Critical Race Theory and Forgotten History: 200 Black Men Reenslaved In Pittsburgh For Spring Planting

Feb. 2, 1909, Immigration from the southern states of Blacks was an ongoing issue in many northern cities as they attempted to adapt to the increased population. Pittsburgh was one of the cities on the forefront of this migration, the city was one of the major stops on the underground railroad and the steel industry offered the possibility of good paying jobs.

The Herron Hills neighborhood in the North Oakland area of Pittsburgh became the Black community with this migration. While there was economic opportunity in the city, and a number of people had gone into business owning groceries, butcher shops and barber shops. Regardless there was still a problem when men who came from a agricultural background entered into an industrial workforce so the unemployment rate for Blacks was higher than for Whites and prejudicial attitudes in the mills and unions made it harder for Blacks to find jobs.

In the winter of 1909 White women began making reports they were being accosted and assaulted in Herron Hills and surrounding neighborhoods. There was little to substantiate this accusation, no witnesses and little evidence except the accusations. There also was no formal investigation into any of the reported incidents.

What did happen was the police using these accusations as a cover entered into the Herron Hills neighborhood and began arresting Black men if they couldn’t prove they had employment. Men were arrested for vagrancy and disorderly conduct. On the night of Feb. 2^nd, they arrested over 200 men. The newspapers of the time reported that this all was done to reassure White women they were safe, but again there was not investigation into assaults. What conclusively happened was that 200 men were arrested and sent to the workhouse where they had to earn their freedom. The Allegheny County workhouse held roughly a 1,000 men at any one time and it was a working farm and workers made furniture, brooms and did laundry. The workhouse forced men to work for nothing while it earned $200,000 a year (6 million in 2023). This type of re-enslavement was a cash fountain for the county and the Feb. 2^nd arrests would give the county a huge work force for spring planting. The men would on average serve 30-45 days for vagrancy and drunkenness. A handful of the men were charged with assault and served 2 to 10 years at the workhouse.

The arrest of the 200 was a bit of an outlier based on the number of arrests, however the police did double their patrols of the Herron Hills community. The mass arrest was a clear example of how even in Northern cities Blacks after the Civil War faced challenges toward their freedom and could be arrested and convicted just based on an accusation.