Interview with Professor Alonna Carter-Donaldson: Research on Black Women’s History in Pittsburgh

I interviewed Professor Alonna Carter Donaldson, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She looks at the history and experiences of marginalized groups, namely Black women in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is involved with teaching, research, and other projects (such as oral history interviews). Her bio reads:

“Alonna J. Carter-Donaldson is a Visiting Faculty Lecturer for the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies (GSWS) Program. As a public historian, her work has centered around African American women and girls’ history in the Pittsburgh region since the 1870s, African American genealogy, the historic preservation of sites related to the African American past, examining restorative justice through oral history methodology, and the intersection of race and disability. Alonna’s writing has been seen in the New Pittsburgh Courier, The Soul Pitt Quarterly, and Public Source. In 2021, she was selected as the Inaugural Burke Family Research Fellow at the Frick Pittsburgh for her work on African Americans in Pittsburgh’s Gilded Age and has previously worked as the first Project Scholar for the Western Pennsylvania Disability History and Action Consortium’s Intersection of Race and Disability Project. In 2022, Alonna presented her paper “Black Women: Education and Literacy as Pathways to Equality in Gilded. Age Pittsburgh” at the Pennsylvania Historical Association annual meeting. Alonna is interested in uncovering the untold stories of how marginalized groups have shaped social justice movements and contributed to advancing their communities.” (bio and photo from University of Pittsburgh Directory)

Could you talk about how you personally got involved in the field of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies and also in looking at marginalized groups and race? What interests you about these topics and/or their intersectionality?

I appreciate this question because I got involved in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies program kind of serendipitously. It wasn’t something that I was actively seeking out. I was a graduate student at the time and at Duquesne University, and I was an advisor for this exhibit at the Heinz History Center here in Pittsburgh. The exhibit is called “A Woman’s Place,” and I think it’s still running. It opened up in March of this year. I was on it with several other people from around Pittsburgh who were engaged in the history field and also had worked with aspects of women in history. I just happened to be on this advisory board with someone who was affiliated with the GSW program at the University where I now work. She was so impressed with some of the work I had done on Black women and girls from a public history lens that she invited me to apply for a visiting lecturer position. I was kind of shocked in a way because I really didn’t think about the fact that the work that I was doing aligned with GSWs in any way. I was simply doing it because I really care about representation, and I felt that Black women and girls are underrepresented in a lot of areas–particularly in history.

So I got into working on and exploring those aspects just because I wanted to widen the scope of what we know about Black women and girls’ contributions. Growing up, it was always abundantly clear to me what those things were. I came from a family where Black history was paramount. So, I was reading Black history encyclopedias from the time I was five years old. So I knew about all these things. I also attended a really good elementary school that made sure that the young students were versed in that history. But, as I got older and moved into middle school, high school, and college, I started to notice that these things weren’t talked about.

So that’s really how I got into it. That’s been my focus for everything that I’ve worked on: to amplify these voices that are not always listened to or are drowned out sometimes by what we consider to be “mainstream” or “acceptable.” I really believe in the value of storytelling and just attempting to understand what others’ experiences are, because I believe that that’s the best way to create positive change in our world.

Can you please discuss your publication “Black Women: Education and Literacy as Pathways to Equality in Gilded. Age Pittsburgh”?

You’re going to hear me harken back to like Duquesne a lot because that’s really the place that has allowed me to kind of explore all of this. That was my graduate university. They really encouraged me to explore all the things that I am interested in.

When I was a graduate student, I took a class called “Women in American History.” And our professor was excellent–she had us read a lot of works on African American women in the era of slavery. I was really drawn, you know, to those works. I was inspired by them.

Simultaneously, I was working as a research fellow at the Frick Museum and Gardens here in Pittsburgh. I was researching African Americans in the Gilded Age of Pittsburgh, which is something that we know very little about. I thought to myself, what’s one aspect that’s missing from this whole piece? Women. What were African American women doing at this time in Pittsburgh? What are their stories?

So, I started to dig into research on African American women. The way that I did this was not through really any kind of textbooks, but rather I just went through old newspapers and tried to dig up what I could find. It inspired me. I was inspired to do this because, again, there’s this missing piece.

When we think about African American women and just African Americans in general, our thoughts are usually confined to three periods: slavery, the Civil War era, and the Civil Rights era.

So I wanted to look at the stuff in the middle and after. I wanted to understand what it was like here in Pittsburgh for Black women. When I started to research, I found that Black women were the advocates of education here in Pittsburgh. We were the ones who were pushing the school board to integrate. A lot of people don’t realize that even though Pittsburgh is a northern city, it was also segregated during the 19th century. There was one Black school in Pittsburgh, and then there was one in the neighboring city, which was called Allegheny City, which is now the North Side neighborhood of Pittsburgh. I’m not going to get to all the historical details, but it was annexed to Pittsburgh in 1907. So instead of being a city, it’s now a neighborhood. So, Black students only had those two options if they wanted to go to school. The other options were in your church basement, if your Reverend was able to teach you, or somebody at church who was able to teach you.

And so, these African American women were instrumental in getting more schools and also getting teachers of color into the school. This was so that the students could have someone in the classroom who looked like them, understood their experiences, and also pushed them to succeed even when the odds were stacked against them.

The other thing that Black women did was also establish these literary clubs. We’re looking at a period where education is not only denied to people of color but it’s also denied to women. So, they’re providing this alternative method of education, which is in turn, helping Black women compete in the professional industry against men.

