(exciting music) (keys shuffling) (pedal clicking) (engine revving) (pleasant music) (wheel clicking) (car revving) - This is a chapter of Pittsburgh history that every Pittsburgher should know.

The story of our city, which was really transformed by The Great Migration.

- Cars are so important for mobility.

African Americans were able to go to places that had differing laws that allowed them more freedoms.

An exhibit at The Frick on the automobile and The Great Migration really opens up the whole topic in ways that just another book on the topic wouldn't do it.

(graphics whooshing) (airy music) - [Narrator] A unique exhibit examines one of the largest movements of people in US history.

- So, here at The Frick Pittsburgh, we really like to think about vehicles as storytellers and how we can tell American history through vehicles.

(country music) Who used them, who made them, how did they make history happen.

- [Narrator] On view at the Car and Carriage Museum are 10 vintage vehicles.

Cars and trucks like these that transported African Americans from the south to the more industrialized north.

- So, we're looking at a Ford Model T from 1914.

- [Narrator] And other models that later generations of migrants would purchase as they transitioned into middle class.

- The invention of the automobile really granted autonomy to those who could afford it.

- [Narrator] Dawn Brean (Dawn's voice drowns) is Chief Curator and Director of Collections at The Frick.

- So, we really were thinking about how the automobile facilitated The Great Migration movement (soft pleasant music) of black Southerners up to northern cities, like Pittsburgh, and how they really transformed Pittsburgh.

- [Narrator] From 1910 to the 1960s, more than 6 million African-Americans set out from southern states for new lives in other parts of the US.

- There are a lot of different reasons that African Americans migrated up from the South.

I think foremost among them was to escape the increased threat of racial violence, and to better their economic prospects.

(pleasant music intensifies) - [Dr. Glasco] The Great Migration, we can very precisely date it.

- [Narrator] Dr. Larry Glasco is a Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, and an advisor for the exhibition.

- It wasn't that the persecution got worse then, they didn't come until 1917 in numbers because there were no jobs!

1917, (soldiers shuffling) the jobs opened up 'cause of the war.

- [Narrator] World War I helped to change the look of the Northern American workforce.

- 1917, when America entered World War I, Germany responded by cutting off all trade in the Atlantic Ocean, European immigrants who had typically taken all the jobs in industrial America, and was cut off as industrialists needed a labor force.

(soft music) So then, they changed their policy, which had been not to hire blacks except as strikebreakers, now they went down and recruited them!

And they came up in droves.

- [Narrator] Black migrants came from all parts of the South, but in Pittsburgh, they came mostly from a few states.

- Now, the ones who came to Pittsburgh, came especially from Alabama and Georgia, and to some extent, North Carolina.

Alabama was the main source of migrants.

Partly because they came not just for working in the steel mills, but also in the coal mines.

Pittsburgh had coal mines, Alabama had coal mines, and blacks had experience as coal miners.

(soft music intensifies) (soft music softens) - It started because you knew somebody up there in the city.

So if one person from your family moved up to Pittsburgh, they were sending you news and writing letters, and talking about how great Pittsburgh was, and how you needed to get up there, and they were reading stories in the newspapers, especially the black newspapers like Pittsburgh Courier, and that would encourage kinda like a chain migration to follow other family members or friends up to those cities.

- [Narrator] Cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh.

(train whooshing and choo-chooing) Travel was originally by train, then bus, and later, the automobile.

But it was a mode of transportation that was especially risky.

- You could be traveling into an area where you couldn't go to a restaurant.

Your car might break down, and you couldn't find a service station that would serve you because you are black.

(soft music) You might have to carry more supplies and carry food with you.

You didn't wanna find yourself in a sundown town, which was a town that pretty explicitly said "No blacks should be in the area after sundown, or they might meet with racial violence, or worse."

(pleasant exotic music) - [Narrator] During these highly-segregated times, "The Green Book" became an essential guide.

It listed hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, barbershops, beauty parlors, and other establishments that provided services for black drivers.

(pleasant exotic music intensifies) - So, it was really difficult to find places that could accommodate you on the road, which is why travel resources like "The Green Book" and other guidebooks like that became so essential for black drivers.

- [Narrator] It's estimated that from 1917 to the 1930s, thousands of blacks made their way to Pittsburgh.

- The black population here more than doubled.

It went from 25,000 to 55,000 in just about 10 to 15 years.

