Forgotten History: Police Brutality in Pittsburgh's Hill District, 1925

In June 1925, ninety-five years ago, the head of Pittsburgh's City Council insisted its Public Safety director deal with consistent "police oppression" of black residents of the Hill District. This followed complaints of wrongful arrests, widespread police violence during “third degree” interrogations, and random fines. Specific incidents were described by Hill residents, including one case of wrongful arrest that resulted in a pregnant black Hill resident being forced to give birth at the station and denied medical care until her release the next morning. 

 

Wrote the Pittsburgh Post 95 years ago: “The substance of the complaint was that the police, by making arrests of many Negroes and treating some of them in a brutal way at the Center avenue station, have brought terror to the hearts of most Negroes, with a tendency to incite race hatred and possibly riot.” The Hill’s magistrate was also described as biased against black residents, but he was beyond the reach of Council.

 

Ninety-five years ago, Council President addressed Public Safety Director: "You have heard this, director, and we know it is true. Go up there and clean up: throw out those responsible and put in new. You can do it over night."

 

Ninety-five years ago, Public Safety Director responded "I'll investigate this."

 

Ninety-five years ago, Council President snapped: "We don't want you to investigate it--we don't want reports, but we want this handled as it should be handled. You are the head of the police department. You have heard what these people said, and we all know that they have not come here just to hear themselves talk."

 

So 95 years ago, within hours of that meeting, Pittsburgh's Superintendent of Police transferred every one of the 42 white policemen of the Central precinct to other parts of the city. He then swapped in all of the city's black officers, a total of about 20, to staff the Central precinct in the Hill at Centre and Devilliers.

Center Avenue at Dinwiddie Street, with Central Police Station (#2) at immediate right
January 1933
Pittsburgh City Photographers Collection, University of Pittsburgh

But in so doing, he also noted that the situation was “a lot of hokum, pure and simple.”

 

Pittsburgh Gazette Times, 26 June 1925 headline and excerpt

 

Politics was behind these allegations, he said, because his officers had refused to “take orders” from certain powerful city officials. Claiming he was only shifting policemen to prove a point, Pittsburgh's Police Superintendent asserted: “We will get the same results by the new officers at the station. There’s nothing to the brutality charges.” He further claimed that one of the complainants “worked in a politician’s office” and thus was presumably put up to testifying.

 

Hokum. 

 

Case closed, 95 years ago. 

 

Headline, 25 June 1925
Pittsburgh Daily Post

 

Consider: to spite the complainants and City Council, the Police Superintendent left the Hill with half of its police force contingent. The remaining officers were men of color who were left to negotiate and reconcile dual identities as black men and "blue" public servants together, without administrative support. 

 

Putting black officers in charge of policing black neighborhoods became an accepted tactic, soon to be employed in a North Side vice neighborhood as well. The black community was essentially left to care for itself. 

 

Although the Pittsburgh Gazette Times headlined an editorial “A Good Start to End Police Abuses” the paper acknowledged that the Superintendent’s action was a tacit admission that “the charges made by respectable residents of the Hill against police methods were well founded.” The 1925 editorial also detailed systemic problems that sound all too familiar in 2020:

A complete change is in order. Not only that, but every policeman--probably there are not many on the Pittsburgh force--who has been guilty of brutality to prisoners should be ferreted out and suitably punished. In the present instance specific complaint was made of ill treatment of colored people. This element of the population is entitled to justice equal to that accorded all others. And that means every one unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the police should be treated fairly and humanely. Too often another course has been pursued by some members of the police force. The indefensible “third degree” has been used very recently, according to reports. Policemen who deem it necessary to resort to this unlawful practice expose their incompetence as well as their inhumanity. Shifting them about may have the necessary disciplinary effect. If it does not there should be no hesitancy about getting rid of them.

Today, 95 years later, at least the Black community now has public support in protesting brutality. 

 

But...it's 95 years later. 

 

And we’re still talking about the same old same old. 

 

Example of policing black Pittsburgherss experienced 95 yrs ago, as described in letter-to-editor, Pittsburgh Press, 26 June 1925. 

 

 

 

 

Compiled from Pittsburgh newspapers, 25-28 June 1925.

A version of this story appeared on my Facebook page on 7 June 2020.

Exciting North Side Booze Raids!

In case you were wishing for a time machine so you could learn what happened in Pittsburgh on 23 October 1920, well, here you go: 

 

 

Headline, Pittsburgh Press, 24 October 1920

 

Prohibition officers assembled in three squads of three men each on the North Side, approaching their targets from different spots to heighten the element of surprise. If surprise there was, it was short-lived. Several thousand people - some accounts said up to 5000 - "swarmed the street" to watch the agents raid multiple establishments in the immediate vicinity of Reedsdale Street.

