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.

Her maternal great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann Miller Carlton, used wooden paddles called cotton cards to pick seeds from cotton when she was a slave in Union Springs, Ala., in the mid-1800s. The cotton cards, kept in a family trunk by Ms. Miles' well-organized mother, Mrs. Lois Miles, were loaned to the Heinz History Center for an exhibition that opens in November. The curator, Samuel Black, believes the cotton cards date to the 1860s.

Although Mrs. Carlton died in 1921 and rests in a Vandergrift cemetery, she had a major impact on her descendants. Mrs. Carlton watched over Lois Miles, who was born prematurely 93 years ago this week in Vandergrift. Mrs. Carlton heated bricks in a fireplace and wrapped them in blankets, creating a warm, makeshift incubator for her 2-pound great-granddaughter. That care allowed Lois Miles to thrive and become the mother of Inez Miles.

The woman who cared for and fed the Aurora Reading Club in the beginning was its founder, Rachel Lovett Jones, a Hill District woman who lived on Wandless Street. She was the great-great-aunt of Aurora member Thelma Lovette Morris, who remembers helping her great aunt, Carrie Lovett, prepare food for club meetings as a young girl. Mrs. Morris was elected to membership in 1993 and winters in San Tan Valley, Ariz.

"Many of these women were stay-at-home or had some kind of a business. So they really wanted to keep up to date with what was going on in the world. They had discussions about events of the day and read all kinds of literature," Mrs. Morris said.

She said she enjoyed "The Help," Kathryn Stockett's novel about the complex relationships black domestics had with white families in the South during the 1960s.

"We were touched by all of the struggles and what people went through to take care of their families, earn an income and attempt to live a life with dignity and grace," Mrs. Morris said.

First Published: February 22, 2012, 10:00 a.m.