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Category Archives: History
Hertz Rotenstein (1939-2023)
“Hitman Kills Local Developer.” That should have been the headline in April 1977 after Hertz Rotenstein’s business partners conspired to kill him. They hired a self-described “apartment building owner” who then offered to pay someone who turned out to be a professional FBI informant $6,500 to kill Rotenstein.
Continue readingPolluted History
I began writing about the history of numbers gambling in Pittsburgh in 2020. My earliest articles relied on decades of historical research and writing, much of it focused on the city’s Hill District. After several months of research and doing interviews with community members it became clear that much of that earlier work that I relied upon was incomplete and in some cases just plain wrong.
Unfortunately, some of my work published between 2020 and 2022 also repeats long-held beliefs about chapters in Pittsburgh’s history. One of the most problematic mistakes I made was writing that Pittsburgh gambling entrepreneur William “Woogie” Harris was a barber and that he opened the Hill District’s iconic Crystal Barber Shop. Historians and journalists for decades have written about Harris as a barber and the individual who founded the Crystal Barber Shop.
It turns out that Harris didn’t actually “open” the Crystal Barber Shop; he bought it in the mid-1920s from a master barber named Frank Belt. Belt was a Maryland transplant whose family included an ex-wife, Bessie Simms, and daughter, Madeline Belt. The Belt women were among the best known stage stars during the Harlem Renaissance and I told some of their story in an article published earlier this year.
Recently historians have begun citing my work in their writing on Hill District history. Earlier this week, a new Hill District Digital History Project launched. The essay on the Crystal Barber Shop was more legend than history. It recycled more of the same stories about Harris and his various business enterprises. And, it repeated the error that Harris founded the barber shop.
You really can’t fault the essay’s author or the project’s leaders. Correcting decades of incomplete and incorrect history is a heavy lift. So is owning up to making mistakes that make their way into new historical research and writing. Mistakes like my first work on Hill District history, including the Crystal Barber Shop.
I emailed the history professor leading the new digital history effort with specific concerns about the accuracy of the Crystal Barber Shop entry. He replied,
I went back and looked at the Crystal Barber Shop story with your critiques in mind. In your original email yesterday morning, you wrote, “Woogie Harris didn’t open and operate the shop; he owned the business as a front for his numbers business.” So I went to the original written narrative which includes all citations; ironically, the student used your article in Very Local, which reads, “Harris might have been Pittsburgh’s best-known barber...[he] opened the Crystal Barbershop on Wylie Avenue in the Hill District in the 1920s.”
Guilty as charged. The tainted history that I used found its way into downstream work, from respected local university professors, journalists, and book authors, to my first forays into Pittsburgh numbers history. And now, the new Hill District Digital History Project.
In subsequent emails with the project historian I laid out how I ended up repeating bogus historical facts that had worked their way into established local oral tradition and academic histories. And then I asked him to remove the link to my 2022 article about the Crystal Barber Shop. I suggested linking to later work that reflects my recent research that more correctly recount’s the shop’s history.
I then emailed one of the online news outlets that published one of my articles about the Crystal Barber Shop. I asked, “Please make a correction to my 2022 article.”
“New research shows that Woogie Harris didn’t ‘open’ the Crystal Barber Shop,” I wrote to a Very Local editor. “He bought the business from barber Frank Belt. He also wasn’t a ‘barber.’ My article was based on the decades of writing about Harris.”
The two mistakes that I pointed out in my request for a correction don’t invalidate the entire article. But, they do diminish its capacity as a teaching tool and as a piece of journalism. I have not yet received a reply from the editor and I will update this post once/if I do.
Update (Nov. 21, 2023): I never received a response from Verylocal.com.
© 2023 D.S. Rotenstein
Crumbs
Ever wonder what the smallest unit a 7-story concrete cold warehouse can be reduced to? Crumbs, apparently. Crews have gone from carting away boulder-sized concrete debris from the former Federal Cold Storage Co. site to running it through a milling machine and creating massive mounds of historic building crumbs. It looks like they’re reaching the end of the demolition phase. Demolition began in early November 2021 ….
