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October 27th is a podcast that tells the story of the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting through the voices of the local community.
Each episode introduces us to the story of a person who experienced the synagogue shooting and its aftermath: survivors and family members of those who were killed, Jewish community members, and their non-Jewish neighbors.
October 27th is adapted from Meanings of October 27th, an oral history project that interviewed over 100 Pittsburghers about their life stories and reflections on the shooting.
Visit the oral history archive: https://october27archive.org/oral-histories
Donate to support this project: https://bardian.bard.edu/register/meanings
I’m Noah Schoen, and I’m Aliza Becker and this is October 27th, a podcast about the October 27th, 2018 synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. Aliza and I co-founded an oral history project that recorded over 100 interviews with local Jews and non-Jews about their life stories and reflections on the shooting. Our interviewees taught us so much and we’ve created this podcast to share their insights with you. This is October 27th.
Aliza Becker: Squirrel Hill has been thought of by some Pittsburghers as a sort of modern-day shtetl because of the Jewish community’s longtime presence, but actually the neighborhood has never been more than 40% Jewish. This means that the other 60% of the neighborhood, people from other backgrounds, grew up in a deeply Jewish cultural space. They know Jews better than most of the country.
It’s a diverse neighborhood, but diversity doesn’t always mean peaceful coexistence.
It’s something Tracy Baton knows well.
Tracy spent her high school years as one of only three Black students in the Allderdice High School Honors Program in Squirrel Hill. It’s here where she encountered the twin dangers of racism and antisemitism — and also began to understand their close relationship to each other.
Today, Tracy Baton is a well-known progressive political activist in Pittsburgh. Tracy offered her organizing skills to a high school student-led vigil the night of the shooting and then several days later for a large community march under the banner “No Place for Hate.”
Tracy Baton: My name is Tracy Colleen Baton. I was born in Harrisburg and moved to Pittsburgh in first grade. As a little girl in Harrisburg, my grandmother worked for an Orthodox family that owned a catering business. So our family and that family always had a relationship. My mom had been a Shabbos goy before I was born. My grandmother taught people how to keep a kosher house. My grandmother's kugel is immaculate, and my brisket is on point. And I often times have Jewish girlfriends call me and ask me how to make things, because my matzah ball soup is immaculate, you know. Now, but because those foods would come home, I would transform them and do things, like you know you can make a real good sandwich with ham and two latkes.
And so, one of my earliest memories of my grandmother explaining to me about Jewish holidays was that before Easter they would clean out their refrigerators for the catering business for Passover, and there would be just piles of food at my grandmother's house. And then her friends would come over to take away the food and give me candy. So, I have like really fond memories of Passover. It was like a great holiday for me,
So, it meant that later, when I lived in the Hill District and was traveling to Squirrel Hill, it wasn't worlds away like it would have been for somebody else. I understood things, like this is a kosher bakery, or this is a store. Yah know, those kinds of things made sense to me easily. And so it was easy for me. Even if I visited somebody's house, I didn't mess it up. Like, I got it.
Becker: How did you come to know Squirrel Hill?
I think the first time that I knew about Squirrel Hill was when I lived in the Hill District. I grew up in Pittsburgh's historic Hill District, which had been a Jewish neighborhood for many years. There are, to today, churches that have stars of David built into them, buildings that you can still see were originally part of the Jewish community. And I can remember my mom explaining, "People moved to Squirrel Hill, but the buildings stayed here." And I think I went to Squirrel Hill after that, and I had to be in elementary school wondering which of those people belonged to those buildings that I knew. And that's really my earliest memory of a Squirrel Hill-ness was living in the Hill District.
When I lived in the Hill District, I went to a school called A. Leo Weil. It still exists. And at that time, A. Leo Weil was then theoretically getting remodeled or something. It had no bathrooms. And they told kids that they had to go home to go to the bathroom.
Now, this was back when you went home to go to lunch, so it wasn't quite as outrageous as it sounds now. But still, there were no bathrooms.
