More Than the Homestead Grays

My dad told me about watching the Homestead Grays of the Negro League; my mom told me about Lena Horne performing in Homestead.  Today I learned an interesting corollary to that last fact.

Homestead's Leona Theater

The Leona Theater in Homestead was the scene of a civil rights sit-in. In 1938, African Americans who'd been restricted to sitting in the balcony resisted the Jim Crow arrangement by taking seats on the first floor.  Several of the protesters were arrested. But when the Organization Committee of the USW (United Steel Workers) took control of Homestead city government in 1938, the city's Jim Crow laws were relaxed, the Leona changed its seating policy, and African Americans were free to sit anywhere in the theater