For a complete rundown on this spectacular demolition operation and the building’s history, check out this November 2022 virtual program hosted by the Society for Industrial Archeology:
©2023 D.S. Rotenstein
From writing history’s first draft to making history
Yesterday, we said goodbye to our friend Lillian Cooper Wiggins. The memorial was held at Arlington National Cemetery and the hall was filled to capacity with family and friends. I was honored and humbled to be among the many people Lil invited into her life and to be there to help celebrate that life.
Lil’s daughter asked me to draw on my many interviews with her mom to help write the obituaries published in The Washington Post and The Washington Informer. My words were unmistakable in the beautiful program Karen compiled to celebrate her mom’s life. I was fortunate to have so many of Lil’s own words to share in my tribute to her. Words like these: “My principle was to be the best I could to write as truthful as I could.” Good advice for a historian and writer.
Lil was a force of nature and one of the best people I have had the honor to know and befriend. She had a front row seat to history as Washington transformed from a Jim Crow Southern town into an iconic Chocolate City. As she transformed herself from a midwestern transplant into a centerpiece of Washington’s social, political, and economic life, Lil moved from that front seat onto center stage. Lil went from writing history’s first draft as an influential journalist to becoming part of history because of her writing and so much more.
Thank you Lil for everything.
One final dispatch “From the Desk of Lil”
Lillian Cooper Wiggins died October 26 at age 92. She was my friend and the inspiration for much of the work that I have done since 2011 when I began writing about gentrification and racism in Decatur, Ga. I’m a historian and I first met Lillian in the pages of a history book of sorts, Dream City, the landmark 1994 work by Washington, D.C., journalists Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood. It’s a deep dive into the politics and culture of late-twentieth-century Washington wrapped around the story of Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry.
Dream City is required reading for anyone working and living in Washington. I first picked it up in 2007 while working as a consultant to the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). I had been hired to do documentary research and dozens of oral history interviews to support author Tony Proscio in writing his book documenting the history of the DC LISC office.
Jaffe and Sherwood introduced readers in Washington and beyond to Lillian’s best known contribution to Washington history. In the 1970s, she began writing about what has become widely known as “The Plan.” Jaffe later wrote, “We can thank Lillian Wiggins for first articulating this particular conspiracy theory [as a] columnist for the Washington Afro-American.” Jaffe got some things wrong in that 2010 Washington Examiner article, but the gist of his observation is correct: Lillian did expose many generations of journalists, historians, and sociologists to “The Plan.”
Continue readingA Decatur, Georgia, Recap
Professional accomplishments directly resulting from my research in and about Decatur, Georgia, 2011-2023. No, it’s not a game.
September 6, 2023: “Decatur Day and the History of Serial Displacement in an Atlanta Suburb.” The Metropole (Urban History Association blog).
April 24, 2023: “Our Missing Middle Housing Didn’t Just Go Missing. It Was Torn Down.” Next City.
August 6, 2022: “Heirs, History, and Land: Recovering and Conserving Black Spaces and Stories.” Featured presentation, Shelton Family Settlement at Possum Trot Family Reunion and Historical Marker Unveiling, Berry College, Rome, Georgia. (Delivered remotely.)
July 2022: Agnes Scott College is awarded a $750,000 Mellon Foundation grant to conduct research, community engagement, and develop curriculum on race and racism in Decatur, Ga. The grant application relied on my research; the institution wrote that if the grant is awarded that the college would seek to hire me as a researcher and adjunct professor. It would have been nice if Agnes Scott College had consulted with me prior to using my name and my credentials in the application. Needless to say, I did not collaborate with Agnes Scott College on its project.
January 2022: Georgia Tech History Professor Todd Michney invites me to participate in a panel on redlining, housing and race for the 2022 Atlanta Studies Symposium. My paper was accepted and the panel was scheduled to present on May 6, 2022. My participation in planning the session included providing the name for the panel, “Spatial Imaginaries, Racial Realities: Boundaries and a Changing Atlanta Metropolitan Area.” Work obligations in Pittsburgh prevented me from presenting my paper.