 

Pittsburgh Sunday Post, 24 October 1920

 

After all, as the character of Eliot Ness was told in the 1987 movie The Untouchables: "Mr. Ness, everybody knows where the booze is."

 

Successful raids at four North Side establishments yielded roughly 220 gallons of whiskey and wine plus 10 gallons of assorted liquors. But the officers left other raid locations empty-handed.

 

For their troubles, one group headed by Special Agent Samuel Melvin Palmer of the Pittsburgh district had a ferocious encounter with an unnamed woman at the Star Hotel on Reedsdale. In defiance of Palmer's search warrant, the lady swung a chair over her head and "threatened the government officers until dissuaded by other members of the household and the agents." 

 

Perhaps she was lubricated with the elixir of righteous indignation, for no liquor was found on the premises of said Star Hotel. 

 

Overall it really wasn't a good day for 48 year old Officer Palmer.

 

Federal Prohibition Agent badge of Samuel Melvin Palmer of Wilkinsburg

 

As he carried his first armful of liquor from a Reedsdale saloon owned by Joseph Foyzey and William Lutz, "a group of foreigners, perhaps unacquainted with "Volstead procedure," formed a human barricade on the steps, refusing to allow the officer to descend to the ground floor." Palmer's fellow agents had to explain how things worked to the "foreigners" in order for him to pass unmolested with his haul.

 

As if that wasn't exciting enough, thievery was afoot amidst "mingled cheers and catcalls as several agents began carrying whisky and wine from the establishment to load it on an automobile truck." In the chaos a North Side youth "....aged about 17, suddenly snatched a quart of whisky from the overflowing truck and made off through the crowd with a yell." 

 

Gadzooks! What's a Yinzer dry agent to do when some young punk lams off with the juice?

 

Faced with this dilemma, Agent Palmer had to think quickly. From his position standing guard on the other side of the vehicle, the Federal Prohibition Officer briefly considered the likely ramifications of leaving his truck unguarded "to the mercy of the crowd" while he chased down the thief. 

 

He thought about it good and hard.

 

And then he stayed put. 

 

A few officers did take off after the lad but quickly realized the futility of a chase through the crowd. A description was sent round to local authorities, but presumably the North Side teen remained free to enjoy his quart of pilfered liquid joy. 

 

The rest of the hooch was hauled to prohibition headquarters at the Bowman Building at 304 Ross Street, Downtown, where it was stored in a vault. It remained in government storage under seal along with lots and lots of other seized liquor, and an impressive collection of stills ranging in size from a 2 gallon milk can to a 50-gallon specialty made contraption.

 

The resistance of North Siders that day wasn't unusual. Truth is, many Pittsburghers of the era were either indifferent to or resented constitutional prohibition. There were certainly women who welcomed enforcement in hopes that it'd prevent their husbands from drinking away the family wages. But the "foreigners" on Reedsdale Avenue were part of an urban immigrant population for whom alcohol was a traditional social and cultural lubricant. Nearly 2/3 of the city's industrial labor force had been born in another county, and for those North Side residents the English language and evolving American laws and traditions were indeed foreign. For them, and indeed for most residents, Pittsburgh would never be dry. For the duration of constitutional prohibition from 1920 to 1933 Pittsburgh remained “wet enough for rubber boots,” as described by an unnamed prominent citizen in a 1923 edition of the Literary Digest.

 

As for the intrepid federal agents, their frustration on the streets that day was probably palpable. Faced with the lack of coordination between federal, state, and local authorities to enforce the "noble experiment" ushered in by the Volstead Act that year, some officers would eventually quit out of frustration. Others were fired for abusing their positions in creative ways. 

 

Samuel Melvin Palmer came to a different end. He joined the federal Bureau of Prohibition after a 20 year career as a veterinary dentist in Wilkinsburg. He seems to have stuck with the job for only two years, although during that time he was frequently mentioned in local newspapers for his assistance on raids. 

 

Palmer died in 1926 after consuming an unnamed poison. This was described in some papers as a suicide attempt due to despondency from being in "ill-health for some time." But other reports asserted that Palmer died of an accidental ingestion of the "effects of poison he had taken the day before from a bottle he had mistaken as medicine." According to that account Palmer, "....without his glasses, searched in the bathroom and got the poison. No sooner had he swallowed it had he realized his mistake...." 

 

The official death certificate recorded Palmer's death as a result of "unknown poison taken in mistake for gargle."

 

 

________________________________________________________________________________

NOTES:

--"Foyzey & Lutz" would make a great name for a saloon.

