30 Days a Black Man

In 1948 Pittsburgh's greatest journalist Ray Sprigle went undercover and then shocked the country with his powerful expose of the Jim Crow South. The history book that retells the amazing forgotten story.

Dogging Steinbeck

When Bill Steigerwald retraced the 1960 road trip John Steinbeck made for  'Travels With Charley' in 2010 he found the iconic road book was more fiction than fact. The true story of how Steigerwald changed the way 'Charley' will be read forever.

Undercover in the Land of Jim Crow

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Ray Sprigle spent 30 days living as a black man in the segregated South. What he saw made him ashamed to be an American. What he wrote woke up the country. Read his original 1948 series.

Q&A: Peter Falk — actor by accident?

May 1, 2021 |

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…

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Help celebrate the publication of ’30 Days a Black Man’

April 20, 2017 |

On Saturday evening, in a beautifully restored and re-purposed old city firehouse in the heart of Pittsburgh, there’s going to be a semi-gala book publication party for my new book 30 Days A Black Man. Don’t expect a jazz band or any hard booze at the Firehouse at 7101 Penn Ave. in Point Breeze. But…

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Bill's Q&A's

Q&A: Tucker Carlson, before he became King of Cable — and GOP presidential timber

Tucker Carlson of Fox News has risen to the top of the cable news heap to become the most-watched, most-hated and most influential commentator in our politically fractured and deeply divisive country. He’s so popular, now he’s being touted as a Republican presidential candidate for 2024. The Washington Post, his former colleagues at MSNBC and…
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Bill Steigerwald

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