June 2021: The City of Decatur in collaboration with the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights developed a Juneteenth walking tour of downtown Decatur based entirely on a walking tour that I designed for the National Council on Public History’s 2020 Atlanta conference, the “Decatur Displaced and Erased” walking tour (see below).
May 29, 2021: Members of The Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights invited me to be a speaker at the 2021 Decatur Juneteenth celebration.
May 28, 2021: The Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights invited me to be a member of its Reparations Committee.
May 5, 2021: Invited presentation of a virtual version of the “Decatur Displaced and Erased” walking tour for Decatur High School educators and professional staff.
April 21, 2021: Invited virtual presentation, “Gentrification’s Consequences in Decatur: Displacement, Erasure, and the Environment,” to students enrolled in Agnes Scott College’s history program.
April 20, 2021: Members of the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights and the Coalition for a Diverse Decatur & Coalition for a Diverse Dekalb invited me to give an illustrated virtual presentation about asset mapping.
March 22, 2021: “Decatur Displaced and Erased” walking tour presented virtually for a class in Agnes Scott College’s Department of History.
March 7, 2021: Invited presentation of a virtual version of the “Decatur Displaced and Erased” walking tour for the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, Decatur, Georgia.
October 9, 2020: Invited Presentation, “Silver Spring Sundown Suburb,” for The Well Community Church in Silver Spring, Maryland.
September 23, 2020: Invited presentation of a virtual version of the “Decatur Displaced and Erased” walking tour for the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights.
September 23, 2020: Invited presentation, “A Path to Reconciliation and Repair: Telling the Full Story on Race and History in Montgomery County,” for members of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Bar.
September 10, 2020: “A Virtual Walking Tour in Decatur, Georgia: Linking Race, History, Community,” published in History@Work (National Council on Public History).
July 27, 2020: “Decatur Displaced and Erased” presented virtually for the Goucher College Masters in Historic Preservation Program and Decatur, Ga., community members. This event was documented in my Sept. 10, 2020, History@Work Article, “A Virtual Walking Tour in Decatur, Georgia: Linking Race, History, and Community.”
March 21, 2020: “Decatur Displaced and Erased: The Black Experience in Decatur, Georgia” walking tour conducted for the National Council on Public History 2020 annual conference. The conference and walking tour shifted online after the onset of the Covid pandemic.
February 7, 2020: “Decatur Displaced and Erased” walking tour and classroom lecture, Agnes Scott College Department of History, Decatur, Ga.
2020: Brock, Julia, Elayne Washington Hunter, Robin Morris, and Shaneé Murrain. “‘Send Out a Little Light’: The Antioch A.M.E. Digital Archive.” In Digital Community Engagement: Partnering Communities with the Academy, edited by Rebecca S. Wingo, Jason A. Heppler, and Paul Schaderwald, 2020. Book chapter inspired by “Antioch’s Eyes” (see below).
October 18, 2019: “Historic Preservation and Folklore: Dismantling the Diversity Deficit” delivered at the 2019 American Folklore Society meeting, Baltimore, Maryland.
October 2019: Published: “The Decatur Plan: Folklore, Historic Preservation, and the Black Experience in Gentrifying Spaces.” The Journal of American Folklore 132, no. 526 (2019): 431–51.
August 14, 2019: Bethesda Magazine reports that the Montgomery County, Md., school system completed an audit of school names in the wake of the decision to rename E. Brooke Lee Middle School (see below).
April 13, 2019: Invited lecture, “Silver Spring: A Sundown Suburb in the Capital’s Gateway,” Gwendolyn E. Coffield Community Center, Silver Spring, Md.
April 5, 2019: Invited panelist, “A Conversation on Atlanta, Georgia,” sponsored by the Black Geographies Specialty Group, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
April 2, 2019: Invited lecture, “Sundown Suburbs,” University of Maryland African American Studies Program.
March 13, 2019: “Competing Histories or Hidden Transcripts? The Sources We Use,” History@Work | National Council on Public History (blog).
