Adam Lee Cilli, "Canaan, Dim and Far: Black Reformers and the Pursuit of Citizenship in Pittsburgh, 1915-1945" (U Georgia Press, 2021)

Adam Lee Cilli's book Canaan, Dim and Far: Black Reformers and the Pursuit of Citizenship in Pittsburgh, 1915-1945 (U Georgia Press, 2021) is an assiduously researched book about the activism of African American reformers and migrants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1915 to 1945. Adam Cilli argues that Pittsburgh is central to the story of the Black freedom struggle in the North and the nation as a whole. “Pittsburgh represents a crucial site for illuminating how reformers maneuvered within a political culture driven by industrial capitalism and informed by white supremacist rhetorics,” states Cilli in the opening section of his narrative. Migrants also played a significant role in this story and they made up “two-thirds of all African Americans in Pittsburgh by 1930.” Cilli further argues that although the middle-class reformers defined the “major social justice campaigns of the day,” it was the Black migrants who gave these initiatives “shape and force.” In this text, the author illustrates how a host of journalists, trade unionists, workers, lawyers, scholars and medical professionals advanced the struggle for Black equality in an urban setting. With an “Introduction,” more than thirty illustrations, seven chapters, and a “Conclusion” section, Cilli traces the social, intellectual and cultural history of Black Pittsburgh.  The first two chapters “The Ugliest, Deadest Town: Migrants and Reformers in the Steel City, 1915-1929” and “A Healthy and Prosperous Race: The Urban League of Pittsburgh and the Struggle for Jobs, Housing, and Health, 1915-1929” cover the Great Migration to Pittsburgh, housing and settlement patterns of the Black community in Pittsburgh, and the role of the National Urban League in Black middle-class reform. Cilli introduces a cast of characters and associations in these first two chapters key to his narrative including Reverend James Simmons, Bartow Tipper, and Robert L. Vann. Pittsburgh’s Urban League was critical in supporting the social needs of the new Black migrants as assessed in Ch