K. Leroy Irvis, First Black Speaker Since Reconstruction

K. Leroy Irvis represented the Hill District of Pittsburgh in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for fifteen consecutive terms, building one of the longest and most consequential legislative careers in state history. In nineteen seventy-seven he became Speaker of the House, making him the first African American to lead a state legislature since the era of Reconstruction, more than one hundred years after the last such speaker had served.

During his career Irvis championed the establishment of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and helped enact two hundred sixty-four bills that expanded equal access to education and protected civil rights across the state. His office was here in the Hill District, the same neighborhood that had once been one of the most vibrant Black cultural centers in the country before urban renewal reshaped it.