And then I realized, when I moved to Squirrel Hill, that exactly that same time that my elementary school had no bathrooms, there was a swim team for the elementary school here in Squirrel Hill.
So, Colfax had a swim team at the same time that an elementary school in the same school district had no toilets. So, if anybody ever wonders if the dispersion of resources was racist, have no question that the Black school didn't get a toilet, and the white very Jewish school, got a swim team and many toilets.
So that's Pittsburgh racist. And it's a harder thing to fight. It's like fighting shadows. It's not the same as somebody in your face calling you a name.
And then, when my mom finished her PhD when I was in eighth grade, we moved from the Hill District to Squirrel Hill. And after that, I lived here, and I went to Taylor Allderdice. And I lived in Squirrel Hill on Barnsdale Street throughout college. So I didn't leave here until after I finished my bachelor's degree at Pitt.
Becker: What was the community like growing up?
Baton: The Squirrel Hill of my childhood was full of bakeries and people on the street and a lot of face-to-face commerce. For example, Rosen Drugs, which was on the corner of Forbes and Shady, was a place where there were always people in there, and there was a soda fountain, and you could get like an ice cream sundae for a quarter or a nickel. It was lots of face-to-face life. Lots of people on the street. Squirrel Hill was a place where you would hear more than one language on the street, and a really vibrant community, busy, vibrant community life.
Becker: What was it like for you as a Black girl in Squirrel Hill?
Baton: Racism in Squirrel Hill was different than racism in other places, but it's definitely still vibrant. Much more discreet. Kind of still got followed. Still got called things, sometimes in Yiddish instead of English.
There was always a separation. There was always a distance. But in Squirrel Hill, unlike other parts of the city, I felt safe and confident, for example, to go into stores and spend my money. My mom would say, "You know, in Squirrel Hill, your money's green." Meaning in other places, your Blackness overwhelmed capitalism.
My shoes have come from Little's since I was a little bitty girl. And you could always go in Little's and be politely waited on, where there were communities where they would ignore a Black girl in the store.
On the other hand, there was a distance of social life, of intimacy in high school. Allderdice was a lonely and isolating place. And that’s like, it wasn't rude. There were parts of the country where people would have been overtly rude. It was just that people knew you didn't belong.
You didn't get invited home with kids. You didn't get invited to go do things. But in school, you could compete. And I was smart enough to compete academically. But most people's experience of high school is more than just the academics. And that's the part that just didn't exist.
But one of my memories of that first year at Allderdice was there were three Black girls in the Scholar’s Program, and we went to the office to ask, “Could we please have one class together, or lunch?" And we were told no, because it wasn't fair to the other kids, because they wouldn't have the experience of having someone Black in their class. I don't think they exactly put it that way, but they told us no. It did not happen. Because it was more important to all the White kids that they could have a Black classmate than it was for us to feel like safe and like we had community.
And it took many years for me to realize that I had every reason to be angry that that happened. But at the time, we were made to feel guilty that that's what we wanted.
Becker: What was your relationship like with Jews growing up?
It’s mostly been good. Sometimes been excluding, but that's okay. A little bit servile. It's okay. My first job was at Little's. My first job at sixteen was putting shoes on feet here in Squirrel Hill. And I was treated politely and hired for the job, and so, you know.
And I guess the thing that was remarkable was when I moved from Pittsburgh the first time, I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, which is very white, non-Jewish, very northern European influenced. Even in Pittsburgh and if you're not Jewish, you might be more southern European influenced than northern European influenced. So, Wisconsin surprised me with its blondness and blandness.
And when I got to Wisconsin, I felt alien from the project of Americanness in a way I'd never felt here. Like that they had an idea that this is what it meant to be like a real American. And I didn't feel that growing up. I felt like this is what real Americans are like. This is really what my country is like. That being northern European WASP wasn't required for part of that project. So, Pittsburgh and Jewish Pittsburgh had me grow up, in part, with a sense that American identity wasn't dependent on WASP identity.