February 14, 2019: Montgomery County newspapers report on request by County Council President to change the name of E. Brooke Lee Middle School. My March 2017 Washington Post article, “There’s More to Fighting Racism than Getting Rid of a Confederate Statue,” is cited as the impetus. Umaña, José. “Navarro Requests Name Change for Middle School,” The Montgomery County Sentinel.
2018: “Producing and Protesting Invisibility in Silver Spring, Maryland.” In Demand the Impossible: Essays in History as Activism, edited by Nathan Wuertenberg and William Horne, 89–111. Washington, D.C.: Westphalia Press, 2018.
September 14, 2017: “Why Diversity Initiatives Rarely Make Gentrifying Neighborhoods More Equitable.” Next City (blog), September 14, 2017.
March 5, 2017: “There’s More to Fighting Racism than Getting Rid of a Confederate Statue.” The Washington Post, March 5, 2017.
December 14, 2016. Ritter, Ellie. “Tearing Down Decatur’s History: As Luxurious Houses Replace Small Homes, Gentrification Forces Minorities Out.” Carpe Diem (Decatur High School Student Magazine), December 14, 2016. I was interviewed for the article and I provided the illustrations.
July 11, 2016: Zainaldin, Jamil. “Digital History in the Making with Antioch A.M.E. History Project.” Saporta Report (blog), July 11, 2016.
April 14, 2016: “(Re)-Imagining Decatur: Gentrification, Race, and History in a Southern Suburb,” Delta Symposium, Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, Arkansas.
February 18, 2016: “Tearing Down Oakhurst: An Oral History of Gentrification.” Documentary screening and discussion of gentrification, The Potter’s House, Washington, D.C.
2016: David Rotenstein Collection, Antioch A.M.E. Digital Archive.
2016: “Historic Preservation Shines a Light on a Dark Past.” In Preserving Places: Reflections on the National Historic Preservation Act at Fifty from The Public Historian, edited by Tamara Gaskell, 18–19. National Council on Public History, 2016.
October 27, 2015: “I Had to Move After Exposing the Seamy History of the City of Decatur, Georgia.” History News Network (blog).
July 28, 2015: “Historic Preservation Shines a Light on a Dark Past.” History@Work | National Council on Public History (blog), July 28, 2015.
March 29, 2015: “Doing Public History: This Is What Success Can Look Like,” History News Network (blog).
March 20, 2015: “Fragile History in a Gentrifying Neighborhood.” History@Work | National Council on Public History (blog).
February 22, 2015: “When a City Turns White, What Happens to Its Black History?” History News Network (blog).
October 18, 2014: “Tearing Down Oakhurst: An Oral History of Gentrification.” Documentary screening and discussion of gentrification, Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, Decatur, Ga.
September 2014: “Antioch’s Eyes,” The Anchor (newsletter of Antioch A.M.E. Church), pp. 1-2, Stone Mountain, Ga. Article reprinted from a blog post, “Antioch’s Eyes,” published on my site January 29, 2014.
April 14, 2014: “From Urban Homesteading to Mazeway Disintegration: Gentrification in Decatur,1975-2014.” Paper presented at the Second Annual Atlanta Studies Symposium.
April 11, 2014: “A Lesson in Racial Profiling and Historical Relevance,” Decatur-Avondale Estates Patch (reprinted from History@Work).
March 11, 2014: “Tearing Down Oakhurst: An Oral History of Gentrification.” Documentary screening and discussion of gentrification, Charis Books and More, Atlanta, Ga.
April 10, 2014: “A lesson in racial profiling and historical relevance,” History@Work | National Council on Public History (blog).
July 3, 2013: “Clinging to Jim Crow Through Historic Preservation.” Like the Dew (blog), July 3, 2013. Site defunct; no archive copy; Also posted on my blog, July 8, 2013 as “Separate and Unequal: Preserving Jim Crow.”
September 21, 2012: “Preservation conversations: When history at work is history at home (Part II),” History@Work | National Council on Public History (blog).
September 14, 2012: “Preservation conversations: When history at work is history at home (Part I),” History@Work | National Council on Public History (blog).
May 2012: “Decatur’s African American Historic Landscape.” Reflections (Ga. State Historic Preservation Office) 10, no. 3 (May 2012): 5–7.
