Housing discrimination helped to create urban ghettos like the Hill District and contributed to decades of harm endured by generations of Black Pittsburghers. Penn Hills’ rise as a Black suburb reflects the other side of the story: how a growing Black middle class resisted segregation through suburbanization. Now Tipton and other descendants of those pioneers — plus newcomers pushed toward the suburbs by city gentrification — look out on a changing landscape and ask: Can Penn Hills’ Black residents protect their community and its history?
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