-- Pittsburgh's Prohibition headquarters from 1920-1925 was in the building that now houses Mitchell's restaurant on Ross Street. They really should have capitalized on that history to sell more drinks.

-- Please, just put me in charge of historical research for Pittsburgh's bars and pay me in Cabernet.

 

 

A version of this story appeared on my Facebook page on 24 October 2020.

Unsolved Pittsburgh Mysteries: He'll Be a Dead One Tonight

In 1920 the widowed Ann Hoffstot lived with her two adult sons, Carl and Miller, on Susquehanna Street in Homewood. They lived in a modest house about a block south below the train tracks from Solitude, the late George Westinghouse's estate. Ann was the former Ann Rachel Shipley, widowed for at least 11 years. Her son, 33 year old Carl S. Hoffstot was known locally as an oil broker. His younger brother Miller Joseph Hoffstot was an accountant.

 

Ann answered a call at home on 21 February 1920 from an unidentified woman who asked to speak to one of the Hoffstot men, specifically the "one with the machine." 

 

Ann responded that both of her sons had cars, so the caller clarified that she wanted the one with the Ford. 

 

That would be Carl, Ann confirmed. 

 

The caller responded "Well he'll be a dead one by tonight."

 

And then she hung up.

 

Ann Hoffstot was alarmed. 

 

She called Carl, who wasn't available. So she called Miller, who reached Carl.

 

Carl didn't want to be a dead one, so he called the police. 

 

The coppers were able to confirm that the call had been placed locally, but that was the extent of phone line tracing in 1920. 

 

Carl informed the police that just in case, he was going to get a permit to carry a revolver. 

 

Now maybe Carl started packing heat from then on. Maybe he didn't. But he definitely placed an ad the next day in the Sunday edition of the Pittsburgh Press, offering a $1000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the mysterious person who threatened his life.

 

Reward notice placed by Carl S. Hoffstot in Sundays Pittsburgh Press, 22 February 1920

 That's what got this story on the front pages of the Pittsburg Press and the Pittsburgh Sunday Post.

 

Pittsburgh Press 22 Feb 1920.

Pittsburgh Daily Post, 22 Feb 1920

The story was even picked up in the Philadelphia Inquirer, with Carl becoming a "wealthy oil and gas promoter" in the process. To be fair there were wealthy Hoffstots in Pittsburgh, but not these Hoffstots. 

 

 

Headline and excerpt, Philadelphia Inquirer 23 February 1920

Death threats were Srs Bsns back in the day. Not like now, when a casual Twitter comment about, say, how often to wash one's towels can bring down the wrath of the masses. 

 

Fortunately Carl lived to see another day, and many more after that. His fortunes did take a downward turn as the country spiraled into the Great Depression, and he spent the last decade of his adult life hanging wallpaper for a living. He was a dead one at age 46, passing in 1935 of acute rheumatic fever.  His mother Ann lived five more years, dying in 1940 of natural causes. Brother Miller outlived them all to the ripe old age of 89. He died in 1980 in Florida, where he'd moved with his wife. (It is not known what kind of car Miller drove in 1920). 

 

What all this newspaper coverage didn't mention, but what a dive into public records reveals, casts new light on the story. 

 

You see, Carl had an ex-wife. 

 

In 1911, Carl Hoffstot married divorced-then-widowed Cleveland native Maud Hill Schenermann. Maud's first marriage as a teenager ended early in divorce. He second marriage left her widowed with a son, Wallace. (Maud had three more husbands after Carl, apparently liking marriage in theory but not in practice. Or maybe she just needed more practice).

 

Carl and Maud lived for some years in Cleveland with Maud's teenage boy from her second marriage, but they divorced in Pittsburgh in December 1919. 

 

That's two months before a mysterious phone call to the Hoffstot residence threatened Carl would be a "dead one tonight." 

 

Now, Carl claimed he had no enemies. And who knows, maybe Carl was certain his ex-wife Maud and his stepson Wallace had nothing to do with this. He told the Post that "He knew of no woman...who had a grudge against him nor did he know of any other individual or group of them for whom she might have been calling." 

 

Maybe the threat actually came from some babushka-clad bubba whom Carl had clipped with his Ford while she was crossing the street with a basket of turnips. 

 

The Press speculated that the threat may have been a hoax.

 

But Carl didn't take it as a joke. The incident had so shocked his mother that it "almost prostrated her"  and Carl told the Philadelphia paper "I intend to run this thing down and will make it hot for the person responsible for causing my mother so much worry."

 

After the reward notice was published, the story died a quiet death, presumably for lack of further information. It was a dead one, for sure.

 

 

*A version of this story was posted to my Facebook page on 22 February 2020.