Again, when I decided to take on this research, I was really just trying to fill that gap of knowledge that we have. I wrote about these topics, and I was able to present the paper at the Pennsylvania Historical Association in 2022 in Williamsport, PA. Out of that, I was able to grow a sort of following on Black women during this period. I have a blog on my website called “Black and Gilded.” The Pittsburgh colors are black and gold, and so the name is a spin of that. My blog uncovers all these hidden figures in this history.

Can you please talk about how you engage your undergrad students in your research work on women of color?

So, I’m still fairly new to higher education. This is actually only my second year teaching. As a result, the opportunity for me to do research coupled with my other work is not quite there yet.

But, what I do to engage my students in general on this topic is making sure that I’m always including women of color in the conversation whenever we’re discussing anything from reproductive rights to the early feminist movements. It’s important that they understand that we’re present and we were heavily involved.

I also make sure that in our classes we explore works by Black women writers like Angela Y. Davis, Audre Lorde, Sojourner Truth, Ida B Wells Barnett, etc. I have them read pieces that I wrote on the intersection of race and the Disability Project, which was the project I was a project scholar on.

I just let them feel their way around the material and see what jumps out at them. I’m interested in knowing what surprises them and what doesn’t surprise them. If they are particularly interested in examining a particular issue, I’m able to direct them to resources to expand our learning and have them take a closer look. Sometimes they develop those into their own projects, such as an oral history project or a final paper where they do some extensive research on a topic they didn’t know about.

I also read that you look at “restorative justice through oral history methodology.” Can you please describe what this looks like?

In 2023, I received a grant–again through my graduate university–to interview three incarcerated men who are people of color currently serving life sentences. I got to interview them to hear them talk about their involvement with a think tank here in Pittsburgh, which explores restorative justice. In these oral history interviews, our goal was really to explore what can be done in society and communities to deter crime and also to keep people from returning to the carceral system. The conversations that we had were really about healing communities.

They’re also about working to rebuild relationships between people who have been affected by crime and those who have committed the crimes. They’re about figuring out how to support those who are returning to their communities after serving prison sentences and helping them figure out how they can give back to those communities that they may have harmed. That’s really what restorative justice is. It’s a process of healing, reconnecting, rebuilding relationships, and also figuring out how to give back. That’s what that term in itself means.

The work I was doing with the narrators was incredibly valuable because so often when we’re looking at these ideas of incarceration and recidivism, it’s also always coming from an academic perspective. So, it’s so important to have people who have actually lived these experiences at the forefront of the conversation. Because as the old saying goes, how do you know what somebody has gone through unless you walk through their shoes? We don’t know what experiences a person has had that caused them to make the choices that they’ve made. They’re the ones who would know best how to keep things like that from happening.

These conversations were just amazing because the narrators changed my perspective of incarceration and those who are on the inside.

The goal really is, once I wrap up, to get this out there in some format. I’m still working with these narrators. We’re thinking about collaborating on some kind of article or something like that, and the hope is that it changes others’ perspectives. I want this to inspire communities and law enforcement to work together to define what restorative justice looks like for them.

Also, this project was actually a continuation, because the class that I took as a graduate student, was an introduction to oral history class where we worked with several others who were involved in this same organization. Prior to the three that I interviewed now, I’ve interviewed another gentleman. That was the catalyst for me–hearing from him and hearing his perspectives. He’s an older gentleman. He was in prison for about 40 years. He had a life sentence and managed to get it overturned. This man went through 40 years of this long process. Not to sound cliche, but hearing from him was just like talking to one of my relatives. His experiences mirrored those of people that I know and that are close to me. That really just changed my perspective. The people who are “on the inside” as we say, are actually not that much different than us.

One of the narrators actually said something to me that I carry with me: “Everyone of us can have a bad day and it could lead to something like that.” That’s what I keep in mind.

What are your goals for how you hope to see your research/other work develop, specifically within the next few months or during the year?

So obviously, it’s almost back to school time! Things are quite busy already, but they’re going to get even more busy. But, I still hope to accomplish some things.

I’m really hoping to continue my research on African Americans in Pittsburgh and also put out some more blog content on my website. That’s going to be something that I will be able to do because this semester, I’m actually going to be teaching in the history department as well. I get to teach this wonderful class called “The History of Black Pittsburgh.” I’ll probably be able to explore a little bit more and also possibly get my students involved in that way.

I also have two projects that I’m currently working on outside of my teaching position. One is for the Washington County Historical Society in Washington, PA here in the greater Pittsburgh area. The second one I’m working on is something for the National Road. These projects all evolve African American history in Western PA. So, my hope is that some of this research ends up in some great exhibitions, or possibly further publications, or some local historical magazines.

What advice do you have for those interested in fields similar to your areas of interest? Do you have blogs, podcasts, or summer opportunities that you recommend students explore?

Yes, yes, yes. My advice is honestly to just really learn as much as you can about your topic of interest, whatever it is. Read, read, read. Find books.

Also, you should visit organizations. Whether it’s something pertaining to Gender and Women’s studies or history, find organizations near you to visit. See how you can get involved. If there are internships available, apply for them. Even if there are not any available, still send them a letter and inquire. You never know–they might be able to work something out for you, and that internship experience could grow into something bigger and possibly lead you on the path to your career choice.

I also recommend that you read my blog on alonnajcarter.com. It’s called the “Black and Gilded” blog. There’s also a really great blog through the National Women’s History Museum that uncovers different historical figures. I also love the “Collected” podcast, which is by the National Museum of American History. That’s a podcast that’s focused on Black Women’s history. Definitely check that out. Another good one is “Conversations with Kenyatta.” That is a podcast by Kenyatta Berry, who is a historian/genealogist. She used to be the host on this show called “Genealogy Roadshow” on PBS, which I used to love. And I also recommend the “Black History Buff” podcast as well.