Jewishness was the water of whiteness. I learned the difference between whiteness and Jewishness more by leaving Pittsburgh than I ever did here.
Becker: What was your understanding of antisemitism growing up?
Baton: As a little kid, I grew up Catholic. And I grew up Catholic in a Black neighborhood, which is stigmatized, which is weird. And I think I thought of being Jewish, as a little, little kid, as like being Catholic. Just like you're just different.
But when I came to Allderdice, the main thing I learned was that white people don't really like each other. So, that's when I learned about antisemitism. I knew about racism, but that's when I learned all the bad names that white people call each other. I had not known until then. So the most virulent antisemitism I heard as a child was at Allderdice.
And when I was in ninth grade at Allderdice, three boys that I didn't think were Jewish took a boy who was Jewish, and tied him up behind a house and set him on fire. Third degree burns on eighty percent of his body. Back then, it didn't make the paper, because it was a wealthy school and…
He was their friend that they picked on and were mean to all the time. And I can remember telling him he should stay away from them. And they were mean and would say antisemitic things about him when he wasn't around. But they also would say them in front of his face. So, maybe that's part of why I associate antisemitism with violence and danger.
Becker: So, anything else you’d like to add about your relationship with Jews growing up?
Baton: My father-in-law is the child of a Polish immigrant, and very much invested in Pittsburgh whiteness. And we used to argue. So, one of my experiences was fighting with him about things I wouldn't listen to. He would say "kike" and I would leave the room. But that kind of antisemitism existed much more in Greenfield and Hazelwood. Pittsburgh's poorer, whiter communities is where you would hear it. But it was Jewish kids who told me, “Don't go into Greenfield at night,” protectively. Because Greenfield was also racist like that.
So I knew from my life and my mom. Was it Frantz Fanon, in the 50s, who said, "We always have to stand together, because if you scratch an antisemite, you find a racist." You found I think he said Negrophobe, because it was the 50s, and he was Frantz Fanon. But "if you scratch an antisemite, you find a Negrophobe," I think is still true to this day.
So, my earliest memories was my mom teaching me that if somebody is antisemitic, they probably hate you too.
Becker: We're going to pivot to October 27th, 2018. Can you describe that day for me?
Baton: I need to explain a couple of things to make that day make sense. I am director of the Women's March on Washington, Pittsburgh. And I do a lot of political things with a lot of political people. So, on that day, I was at a meeting for the 14th Ward Independent Democratic Club, and we got a text message from one of our members saying he wouldn't be able to come to the meeting because he was at Tree of Life, and he wouldn't be able to leave because there had been a shooting.
And I went home and I heard from Jonathan Mayo, who said that the students at Allderdice, that I think includes one of his children, wanted to speak that evening, and would I please help?
And because of Women's March, I own a stage that's in my garage, and I have contacts for people who will bring a sound system for political things. So, I organized the stage and the sound system and had people come over and throw them in vehicles and brought them up to Forbes and Murray. And I was like super-busy. My memory of that day was like, "Any minute I'm going to be upset," but I was super busy.
And I got up to Forbes and Murray and got them set up, and got the sound system set up. And the kids were speaking, and one of the girls reminded me of my daughter that passed away. And I just stood up there at Forbes and Murray, holding up that big pillar that holds up the library, crying. Because for me, as long as I'm busy, I'm fine. If somebody needs me, I can hold it together. As soon as nobody needed me, that's the end of me.
And we got that all torn down, and went home.
Baton: Pittsburgh is an incredibly quiet and peaceful place compared to other cities. You know if you compare like gun deaths, compared to Chicago or Philadelphia. This is one of the most quiet and peaceful parts of Pittsburgh. So, the ambulances and the police, you could hear from my house. I don't live in Squirrel Hill. I live in Regent Square, one neighborhood over. But you could hear all of that shatter our silence and our peace. In a way, that's never really been put back together—or our illusion of peace, maybe.
