ABSTRACT
Historical analyses of Pittsburgh frequently classify the metropolis as a ‘blue collar’ city. [ 1 ] That working-class image evokes perceptions of strong resistance to integration during the 1960s and 1970s, the height of the modern US civil rights movement. Class dynamics certainly complicated racial conflicts in Pittsburgh and other ‘blue collar’ regions of the US during that era. Some of the divisions over issues of job discrimination and fair employment practices proved particularly intractable. Working-class white ethnics and African-American labourers clashed in Pittsburgh and throughout the nation over access to good jobs and over the equity of programmes aimed at including those groups who had been historically excluded from certain occupations. [ 2 ] At the same time, the city’s two leading major-league sports franchises, the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball club and the Pittsburgh Steelers football club, fielded multiracial rosters that seemed models of enlightened integration. Indeed, during the late 1960s and 1970s the Pirates and Steelers were often invoked both in Pittsburgh and across the US as symbols of racial progress. [ 3 ]
