When I interviewed Falk on the Burbank Studios lot in 1986 it was easy to see where the lovable Columbo got his eccentricities — and his raincoat. One of my favorite interviews in LA in the ‘80s was with the beloved actor Peter Falk, who died in 2011. 1986 “Columbo” the TV show may have…
Read More ...Remembering when Pittsburgh’s ‘square white men’ dropped their A-bomb of development on the city’s ‘Little Harlem’
Pittsburgh and its people have pioneered a lot of important stuff over the years. Industrialism and post-industrialism are its major historical innovations. The city’s fortunes — and population — rose and fell precipitously with the rise and fall of manufacturing and steel from the late 1800s until the 1960s, when the heavy industries that once…
Read More ...A critique of Richard Florida’s new book “The Urban Crisis” in Forbes nails it — it is the zoning and land use regs, stupid
The smart young man — Scott Beyer of http://bigcitysparkplug.com/ — who wrote the smack-on critique of my pal Richard Florida’s new book The New Urban Crisis for Forbes — is coming to Pittsburgh next year. His visit will be part of his 30-city project to study the incredibly stupid things that have been done by…
Read More ...How government used the law and racist policies to segregate America — and keep it that way
In the Jim Crow South, the system of segregation was, as we’ve been told for half a century, de jure — established and enforced by law. In the North, racial segregation, we were told, was de facto segregation — a result of private, uncoordinated choices made by individuals and institutions. In 30 Days a Black…
Read More ...Flying somewhere? Buy my 1948 civil rights history book from Hudson News
My old friend Dan Splain, behind whom I sat for six years in alphabetically fixated Catholic school in the southern suburbs of Pittsburgh, took the photo while bound for Tahiti, a place I think I have heard of. It’s a hopeful sign that the book is being noticed. I hope it was in the LA…
Read More ...A vintage Q&A with Ethan Nadelmann, the tireless and sainted reformer who beat the drug warriors — so far
in 1999 when I interviewed anti-drug-war warrior Ethan Nadelmann for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette he was optimistic about reforming America’s hideous drug laws when he really had no right to be. In 2009 when I interviewed Nadelmann about America’s war on drugs and the prospects of the government losing it, things were looking rosier for the…
Read More ...A Look Down at Ray Sprigle from the Ivory Tower
We’re still hoping/praying for a rave review of 30 Days a Black Man from The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. Or a nice Sunday Morning segment from CBS. Until then, let’s go way back to Feb. 14, in mid-Black History Month, when Smithsonian.com ran a long and thoughtful article about my book…
Read More ...Bill's Q&A's
Q&A: Tucker Carlson, before he became King of Cable — and GOP presidential timber
Bill Steigerwald is a veteran journalist from Pittsburgh. His new nonfiction book "30 Days a Black Man" tells the amazing but forgotten story about an undercover mission by a Pittsburgh newspaperman into the Jim Crow South in 1948 that shook up the whole country. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette star reporter Ray Sprigle's nationally syndicated series "In the Land of Jim Crow" exposed the iniquities and humiliations suffered by ten million black Americans in the segregated South. It shocked the white people of the North, angered the South and started the first national debate in the media about ending America's legal apartheid. Kirkus Review said "30 Days a Black Man" is "a fascinating account of an anti-Jim Crow muckraking adventure..." that Steigerwald turned "into rollicking, haunting American history." ... READ MORE