Now, in 1930 with The Depression, the migration slows down drastically 'cause there weren't jobs.

Then, the next big migration came in World War II.

(soft music) As America geared up for war, jobs were available.

(country music) - [Narrator] The city's newest immigrants almost always settled in the Hill District.

- The Hill District had a lot of good things going on for it.

The one thing it did not have was good housing.

Housing was a big, big problem.

It was very crowded.

There was a lot of disease, a lot of illness.

People got sick at home, the men got sick on the jobs.

- But despite the hardships and in hope of a better life, the journeys north continued.

(soft orchestral music) - [Narrator] The cars began coming off the assembly line at the rate of 1 every 40 seconds.

- [Dawn] So, the earliest car that we have in the exhibition is a 1914 Model T. - [Narrator] Now, everybody could have one.

- The assembly line production made it affordable (suitcase shuffling) to a larger number of consumers.

Black southern migrants may have been driving cars just like this one, while others might have been traveling up on the train.

(upbeat jazz music) We also have some Buick models from the 1930s, and the Buicks were a really popular make with black buyers because they had a reputation for durability and reliability.

They had a really large size, they had powerful V8 engines, which could come in really handy if you found yourself in a dangerous situation.

Black drivers were looking for different things from their automobiles.

If you couldn't find a hotel or somewhere to accommodate you on an overnight trip, you might end up sleeping in your car, and you needed that extra space to carry the extra supplies and food that you might need along the way.

(upbeat music) So, the exhibition includes a lot of everyday cars, but also some really flashy, aspirational status symbols.

And this 1938 Red Packard would have really stood out in a crowd.

This would've been so noticed as it traveled through the Hill District.

And this is really similar to a car that was owned by Gus Greenlee, who was a philanthropist, a racketeer, owner of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, the Negro League's baseball team.

He actually built Greenlee Field, which was the first black-owned, black-built baseball park in American history.

And on opening day, he drove out in the back seat, convertible top down in a white suit with a red rose, and his lapel smoking a cigar, in a car very similar to this one.

(jazz music) - [Narrator] For most African Americans though, buying a fancy expensive car was not possible financially, and because of bigotry.

It was next to impossible to own your own home.

So, owning a car became that symbol of really making it.

- It could be difficult to get a car, especially a new car, 'cause that implied you were well-off, and might be thinking you were better than what whites wanted you to think you were.

(jazz music intensifies) (jazz music softens) - [Narrator] But for those with enough money, the Cadillac became the car of choice.

Buying one though was not easy.

- There were dealers in Pittsburgh who wouldn't sell Cadillacs to blacks.

(dramatic music) ♪ Let's go all out and buy a Cadillac too ♪ ♪ I can hardly wait for the dream to come true ♪ - So, earlier in the 20th century, Cadillac, which was part of GM, had an unwritten policy discriminating against black buyers.

But after some poor sales in the 1940s, they eliminated that unwritten policy and started marketing directly to black consumers, because they realized the market potential that they brought.

- [Narrator] Alonna Carter-Donaldson is a descendant of southern black migrants who came from Alabama, settling in the Hill District around 1917.

She's lived in Pittsburgh all of her life, and is a historian and fellow at The Frick Pittsburgh.

Carter-Donaldson's research also reveals some interesting information about The Great Migration and its connection to cars, which she put together in a timeline.

- In 1915, CR Patterson and Sons became the first African American-owned automobile manufacturer, and that was in Ohio.

So, fast forwarding into the 1940s, Ed Davis actually becomes the first African American to own a car dealership in Detroit, Michigan, and that's huge.

Because African Americans would often be denied service at other dealers who were not black-owned.

Putting together this timeline, it was kind of difficult in a way because there were so many events that could have been highlighted in art, politics, the upward mobility of African Americans.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] Mobility brought about in part as a result of travel by automobile in the struggle for freedom and prosperity.

- Migrants always cause change.

They're always looking for something to improve themselves or improve the conditions.

Oh, The Great Migration created the modern world as we know it today.

It created the modern black community.

It enlarged the black population, it brought some of the best and brightest out of the south to the benefit of the north.

- This is part of the story of our city, which was really transformed by The Great Migration.

And so, it's in the photographs, it's in the stories, it's in the automobiles where we can bring that history to life again.

(dramatic music intensifies) (funky music)