I can remember seeing this book, Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir, on bookstore shelves while living in Atlanta in the 1980s and 1990s. For whatever reason I never bought it or read it. That all changed a few months ago after I began researching a “forgotten” Pittsburgh Negro Leagues ballpark and the people involved in its development, etc. It turns out that Louis Bellinger (1891-1946), the only licensed and practicing Black architect in Pittsburgh between 1919 and his death in 1946, designed and built the stadium in 1920. And, he built Greenlee Field a dozen years later. This book is a memoir of the extended Bellinger family and their lives in South Carolina. Louis left Charleston in the teens and ended up in Pittsburgh in 1919. His father and brothers joined him by 1926. But it’s not just a window into the architect’s life. It also offers a glimpse into the life of Walter Bellinger (1901-1965), Louis’s younger brother.
Walter also left Charleston in the 1910s. He married the daughter of an Indian (Pakistani) immigrant. By the mid-1920s, Walter and Marguerite Bellinger were living in Pittsburgh. He was working in construction, specializing in new construction and rehabilitating existing buildings. Walter eventually established his own company and was well known for refurbishing some of the city’s most iconic jazz clubs. About 1928, Muslim missionaries based in Ohio began a drive to convert Pittsburgh area Black residents to Islam. Walter and Marguerite joined others in laying the foundation for the nation’s first native-founded mosque, the First Moslem Mosque of Pittsburgh (incorporated in 1944). They renounced their Christian names. Walter Bellinger became Saeed Akmal and his wife became Rasheeda Akmal. Historians of Black Muslims in the United States describe Saeed Akmal as a pivotal figure in the history of non-Nation of Islam Black Muslims. Rasheeda died in childbirth in 1932, leaving Saeed with eight children to raise.
In 1950, Saeed moved to Los Angeles to work with another Pittsburgher, architect and builder Oscar Liff, who had relocated there earlier. Within a few years several family members had joined Saeed in Los Angeles where they began building another Muslim community. It thrives today as the Islamic Center of Southern California.
Saeed Akmal was a builder in more ways than one. He worked with his hands in bricks and mortar. And, spiritually he helped to build two historically significant Muslim communities. My first article about Saeed Akmal was published today by NEXT Pittsburgh. Look for more about this amazing story coming in 2023.
Read Saeed Akmal stepped out of his brother’s shadow to build Pittsburgh’s Black Muslim community (NEXT Pittsburgh, December 5, 2022).
© 2022 D.S. Rotenstein
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