Why I Love (and Sometimes Hate) My City: Sala Udin on Pittsburgh

Born in Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District, former city councilman and lifelong civil rights activist Sala Udin, 68, experienced some of the city’s most controversial 20th century urban planning decisions from his front stoop.

Udin was an adolescent, for example, when city officials used eminent domain to bulldoze his family’s home along with 95 adjacent acres. The move displaced hundreds of small businesses and more than 8,000 residents – nearly 80 percent of them African American – to make room for the Civic Arena sports and exhibition auditorium.

Though some of Udin’s 11 brothers and sisters had already moved away from the Hill District by then, those who remained were relocated to the Bedford Dwellings housing project. Udin says this move "appeared to be a good thing" at first, because it allowed his parents to use government subsidies for day-to-day expenses. But in the long run, the move taught Udin that deep class and race boundaries exist in Pittsburgh to this day.

Driven away from Pittsburgh by "upper-class boys who didn’t know [his] name and girls who looked right through [him]," Udin dropped out of high school after his sophomore year and moved to Staten Island to live with his aunt.

Udin thrived away from Pittsburgh. He graduated from high school and later became a civil rights leader with the Staten Island NAACP. He watched Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have A Dream" speech as it happened on the National Mall in Washington D.C. and participated in some of the most important and iconic civil rights activism in U.S. history.

But there were dark times, too. After working for four years in Mississippi, he returned to Pittsburgh, though he made multiple trips between the Mississippi Delta to the Hill District. During one of these drives, federal police stopped and searched Udin and three friends. Found in their possession were shotguns and a bottle of moonshine. They were charged with illegally transporting firearms and possession of non-taxpaid distilled spirits.

Today, Udin shrugs off the moonshine but explains that the shotguns were justified.