Last Updated: May 31, 2000
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One of three winning stories by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that
won the Jesse Laventhol prize for deadline writing in 1998.
The region’s fight against hate groups didn’t begin when white men came
to town dressed in bed sheets.
In Monroeville, a racial hate flier circulating at Gateway High School
two years ago prompted formation of a local group that tries to fight racism
at its roots.
In the Allegheny Valley, an incident in which a black teen-ager was
beaten by white thugs in Harrison brought the Alle-Kiski Community Relations
Council into existence.
Some Washington County residents formed a task force in 1989 when racial
incidents erupted around the Mel Blount youth home in Buffalo. The
Washington-based Committee for Racial Equality continues to operate, one
of the oldest groups of its type in the state, said William Lacey, one
of the group’s founders.
"Our mission is to eradicate racism within ourselves and within our
community," Lacey said. "It is a 24-hour job."
Out of both subtle and blatant incidents of discrimination and hatred
across Western Pennsylvania, citizens’ groups have sprung up to sponsor
seminars, education programs and church services. They bring in speakers
and try to encourage dialogue.
Yesterday, members of some of these groups, under the banner of the
Pittsburgh Coalition to Counter Hate Groups, gathered in Market Square
to hold a rally to counteract the Ku Klux Klan rally at the City-County
building on Grant Street.
Leaders of the groups say that standing up against the Klan is an easier
mission than getting people who don’t consider themselves biased or who
don’t think about the issue to acknowledge and deal with their own prejudices.
"As long as we talk about this guy from Punxsutawney, we don’t have
to make excuses for our own biases," said Ray Firth of the Monroeville
Race Unity Forum.
Firth was referring to C. Edward Foster, a grand dragon in the American
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who lives in Walton, near Punxsutawney, Jefferson
County, and was to lead the Klan in its first Pittsburgh rally in about
70 years.
The Pittsburgh Coalition to Counter Hate Groups, the umbrella organization
that organized yesterday’s counter demonstration in Market Square, has
been fighting all kinds of hatred for about 19 years, said Barney Oursler,
a co-founder.
The coalition passed out banners and signs saying "Not in Our Town."
That theme is based on a video that tells the story of residents in Billings,
Mont., who joined together when their neighbors were under attack by white
supremacists.
In Western Pennsylvania, hate does talk in isolated incidents that continue
to plague communities and erupt in school districts, where the young have
learned hatred from the adults around them.
Last fall, six students were suspended from Slippery Rock High School
in Butler for using racial slurs and for harassing the half dozen black
students who attend school there.
In October, a Derry couple was forced off the road and their car was
damaged in what police said was a racial attack. In November, volunteers
joined in to repaint the Resurrection Church in West Mifflin after satanic
obscenities, swastikas and white power symbols were painted on the church.
In 1995, a teacher at Trinity Middle School in Washington County received
a 20-day suspension on charges that he used a racial slur referring to
a black student. That same year, some schools in Washington County were
plagued by racist incidents, including black puppets with nooses around
their necks and Ku Klux Klan cards slipped into student locker vents. Firth
said the flier circulated at Gateway High School in March 1995 prompted
high school students to demand that adults in the community take some action.
The flyer included a copy of a Pennsylvania Game Commission logo and
a message calling for hunting minorities.
Firth praised the school district for its quick response to the incident.
Four white Gateway students were suspended and the school district outlined
plans for programs to heighten sensitivity to racial issues.
Those programs could be tested: Foster has said he wants to hold a Klan
rally at the Gateway School District later this year.
In northern Allegheny County, the Pittsburgh North Anti-Racism Coalition
was formed after a local peace group decided to explore relationships between
economic downturns and racial problems.
What the group found was that blacks didn’t feel entirely welcome in
the predominantly white North Hills. At the same time, whites feared that
life in the North Hills wasn’t typical of what their children would experience
when they moved to areas with more diverse populations.
"Our concerns are that as things go, (racism) in the North Hills is
more covert than overt," said Mary Sheehan of McCandless, a spokesperson
for the Pittsburgh North Anti-Racism Coalition.
The coalition recently confronted the North Hills school board when
it passed a resolution asking the government to pay for the cost of educating
children who live in homes owned by the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development.
The coalition believes schools should support a mandated HUD plan that
would create housing opportunities in Allegheny County’s suburbs for people
who used to live in a Braddock housing project.
"When hate talks, we have the right to say no," said Anita Fine of New
Kensington, a spokeswoman for the Alle-Kiski Community Relations
Council.
Fine said the council, which sponsors seminars and educational programs
on all forms of discrimination in the Allegheny Valley, came into existence
after a 14-year-old black youth was attacked in Harrison in 1992. She said
his jaw was fractured and he was blinded in one eye.
The attack was so "horrific," Fine said, that a group of residents placed
an advertisement in the local newspaper vowing not to tolerate racial hatred
in their community. She said so many people wanted their names printed
on the ad that the group had to place a second ad to accommodate the signers.
