Sala Udin is a leader who has shaped Pittsburgh life for decades. He served for years on Pittsburgh City Council and sits on the city’s Board of Education. Udin also spent just as much time working outside these institutions as a civil rights activist as within them. After growing up in the Hill District, Udin left Pittsburgh to fight segregation in the Jim Crow South, and received a presidential pardon for a conviction he received while helping African Americans in Mississippi register to vote.
Following news of his retirement from the school board after decades of public service, 90.5 WESA’s Priyanka Tewari spoke with Udin to discuss his career and legacy.
Priyanka Tewari: You have announced your retirement from the PPS board, and we even heard that you may not seek more public service roles. Why now?
Sala Udin: That's true. You’ve got to know when to say enough. And I turned 82 just this past Thursday, [Feb. 20]. So I'm working on a memoir documentary, and I'm learning how to say no, and I think I've given enough.
When you began serving on the Pittsburgh Public School Board representing District 3 in 2018, what were your hopes?
I searched for a young person who I thought had the qualities of leadership and experience to serve on the school board, but I was not able to find one. My standards were admittedly pretty high. So my friends told me, “Well, you’ve got to do it yourself.”
Soon after I got on the school board, I discovered that the method that we were using to teach children how to read was an outdated, ineffective method. And so my first big challenge on the school board was to get the board to adopt evidence-based reading. The board has adopted it, and is integrating phonics into our reading, curriculum.
That was the biggest challenge, and that challenge, quite frankly, goes on. Institutions — bureaucracies — are very difficult to turn around, to change, to move in a different direction. But I'm confident that the current superintendent will be successful.
That's, I think, my biggest achievement.
One of the efforts that you were involved with as a civil rights activist in Mississippi in the 1960s was desegregating schools. How has that experience informed your time on the PPS board, especially knowing that even 70 years after Brown v. Board, Pittsburgh Public Schools are more segregated now than in the 1980s?
The bravery of the families in Mississippi — the fact that families were so willing to risk their well being, their lives, to take on mountains of racism, to get their children educated — it helped me understand the importance of education.
We've attempted desegregating the schools before in Pittsburgh. It has always been a painful experience. Pittsburgh is so racially segregated and people want neighborhood schools. So it requires a transportation system that is effective and efficient. We haven't figured that out yet. That's one of the challenges that the new school board will have to take on. And the desegregation of our residential neighborhoods is essential.
Your parents gave you the name Samuel Wesley Howze. But it was one of your mentors who gave you the name Sala Udin. Why do you think he gave you that name?
[My mentor’s] name was Muhammad Ali. He's a local Pittsburgher. And an old friend of my family. He was attempting to share as much as he could with me as my mentor. I asked many, many questions, and he said, “I think I'm going to name you Salah Uddin: ‘one who seeks knowledge.’”
That was in 1968. And I still bear the name “seeker of knowledge.”
You have always made yourself available to talk about your life. In fact, you've given WESA several interviews. Why is it so important for people to know your story and your history?
When we were young, in our 20s and 30s, we didn't know we were making history. if I was aware of that, I would have saved so many memories: brochures, photographs, writings. Now that I'm in my 80s, I reach back to try to pull those things into the present and there's so much that I lost.
But I've also retained a lot. I'm proud that I'm at a place now where I can sit down, and look back, and say thank you.
