Adding a new component to their yearly list of 50 Men of Excellence, the New Pittsburgh Courier will honor three local legends. Receiving the 2010 Legacy Awards are Wendell Free­land, Robert Lavelle, post­­humously and Robert Pitts.

ROBERT LAVELLE, WENDELL FREELAND and ROBERT PITTS

Through more than 50 years as a civil rights attorney and leader in the Urban League, Freeland pressed the city schools on issues of hiring and achievement in the 1950s and was a lead attorney in the desegregation of Highland Park Pool. He is also well known for his time in the service as a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African-American pilots who fought in World War II.

After more than 40 years of programming, a legacy will come to an end Nov. 1, when WQED Multimedia replaces its African-American focused program, “Black Horizons” with a new show, during its new scheduled lineup, called “Horizons.” The new program will feature issues pertaining to the different ethnic populations living in the region.

“Black Horizons” has been a major entity in the Black community. It is the country’s longest running program for and about the African-American community. It was another side to the many negative images of Blacks that are portrayed night after night on the news reports.

While the station may see it as an expansion to their programming, others see it as a loss of an entity that played a major role. “Black Horizons” did not just play a major role, it was a piece of history.

At the first town hall meeting at the August Wilson Center for African-American Culture, visitors and staff seemed to want the same thing. The public asked President Andre Kimo Stone Guess how he was getting the community involved in the center and Guess expressed a desire to get more involvement from the community.

“We’re going to go into the community. I’m going to learn about the community,” Guess said. “I hope this is the first step to that. We need to take this setting into the community.”

PANEL HOSTS—Andre Kimo Stone Guess, right, and Aaron Walton answer questions from the audience.

In the past months since its opening, the center has been struggling with how to balance a welcoming open-door atmosphere while still remaining financially viable. Both the public and Guess, along with Aaron Walton, chairperson of the board of directors, agreed the solution would be give and take. The center should offer more engaging activities and in return, the public would visit and serve as the center’s ambassadors to other residents in the city.

He stood before the bulldozers that erased the lower Hill District with Byrd Brown and Jimmy Joe Robinson, saying, “no further.” He led the marches and protest that culminated in more than 1,500 Blacks gaining union jobs they had been denied for decades. And along the way he met and befriended people of all political stripes, from Yasser Arafat and Jimmy Carter to Dick Thornburgh and George H.W. Bush. And always his challenge was the same—help me help my people.

NATE SMITH

Though Nate Smith’s contributions to labor rights for African-Americans are well known in Pittsburgh, national awareness of his work has not been as broad.

That is about to change.