Becker: Can you tell more about what it was like for the non-Jews after the shooting?
Baton: I think people didn't feel like they had really a place to go, a way to gather up those feelings, at first.
I got home to a lot of phone calls, because people had seen me there and thought I knew something, but I didn't know anything. I have a somehow genetic ability to have people think I know what's going on, when I don't know what's going on. My children seem to have it as well. So, that's why I've decided it's genetic.
The rest of that evening was kind of people calling me crying, because they thought that I knew something or that I was a good person to call and cry and be upset. And I created some space for people who didn't have faith communities. Particularly people who weren't Jewish, but lived in Squirrel Hill, who wanted to cry, who wanted to say, "I'm upset," and just needed a place where they could say that, and they didn't feel like it was their place to go to Tree of Life. It wasn't their synagogue.
And Squirrel Hill is one of the most Jewish places in America, but it's not a shtetl. Like it is maybe half Jewish. That means that half are not!
But those days in between seemed a little dreamlike of what all had to be done in those days. So, then I went to somebody's home. And people were going in and out to get bodies ready for funerals and do blessings. And the people who could stay there were largely not Jewish, because we weren't busy with burying people.
But I think that the march a few days later, offered a way into the heart of things, a way into the heart of Jewishness. I would say of all the people out on the street that day maybe half were Jewish. But to sing songs of Jewish mourning. And really, like I'm not a scholar of Jewish life, cuz I'm going to say this as a non-scholar of Jewish life. I think it was the most Jewish public political moment in the history of the United States.
The march was powerful and meaningful for the people that were there. Bend the Arc asked me to be on the corner early, so I got there first and sat there on the steps of that synagogue on Forbes and Beechwood as people welled up and arrived. And it was pretty amazing how quickly it went from me on the steps to what was my guess for that day? It was five, ten thousand people. And people were really peaceful and cooperative.
Now you have to understand this in context. It's not all me but Squirrel Hill highly participated in Women's March and other actions, so it wasn't just magical that that action went that well. Most of the people had a schema of what you do at an action.
Enthusiastic sounds wrong, because there was a definite feeling of lamentations, which are really out of style in our time. You know, like the idea of lamentations as an offering. The idea that we open up our hearts and pour our pain out together is not a thing of our time. We have a kind of Pollyannaish culture, where you're supposed to look real happy all the time. And that was part of what was so very different about the day, because it was a day of collective lamentation.
And the way that people were enthusiastically participating, even in Hebrew. It was pretty amazing.
My grandson was there, but he was not the only baby. My children were there, but we were not the only family of many generations.
And then we went by the police station, and people were giving the police candy and treats and things. My understanding is all the police there gained a bunch of weight because of their support at Tree of Life. And the police were like helpful and waving and—so different than other places, other actions.
And we went up to Forbes and Shady to Sixth Presbyterian, sometimes known as Mr. Rogers' church. I went to school with his kids. And a number of people spoke from the steps of Sixth Presbyterian, facing the JCC. And I was one of those people that spoke.
I think the thing from the speech, the thing that I thought is—Pittsburgh values matter. And I think that there is a post-facto ownership of those values to Fred Rogers that I'm troubled by. Like Fred Rogers came to a community with values. We had values, and he learned them, and he taught them to the world, and I appreciate that, but he did not invent them.
Fred Rogers came here and he learned Pittsburgh values, he learned Jewish values, and he took them to the world.
At the end of that speech, I quoted Rabbi Hillel. “If I'm not for myself, who will be for me? If I'm for myself only, then what am I? If not now, then when?"
I think that for me that is an important message out of that moment is that, you know, If I'm for myself only, what am I? What am I? So, I tried to keep people engaged and on moving, because they need to be something and not nothing.
And we tore it down and went home. And that was that difficult day.
