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African American Property Ownership, Berean Building and Loan, and the City of Philadelphia, 1890 to 1920

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African American Property Ownership, Berean Building and Loan, and the City of Philadelphia, 1890 to 1920 University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 Becoming Owners: African American Property Ownership, Berean Building And Loan, And The City Of Philadelphia, 1890 To 1920 Ricardo Orlando Howell University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the African American Studies Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Howell, Ricardo Orlando, "Becoming Owners: African American Property Ownership, Berean Building And Loan, And The City Of Philadelphia, 1890 To 1920" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2346. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2346 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2346 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Becoming Owners: African American Property Ownership, Berean Building And Loan, And The City Of Philadelphia, 1890 To 1920 Abstract This dissertation traces the contours of African American property ownership in in the city, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. How did a moment of political deterioration during the 1890s foster African- American movements for civic accountability and political mobilization in the Quaker City? This study connects material achievement and the pursuit of property ownership among African Americans to the growth of church-based, minister-led, and property-focused associations. Historians have not often considered the connection between ostensibly moral-missioned institutions, the property they and their communities owned, and later political expressions. By raising and contextualizing a heretofore unexamined set of nearly 280 mortgage, census and directory records related to one-such building and loan association, Berean Building and Loan, this study argues that black property ownership functioned as a moral and economic lever in the view of the race’s leaders. Once a significant number of these associations formed, a “determined” middle class of black Philadelphians, armed with economic and cultural success, argued for political rights and representation they had previously been denied. In 1888, faced with an inability to otherwise achieve suitable housing for its members, the black-led Berean Presbyterian Church formed a building and loan association. Matthew Anderson, the church and association’s leader, claimed that participation in the association and ownership of property boosted the civic capacity and respectability of its members. Berean Building and Loan epitomized the material and moral movement that contemporary leader Booker T. Washington hoped to see growing among the race. Washington’s “cast down your bucket” sensation of a speech in 1895 seemed to mark the way forward for African Americans in the south and nationally. The promise of individual and group transformation accompanying property and material success formed a central pillar of Washington’s ethos and his National Negro Business League. Anderson’s efforts in Philadelphia provide a unique contrast to Washington’s and point to the intellectual continuity of ideas as regards property. As Berean and similar mutual aid associations and institutions formed and flourished in Philadelphia in the early 20th century, Washington’s disavowal of politics could not hold captive the minds of blacks in the city. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group History First Advisor Kathy Peiss Keywords African American middle class, Berean, Building and Loan, Matthew Anderson, Philadelphia, Richard R. Wright, Jr. Subject Categories African American Studies | United States History This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2346 BECOMING OWNERS: AFRICAN-AMERICAN PROPERTY OWNERSHIP, BEREAN BUILDING AND LOAN, AND THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, 1890 TO 1920 Ricardo O. Howell A DISSERTATION in History Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Supervisor of Dissertation _______________________ Kathy Peiss Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History Graduate Group Chairperson _______________________ Peter Holquist, Associate Professor of History Dissertation Committee Walter Licht, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History Barbara D. Savage, Chair, Department of Africana Studies & Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought Amy Hillier, Chair, Penn Forum for Women Faculty, Associate Professor, School of Social Policy & Practice, School of Design BECOMING OWNERS: AFRICAN AMERICAN PROPERTY OWNERSHIP, BEREAN BUILDING AND LOAN, AND THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, 1890 TO 1920 COPYRIGHT 2017 Ricardo Orlando Howell iii DEDICATION One generation empowering the next, this work is dedicated to my parents, Pamela and Edwin Howell, to my wife, Angela McMillan Howell, Ph.D., and to our children, Lily and Levi Howell. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENT No work stands on its own. The good parts of this history are owed to the feedback and commentary from its readers. The other parts, the mistakes and otherwise, are my own. Necessarily, this work was crafted with the inspiration of many and the perspiration of others that pushed it forward. I am grateful to God for grace to have begun this work and now completed it. It is God that gives the capacity to accomplish these things. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. My wife, Angela McMillan Howell, Ph.D., and our children, Lily and Levi, gave of their immeasurable ideas, energy and courage, when I had none. Before they could speak words, Lily and Levi provided motivation to work through nights and thorny problems. I wish to thank my family near and far who also supported this work. My patient parents, Edwin and Pamela Howell, waited to hear news of this project’s development, even when I could share little of what it was becoming. My sister, Nadine Howell Timmons and her husband, Sylvester, as well as my in-laws, Lois and Betha McMillan, Tiffany and Kweisi Mfume, Jennifer and David McMillan, and Sally McMillan, supported us in material and spiritual ways -- including providing secluded places to work, and babysitting. Thank you to Juanita and Hannibal Mickens, Jr., and their family, to Saundra Bond, and to the extended Howell family, including my many cousins in Antigua, Barbados, New York City, the U.K., and the U.S. You are everywhere and your encouragement was always with me. Hither and yon, my living biological aunts and uncles and their spouses include Agatha Applewhaite, Kathleen and Seldon Daniel, Miriam Howell, Rosey and St. Clair Howell, Doreen and Jeremiah Joseph, Evonne Nicholas, and Monica and Dennis Stowe. Were it not for them, our family bond could not have been sustained. Our family also thanks Bishop Monroe R. Saunders, Jr., and the Transformation Church family for continuous prayers and support. This work began and was defended at UPenn under the direction of Kathy Peiss, whose generous and incisive comments helped shape it into a dissertation project from a cultural history seminar paper. Peiss and the other members of my dissertation committee, Walter Licht, Barbara D. Savage, and Amy Hillier, encouraged and prodded the work to become more than it would otherwise have been. Each helped guide and streamline the study toward its completion with their own unique contributions. I thank the committee for its rigor and for its probing questions. As noted, they have improved this work. I only hope to continue to benefit from their counsel. Steve Hahn and Robert St. George helped shape the nucleus of the study with their careful comments and advisements. Robert F. Engs was a friend and mentor whose voice hovers over the work. I wish that we could still see and speak with Uncle Bob, as he asked us to call him. Eve Troutt Powell offered encouragement and provided critical administrative assistance. These historians and scholars are those whom I hope to emulate, even as my own work develops. The intellectual community at UPenn includes talented administrators who do essential work. From the first day, my experiences included Joan Plonski, for whom I am very grateful. The fearless Deborah Broadnax, along with her family Tony and Holly Woodbury, made Penn, Philadelphia, and Yeadon, a home. The Center for Africana v Studies and the academic department that it houses is well more than the sum of its co- curricular parts. I am grateful to Tukufu Zuberi, Camille Charles, Gale Garrison and Carole Davis for welcoming me into the center as a graduate fellow. I was fortunate to serve among UPenn’s Africana Studies Summer Institute fellows for several summers, working with distinguished students at the beginning of their undergraduate careers. I am only too proud of my association with the Center’s undergraduate and graduate community and to be among its alumni. The Center fostered a Dissertation Group of graduate students who read versions of each other’s work in proposal and chapter form. Becoming Owners would not have gotten to the successful proposal stage, if not for the DSG students’ commitment to one another. I arrived at Penn at the same time as a group of scholars who were at various stages of graduate study. This group taught me about commitment to scholarship and how young colleagues might treat one another with kindness and generosity. These include Yea Afolabi, Brian Coleman, Kim Gallon, Matt Karp, Jessica Lautin, Andrew Lipman, Tshepo Masango, Leander Seah, Cate Styer, Karen Tani, and Nicole Turner. I am grateful for their companionship, encouragement, humor, and for the work they have produced. I think of this group with much fondness. At points when either my energy or will were foundering, (Coach) Merlin Chowkwanyun sent motivational messages that originated on the basketball court and were applicable to the library; Clem Harris shared Philadelphia history, grad school strategy, and life lessons with me; and Nicole Turner, along with Dan and Eisa, helped refocus me on the writing and the mission. I could not have asked for better friends in the struggle, and I thank them for their special efforts.
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