Each year for Black History Month, the Pittsburgh Public School District showcases black alumni who are making a mark on Pittsburgh and across the world. This year 21 were honored for their contributions to Pittsburgh’s art and culture scene. Here is one of them.
Corey Carrington always loved rap music.
As a kid, he was always writing rap lyrics and listening to the songs. So, he was immediately interested when some classmates at Pittsburgh Perry started a poetry club.
“At this point I was kind of looking for something to do,” said Mr. Carrington, now 29. “I wasn’t necessarily an athlete and I didn’t really hang out with like the tough kids or anything like that.” He was starting to “go down the wrong road” he said, and had previously gotten in trouble for stealing.
He shared his poems with the club at school, and one of his teachers submitted a piece he wrote to a Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative contest at Carnegie Mellon University. It won honorable mention, and he was invited to come read it. Thus, he said, his spoken word career was born.
“When I did that, I didn’t really understand how big of a deal it was,” said Mr. Carrington, who lives on the North Side.
He studied communications and creative writing at Slippery Rock University. He started doing collage-work and digital art after he was invited to teach an “arts activism” course for kids. Now, he produces visual art and performs spoken word under the name “Grits Capone,” emphasizing themes relevant to Pittsburgh’s black community.
In 2016, Mr. Carrington was named the first Emerging Black Arts Leaders Apprentice for the Strip District’s Society for Contemporary Craft. In the fall of 2017, he was invited to curate a show for the Brew House Association.
He has been working for the past several months as a substitute teacher in Pittsburgh.
“I’m very passionate about the youth because I think that they don’t see enough positive images of African Americans or black men, and if they do see them, it’s either negative or they’re not cool people,” Mr. Carrington said. “Something that’s always been important to me is ‘being cool.’ Being cool to the point where you can influence people and change the narrative of what is cool.”
