Landmark Concert Revives Spirituals on the Hill

After Dark - February 2019: The long history of Pittsburgh’s Hill District goes far beyond its 20th-century prominence in African-American culture. A century before visits from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the heyday of the Crawford Grill, the neighborhood was a refuge for those on a treacherous journey north to freedom. Homes in the bygone neighborhoods of Arthurville and Hayti served as stops on the Underground Railroad; these sanctuaries were part of a grassroots, often unsanctioned effort among the city’s African-Americans and abolitionists to oppose the heinous Fugitive Slave Act.