Aurora Reading Club of Pittsburgh spans generations, gives insight into African-American experience
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Members of the Aurora Reading Club co-sponsored a Jan. 30 reception at Carnegie Music Hall for two authors. Book club members, seated from left, are Martha Conley, Cecilia Williams and Florence Johnson. Standing, from left, are Inez Miles, Beatrice Vasser, Margaret Burley, Charlene Foggie Barnett, Pam Golden, authors Michele Norris and Isabel Wilkerson, Sarah McDaniel, Emma Odim, Ada Ezekoye, Mildred Morrison and Marylee Giles. -
Lois Miles holds the cotton hand cards, wooden paddles to pick seeds, that were used by Mary Ann Miller Carlton. -
Inez Miles unpacks an old family photograph at the Heinz History Center as curator Samuel Black watches on Monday. Between them is a Miles family Bible from the 1800s. Ms. Miles, the Aurora Reading Club of Pittsburgh's immediate past president and a vice president at the Downtown office of Citizens Bank, knows firsthand that an ancestor's nurturing ways smoothed the path for her birth. -
Mary Ann Miller Carlton, a former slave who helped raise Lois Miles when she was born, is shown in an undated photo.
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At Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland last month, author Isabel Wilkerson recounted, with evangelistic fervor, how the great migration of African-Americans from the South to the North changed the nation, noting that an ancestor of playwright August Wilson walked from North Carolina to Pittsburgh.
Afterward, NPR news anchor Michele Norris thanked her colleague for "taking us to church."
In the "Literary Evenings" audience sat many of the 25 local women who make up the Aurora Reading Club of Pittsburgh, one of the nation's oldest African-American book groups.
Many Aurora members are active in their churches and communities; they include educators, a speech clinician and a lawyer. Their reading list ranges from Elie Wiesel's "Night" to "The Colors of Courage," an account of the Gettysburg battle from the viewpoint of women, immigrants and African-Americans.
Founded by six women in the Hill District in 1894, Aurora Club members read a wide variety of titles, take in the city's cultural offerings and inspire one another to cut new paths of opportunity. Their motto is "Lifting As We Climb." That evening, the club co-sponsored a reception for the authors with the United Black Book Clubs of Pittsburgh, whose members also attended.
Inez Miles, the Aurora's immediate past president and a vice president of risk management at the Downtown office of Citizens Bank, said many of the organization's members are pioneers, citing club member and community activist Lavera Brown, who served as director of the NAACP's local chapter from 2001 through 2004.
"These women made it possible for women in my age group to do what we do," said Ms. Miles, who lives in Wilkinsburg and was elected to membership in 2005.
"The women were so interesting and bright. They're well traveled. They're well read," she said, adding that about half still work full time while the other half are retired.
Last year, club members discussed "The Warmth of Other Suns," Ms. Wilkerson's moving account of three black people who left the segregated South for better lives in California, Chicago and New York. The book made Ms. Miles wonder if any of her ancestors had been slaves. Her questions led to a family heirloom with a story all its own.
First Published February 22, 2012 12:00 am
