Audio File
Transcript
My name is Charlene Foggie Barnett. I had a very happy childhood. I grew up in the Hill, and I had wonderful neighbors and wonderful relationships with my friends’ parents that were civic leaders and civil rights leaders and whatnot, and I didn’t know all of that richness was around me. I just knew that these people made me happy, and I felt safe and secure, and I was able to kind of walk around the Hill at that time and do things as a youngster. As somebody six years old, I’d walk down to Finches drug store, and I felt like I was home. Everybody in the neighborhood at that time could kind of tell you “It’s time to go home” or “You shouldn’t be over here,” or “Do you need help?” or whatever because of the way our society was then. Much safer, much more community oriented and everybody was your mother, or your grandmother, or your uncle, or your daddy, or somebody. It just felt like the Hill was one big, warm place. It brings me not just joy, but pride that I am from such a historic area. The Hill is more important than we’ve often realized. I’m very proud to be part of a society that produced such great talents like August Wilson, a photographer like Teenie Harris, activists like Sala Undin, people who were prominent Pittsburghers who could make a difference in people’s lives. A real difference, like Judge Homer S. Brown and his wife. I loved being part of the society that dealt with the Pittsburgh Courier when it was right down on Center Ave. right across from the old Y. And I loved being at the old Y and swimming and playing ping pong and different games there. I find myself very fortunate to be able to say that I’m a legit resident of the Hill District, and we’re getting a lot of recognition now as the Hill itself because of people’s work, like the playwrights and Teeny Harris Photo Archive, which I work for. I moved away from Pittsburgh in the mid 70s, and I moved back home in the mid 90s. And driving through the Hill District, I hadn’t been living in the Hill in my late teens, but driving in the Hill, visiting family and friends, it just looked like someone had pulled every other tooth out of it. There were vacant lots, things were broken, things were not being kept up, and it wasn’t the place that I remember, and I was frustrated. So, I got involved with the NAACP and with some other civic organizations to try to work through some of the issues of what’s going on with my hometown. People in general think that the Hill is just an unsafe place and, you know, everything terrible could happen to you there, and that’s not true. So, for me, it’s a frustration that people need to move past that and not believe what they’re being sold on the news every night, and I know for a fact that the oldest people I know that are 90 or close to 100 years old are still on the front line of making changes in this city, but I think that your generations are ready to do that as well because you’re seeing so many things happening around the country and around the world to people that are egregious and wrong. We were civil rights children, but we were so used to our parents not wanting us to have to go through what they went through that maybe we don’t have the same drive to push our own agendas. I’m concerned with working with the younger generation because you’re the hope.