serving during World War II and Korea, and in the ring as a champion amateur and professional boxer. The second of…
Have Fun but Remember the War: Halloween during World War II
With the History Center’s traveling exhibit “We Can Do It: WWII” returning to Barensfeld Gallery, it seemed a good time to celebrate the upcoming Halloween holiday by looking back on how this haunting…
Colin Powell: A Soul Soldier’s Life
In 2006, I was busy working on a new exhibit, Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era. The exhibit would go on to win regional, statewide, and national awards and travel to seven…
Acorns for Dinner: Finding Food in Prehistoric Pennsylvania
A walk in Squirrel Hill is always pleasant, but as I followed the sidewalk yesterday after a summer of ethnobotanical study, I looked at the plants growing along the…
Asian American Heritage at the Heinz History Center
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. To mark the occasion, explore artifacts from the Heinz History Center collection that speak to Asian and Asian American heritage…
Celebrating National Nurses Week
A photograph in the collection of the History Center’s Detre Library & Archives captures a moment in the life of an operating room nurse from Montefiore Hospital, c. 1910.…
Matzah, Made in Pittsburgh
A photograph from the April 24, 1929 edition of the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, showing Radbord and a team of baker packing matzah for Passover deliveries throughout Western Pennsylvania. If you…
Daisy Lampkin
Born in Washington, D.C. and educated in Reading, Pa., Daisy Lampkin was a suffragette, civil rights activist, organization executive, business woman, orator, and community leader. Gift of Earl L.…