2012: “Reviving South Decatur Through Urban Homesteading.” Times of DeKalb, DeKalb History Center newsletter, 6, no. 2 (2012): 1, 4–5.
2011: “Decatur’s Oakhurst: A Subdivision and A Castle,” Times of DeKalb, DeKalb History Center newsletter, 5, no. 4 (2012): 2-3.
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Facebook-friendly link: https://ivernacular.wordpress.com/2022/07/17/a-decatur-georgia-recap/
“Mistaken Identities” and murders
Obsessed is probably too strong of a word to describe my interest in the October 1934 turf war among two Washington, D.C. gambling entrepreneurs. But, I have had a very keen interest in the case ever since 2019 when I first read about it while working on the Talbot Avenue Bridge Historic American Engineering Records (HAER) report. It had been nearly four years since my first interviews with an aging Washington, D.C., former journalist had turned me onto the historical significance of numbers gambling. By the time that my research took me to the Takoma Park, Md., driveway where a notorious mob hitman gunned down newspaper employee Allen Wilson, I was hooked.
On July 25, I’m continuing the mini-mob-lecture circuit with a talk on racketeering in the D.C. suburbs: “The Numbers Game in the Burbs: Racketeering in Montgomery County.”
The free virtual program covers the history of racketeering and numbers gambling in the D.C. burbs, from the Black gambling entrepreneurs who ran the numbers in rural African American communities throughout the mostly rural suburban county to the white D.C. kingpins who made their homes there to complicate law enforcement efforts to rein them in. The so-called “Mistaken Identity Murder” caps the program as I connect the dots on one of the D.C. area’s most sensational gangland killings.
The alleged hitman, Tony “The Stinger” Cugino, was one of the East Coast’s most feared killers. In my “Squirrel Hill by the Numbers” walking tours, participants visit the site where Cugino allegedly dumped the body of one of the loose ends he cleaned up earlier in 1934 before killing Wilson. With Cugino, it’s always “allegedly” because he never made it to trial, for the Wilson murder or any of the others attributed to him. The official reports were that he hanged himself in 1935 in a New York City jail cell after the police finally caught up with him. By that time he had been suspected in hits all throughout the mid-Atlantic and upper South, including another infamous Montgomery County murder case (the “Chevy Chase Car Barn Murders“) just a few months after Wilson’s “Mistaken Identity Murder.”
Come for the numbers history and stay for the murder!
Beyond the Zoom room
The Silver Spring program is the second of three lectures on racketeering history I’m giving this month. Pittsburghers can drop in on “Cold Storage and Real Luck” at the Lawrenceville Historical Society July 20. There were mobsters on 1500 block of Penn Ave. in Pittsburgh and the story of the city’s giant refrigerator building and Pittsburgh’s most aptly named bar has several good rackets chapters.
On August 1, just a few days before Pittsburgh’s infamous 805 episode‘s 92nd anniversary, I’m speaking to the Moon Township Historical Society. Tony “The Stinger” and his 1934 visit to Pittsburgh may or may not be on the program but lots of Steel City vice will be.
© 2022 D.S. Rotenstein
Cold Storage and Real Luck
Under every stone (or building foundation) in Pittsburgh there seems to be a mob story. It’s no different in the 1500 block of Penn Avenue in the city’s Strip District. The mob history is what caught my attention around the same time that plans became public to demolish the former Federal Cold Storage Company building popularly known as the “Wholey’s Building” for the giant illuminated fish that dominated one facade. Over the past year i have been documenting the building’s history and the lives of the people who owned it and who worked there. As I watched a demolition carefully deconstruct the walls adjacent to a historic bar, I got interested in the bar’s story, too.
Folks can learn more about the cold storage building and the Lucky’s story at a special Lawrenceville Historical Society program Wednesday July 20 at the Carnegie Library on Fisk Street. No more spoilers here. The program is free and open to the public. See you then.
Facebook friendly link: https://ivernacular.wordpress.com/2022/07/09/cold-storage-and-real-luck/.
