Audio File
Transcript
My name is Maria Teresa Amelia Searcy. I was born in 1962, so I’m 62 years old, and my relationship currently to the Hill District… I’m very familiar with the Hill District. I partied up here when I was your age at Y-bop and, you know, came up for social and educational things, but I’m currently working at the CEC, the Pitt CEC, as a program associate. I would describe my childhood as… To be honest, some of it was problematic. I came from a single parent household. We were poor. My mother was a high school dropout, and my grandmother took her out of Perry High School to help take care of her older sister’s child. My father was not very involved in our life, so my mother struggled as a high school dropout. She cleaned houses. She did- they called it day’s work, and she didn’t make a lot of money. But somehow she sent four children to college on not a lot of money, and so, even though I had a good mother who was very involved in our education as much as she understood, I lived next door to my paternal grandmother who helped us out a lot financially. There were some problems there, you know in our life. But I think our involvement in church, and my mother’s being very adamant about us getting an education…She put four kids through college because she didn’t get her education, so that was kind of like her platform thing. You got to get a good education because she didn’t. And so I think through a lot of perseverance and family unity and community… that was very important that the community stepped in so neighbors helped out. So I grew up in central Northside, and when I grew up in central Northside, it was very similar to what the Hill is today. It was a predominantly black neighborhood, very community oriented, a lot of schools. I went to school on the Northside, went to school in my neighborhood. We had a lot of social agencies where youth could spend time, education, social. But I prefer the Hill over Northside, you know, because I was born and raised on the Northside, but it’s very gentrified. So the street that I grew up on, which was predominantly black, it’s like predominantly white, and you don’t get treated the same way, you know? It’s very different and so, where I used to know all my neighbors, I don’t know too many now, you know? It has a very different feel, and it’s not the best feeling for me. I think it’s just one of the best places to be because I just love the culture of the Hill. I think more than any area of the city, the Hill has more black unity, black solidarity, black people. I just love riding around to see it, and you don’t see that on the Northside. You don’t see it in Lawrenceville. You know, you don’t see it. Like Northview Heights is very- most people live up there are African, but it’s very impoverished, so they kind of isolated poverty in Northview Heights, but here you see more like this center, and churches, and, you know, still more black businesses, I think, than you see in any other area of the city. I love it. You are too young to remember like the Aurora club, the Little Wind High club, like, these really nice places that were nightlife for black people, a lot of music, a lot of famous musicians, George Benson and Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine. And that’s the kind of black culture that was in the Hill, lot of black businesses, more black schools than you see now. So it’s just like in other areas of the city, because of gentrification, you don’t see as much. You see a decline in schools. I worked in UPrep for 2 1/2 years and worked with the Pittsburgh Public School system. I knew UPrep was supposed to be this dynamic school that was partnered with the University of Pittsburgh. We put a lot of money into UPrep, and that model didn’t succeed. So that’s very disappointing. So to answer the question, to see some of the- back in the day, they called it urban renewal. Now I think it’s more like gentrification. So you see supermarkets that are not black, that’s very different from what we saw when I was your age and like 2 cousins, where a lot of our black dollars are turned over in that store, but it’s not black-owned. When I was growing up, the black dollar was turned over in our neighborhood, you know, more often than you see now because there were more black barber shops, black businesses, cleaners, you know, bakeries, those kind of… candy stores. So, you know, you spent your dollar in your neighborhood with your own people, and we don’t see that as much now. I love the Thelma Lovette Y. I go there, I take swimming aerobics, water aerobics. I love it. It’s a big part of my life. Love the Pitt CEC Center. I think so much good programming comes out of this organization, and Kelly does an excellent job, Kelly and Marlow and the people that I work with.