Word: homesteads
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Sooner or later everybody hears about Homestead, a dwindling Pennsylvania mill town of 5,092 souls just across the Monongahela River from Pittsburgh. It was the site of historic labor-management strife in 1892, when striking workers lost a bloody (ten dead) battle with armed, union-busting Pinkerton agents hired by the Carnegie Steel Co. More recently, after U.S. Steel (now the USX Corp.) closed a plant that had provided about 15,000 jobs, the town commanded attention as a victim of the economic tides that have sunk smokestack industries. Last week Homestead blurted into national attention yet again -- this...
About a month ago, the chief deployed his 13-man force with orders to ask all grown black men, with the exception of the obese, to agree to be fingerprinted. "We have an obligation to try every option within our means," proclaimed Kelly, 33, a Homestead native who has been on the force for 13 years. He sternly denied any racist sentiment and insisted -- convincingly, since at 6 ft. 5 in. and 280 lbs. he looks like a fellow who could go bear hunting with a switch -- he would have asked for fingerprints of whites if he had thought...
...Homestead's black leaders generally supported the fingerprinting tactic. The Rev. Donald Turner, pastor of the Second Baptist Church, volunteered his prints and urged others to cooperate. "We're not here to prove you are the rapist," he told members of the black community, which makes up 40% of Homestead's population. "We want to prove that you are not the rapist." Alice Kirkland, president of the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., said her group would not oppose anyone who wanted to volunteer prints, adding, "We've had no complaints from the residents so far." One of two black officers...
...middle of last week, Kelly's investigation had turned into a national story, and Homestead briefly became a media circus. While idlers in the doorway of the Ragtime Saloon gawked at network television crews outside police headquarters, the chief pressed on with his campaign. On Wednesday his men rushed to request fingerprints from a "suspicious" black man reported downtown; they found that he was merely an innocent man from Pittsburgh who was standing around waiting for his brother. Otherwise, Kelly's teams kept up ! their door-to-door canvass, collecting prints and handing out alarm horns to women...
...Homestead Records...