Jump to content
Main menu
Main menu
move to sidebar
hide
Navigation
Main page
Recent changes
Random page
Help about MediaWiki
Special pages
Niidae Wiki
Search
Search
Appearance
Create account
Log in
Personal tools
Create account
Log in
Pages for logged out editors
learn more
Contributions
Talk
Editing
Coatesville, Pennsylvania
(section)
Page
Discussion
English
Read
Edit
View history
Tools
Tools
move to sidebar
hide
Actions
Read
Edit
View history
General
What links here
Related changes
Page information
Appearance
move to sidebar
hide
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
===20th century=== [[File:Lukens Main Office.JPG|thumb|right|Main Office of Lukens Steel]] As Lukens Steel grew so did Coatesville, eventually becoming known as the "[[Pittsburgh]] of the East."<ref name="mow"/> By the beginning of the 20th century the population had grown to 6,000, attracting immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe to its industrial jobs, as well as both black and white migrants from the rural South. Tensions rose in the city as the population rapidly became more diverse. In August 1911, steelworker [[Lynching of Zachariah Walker|Zachariah Walker]] was [[Lynching|lynched]] in Coatesville; he had left his wife and children in [[Virginia]] while seeking better work. This African-American man was accused of killing Deputy Constable/[[Coal and Iron Police]]man Edgar Rice, a popular figure in town. Walker claimed self-defense and was hospitalized after his arrest. He was dragged from the hospital and burned to death in front of a mob of hundreds in a field south of the city. Fifteen men and teenage boys were indicted, but all were acquitted at trials. The lynching was the last in Pennsylvania and is said to have left a permanent stain on the city's image.<ref name="mow"/><ref name="smith">[https://web.archive.org/web/20160201152533/http://www.dailylocal.com/article/DL/20110813/TMP01/308139966 Eric S. Smith, "Zachariah Walker's lynching haunts the city"], ''Daily Local News'' (Chester County), 13 August 2011, accessed 5 January 2016</ref> Walker's murder was investigated by the [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP), which called for an end to lynching nationwide.<ref name="mow"/> Pennsylvania passed a state anti-lynching law in 1923. But, even after passage of an anti-lynching House bill in the 1920s, no federal law was passed because of the power of the Democratic southern bloc in the Senate. At that time, it represented only white southerners; African Americans had been [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disfranchised]] in the South since the turn of the century. Racial violence was spreading all across America during the [[Red Summer]] of 1919 and the local African-American community was on edge. On July 8, 1919, the black community of [[1919 Coatesville call to arms|Coatesville formed a large armed protection group]] to prevent the rumoured lynching of a rape suspect. When the armed group surrounded the jail to prevent the attack, they learned that there was no suspect and no lynch mob. In 1929, the [[Coatesville Veterans Affairs Medical Center|Coatesville VA Medical Center]] was built with an original mission to provide neuropsychiatric care to veterans. In 2013, the Medical Center, with its distinctive architecture of Colonial Revival and Classical Revival, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Medical Center now provides a range of health care services to more than 19,000 Veterans in Pennsylvania and Delaware.<ref>{{cite web |title=History - Coatesville VA Medical Center |url=https://www.va.gov/coatesville-health-care/about-us/history/ |website=va.gov |date=9 June 2021 |publisher=U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs |access-date=7 April 2022}}</ref> The school system expanded to keep up and the religious community became more diverse, with Roman Catholic churches founded and [[Beth Israel Congregation of Chester County|Beth Israel Congregation]], one of Chester County's few synagogues. In 1932 there were a total of 22 churches of various denominations in the city. After [[World War II]] the steel industry began a long decline, but in the 1960s Lukens Steel was still the largest employer in Chester County, with over 10,000 workers. It finally started to restructure due to industry changes, was sold several times, and its workers were reduced in number to 5,000 and eventually to 2,000.<ref name="mow"/>
Summary:
Please note that all contributions to Niidae Wiki may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see
Encyclopedia:Copyrights
for details).
Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)
Search
Search
Editing
Coatesville, Pennsylvania
(section)
Add topic