Becker: You spoke earlier about what it was like for you as a Black girl in Squirrel Hill. What is it like for you now?
So, Pittsburgh has turned whiter during my lifetime—dramatically whiter during my lifetime. The Black population is down, Black home ownership is down, and it is a terrible place to be a Black woman. Part of that is displacement out of the city.
But If you're looking for connections between the Jewish community and anybody, there's no sign. And Black Pittsburghers do not have a sense that—I can't speak for what all Black people know, but in general—that the Jewish community is interested in that at all, even as a problem. It’s not on the agenda. And maybe when I was a kid, at least, it was on the agenda, that Jewish Pittsburgh worked with the NAACP, engaged in civic collectiveness.
But when I talk to people outside of Squirrel Hill now, the sense is that it's much more insular and much less interested in building up the rest of the city and the region, and that's sad. I don't know if it's true, but it’s definitely the feeling out there.
Becker: How do you think the shooting impacted the community in Squirrel Hill and your own community?
Baton: I think that the African American community in Pittsburgh anticipates gun violence. Had less painful and difficult impact in part because that illusion of safety was already shattered. So, for Squirrel Hill and Shadyside and white Pittsburgh, people are more fearful. People are more afraid of something they can't name.
I see more Jewish people talking about their Jewishness. I think there was more people saying, "It matters whether or not I say publicly that I'm Jewish." I even have a couple of friends who are Jews of color who have stepped out to talk more publicly about that as well. So, that's been one of the real outcomes, is people stepping up a little bit.
Becker: Have you seen any bridge-building or deeper connections since the shooting?
Baton: No. I have wanted to. I've seen organizers try. But no.
I think that the Jewish community here in Pittsburgh has a lot of capacity. Right. And by capacity, I don't just mean money. I mean smart people who have extra time. I mean spaces that things can happen.
To be fair, the attempts that I have seen at what might be loosely called bridge-building remind me of being told that there had to be a Black girl in every class at Allderdice.
Becker: Can you elaborate on that?
Baton: Well, I'm convinced that I was told that I couldn't have a class with the other three Black girls at Allderdice because they thought the white kids would be better off if they had a Black kid in every class, because they'd feel better about themselves. I think that was the purpose of telling me that.
There have been some attempts at doing things together, but I think that they have been more designed to serve the white community than the Black community.
Becker: And what would it look like if it served the Black community?
Baton: You'd have to ask people what they need, and structure things around what people want rather than what you think of. That's why I keep saying I don't know what the bridge would look like, it’s because the first thing that I would do is talk to people about what it is they need and want, and not start with what I think the bridge should look like. So, I can tell you things that would make me happy. But that's not the same as how to serve people best.
Becker: Is there anything that you'd like to share with future generations from the October 27th synagogue shooting?
Baton: That things that seem distant and disengaged and political will come home. It's easy to think that events like electing a president full of hate, who has been racist and antisemitic from the start, that electing him was going to be okay and not matter right here, right at home. But it's just not true.
Who leads matters. Hate speech from afar comes home, and poisons your own well.
Hate has to be stopped when it's small. Put out small fires. It matters. If you ignore it, it will grow, and you will own it.
So, what I would tell future generations is don't let it go. Don't let it grow. Stop it, nip it in the bud. Stand up. Speak out. Because it will come home, and your own friends and family will die.
October 27th is written and hosted by Aliza Becker and Noah Schoen, and it’s produced and edited by Carly Rubin. Our audio engineer is Patrick Budde. We get administrative support from Tina Stanton Gonzalez of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions and our closing theme is Tree of Life by Nefesh Mountain. If you want to support our work and the creation of more episodes like this one, you can make a donation at October27podcast.org where you’ll also find episode transcripts, a link to this full unedited interview, and more. That’s October27podcast.org. And lastly, thank you to all of the amazing Pittsburghers who shared their stories for the Meanings of October 27th Oral History Project. We’re so grateful for your trust and your generosity.