A new Atlanta suburban school
Decatur, Ga., got a new school last week. Sort of: it’s an old city school building with a new name. The City Schools of Decatur voted May 22 to change the name of the city’s only middle school from Renfroe Middle School to Beacon Hill Middle School. The new name went into effect July 1, 2022.
A grassroots effort to change the school’s name began in 2020 after I designed a walking tour of Decatur’s erased Black community. The middle school, which is located across the railroad tracks from the former Beacon Community, was one of the stops in the tour created for the 2020 National Council on Public History annual conference (which was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic).
I conducted the tour intended for the conference virtually and then recreated it several times over the next year for various Decatur community and religious groups. Participants in one of those virtual tours began an online petition to change the school’s name: “Rename Renfroe Middle School To Reflect Decatur Values.”
The petition got more than 700 signatures and the attention of city leaders. In the first paragraph, the petition’s authors cited my walking tour, which included oral history excerpts of people talking about the school’s namesake, Carl Renfroe who was Decatur’s school superintendent between 1959 and 1975.
The petition only cited one of the examples that I used in the walking tour. It was an excerpt of an interview that I had done with a Black man who attended Decatur’s segregated schools (a federal consent decree forced Decatur into compliance years after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case).
The complete entry for the walking tour’s storymap was a lot more detailed and it included an excerpt from an interview with a former civil rights and social justice activist who lived in Decatur during Renfroe’s tenure. William Denton taught education at Agnes Scott College and Atlanta University.
Commerce and West Howard
This intersection didn’t exist before the 1960s. It was created during urban renewal when the city of Decatur extended then-Oliver street south to Howard. Visible to the south is carl g. Renfroe middle school. Intersection didn’t exist until urban renewal in 1960s.
This is Decatur’s only middle school. It is named for educator Carl G. Renfroe (1910-2004), who was Decatur’s school superintendent (1959-1975). Despite serving after the Brown v. Board of Education case (1954) Renfroe resisted desegregating city schools and is remembered by residents for racially biased decisions and language.
It was an embarrassing situation for me to be sitting during my graduation and the superintendent of the school system, Carl Renfroe, spoke and commented that evening, “we are proud of our nigras,” you know …“we are proud of our nigras” — R.L, Decatur resident and former trinity high school student, February 2018.
I just have to say that that brought to mind a sense of irony because when we were first there, the superintendent, Renfroe, was of the old school and he did everything he could to keep black and white children separated — William Denton, former Decatur resident and civil rights activist, February 2018.
The interview with Denton was one of several that I did with the former Decatur resident over ten years. Denton is one of a dwindling number of people still living who would know about the inner workings of Decatur city government and its schools. He and his wife Barbara were active in their efforts to bring equity to the city’s school system. They also were among the first generation of 1970s community activists who sought to maintain Decatur’s trajectory towards housing and social equity. For years they were among the leaders of the South Decatur Community Council, the precursor to the contemporary Oakhurst Neighborhood Association.
The Dentons agreed with the city’s decision to change the school’s name. Barbara Denton expanded on our earlier conversations about Renfroe:
Regarding the late-great “Renfroe” Middle School and Carl’s role in maintaining school segregation: He advised the Board to gerrymander the school zones in the early 70’s in order to maintain maximum segregation. Bill wrote to him in disagreement. When he failed to respond, Bill informed federal E.E.O. of this action. The Decatur distract thus joined about 80 other Georgia distracts under E.E.O. supervision.
She added that she and her husband attended the school board meeting when the school was named for Renfroe:
We were at the Board meeting when the naming of the new middle school was announced. Board member Scott Candler looked directly at us and smirked when he saw our jaws drop. Fait Accompli! I’ll never believe Renfroe deserves credit for a desegregated middle school. Given Carl’s history we think its origin lies in the E.E.O. designation as an obstructionist system.
After the petition went live, accusations started flying about the veracity of the allegations against Renfroe, whom the Dentons said vigorously resisted desegregation.
To allay the claims that the oral history comments about Renfroe were unsupported and/or unreliable, here is the video clip played during the virtual walking tours. Perhaps they can assist Decatur residents in complying with the Facebook comment author’s suggestion to “be smart.”
© 2022 D.S. Rotenstein