Racing the City Intentional Integration and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in Post -Wwii America

RACING THE CITY INTENTIONAL INTEGRATION AND THE PURSUIT OF RACIAL JUSTICE IN POST -WWII AMERICA A Dissertation Submitted to The Temple University Graduate Board in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Abigail Perkiss May, 2010 Examining Committee Members: David Farber, Advisory Chair, History Bryant Simon, History Beth Bailey, History Kevin Kruse, External Member, History, Princeton University ii ABSTRACT Racing the City: Intentional Integration and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in Post-War America Abigail L. Perkiss Doctor of Philosophy Temple University, 2010 Doctoral Advisory Committee Chair: David Farber My dissertation, Racing the City: Intentional Integration and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in Post-WWII America , examines the creation, experience, and meaning of intentionally integrated residential space in the latter half of the twentieth century. Entering into the growing historiographical conversations on post-war American cities and the northern civil rights movement, I argue that with a strong commitment to maintaining residential cohesion and a heightened sense of racial justice in the wake of the Second World War, liberal integrationists around the country embarked on grassroots campaigns seeking to translate the ideals of racial equality into a blueprint for genuine interracial living. Through innovative real estate efforts, creative marketing techniques, and religious activism, pioneering community groups worked to intentionally integrate their neighborhoods, to serve as a model for sustainable urbanity and racial justice in the United States. My research, centered on the northwest Philadelphia neighborhood of West Mount Airy, chronicles a liberal community effort that confronted formal legal and governmental policies and deeply entrenched cultural understandings; through this integration project, activists sought to redefine post-war urban space in terms of racial inclusion. In crafting such a narrative, I challenge much of the scholarship on the iii northern struggle for racial justice, which paints a uniform picture of a divisive and violent racial urban environment. At the same time, my dissertation explores how hard it was for urban integrationists to build interracial communities. I portray a neighborhood struggling with the deeper meanings of integrated space, with identity politics and larger institutional, structural, and cultural forces, and with internal resistance to change. In that sense, I speak to the larger debates over post-WWII urban space; my research, here, implies a cultural explanation complementing the political and economic narratives of white flight and urban crisis that scholars have crafted over the last two decades. This is at once the story of a group of people seeking to challenge the seeming inevitability of segregation by creating an economically stable, racially integrated community predicated upon an idealized vision of American democracy, and it is the story of the fraying of that ideal. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In August of 1986, a local news crew came to Kiley Guyton’s fifth birthday party, to shoot a story about the daughter of a white mother and a black father. Karen and Odell Guyton had chosen to raise their family in Mount Airy, the model of an integrated community. I was at that party. That was the day that I learned that race matters. Writing about the neighborhood in which I grew up has presented an interesting challenge, but it has also provided amazing opportunities. Thank you to the residents of West Mount Airy, for sharing your stories with me, for offering your insights while waiting in line at the co-op, relaxing at the coffee shop, or running beside me at the gym. Thank you to my neighbors and friends, for letting me think critically about our community, and for allowing me to complicate and challenge the historic ideal of integration that has attracted so many to this space. On my own intellectual path, I have had the opportunity to work with and learn from a diverse group of scholars, teacher, and writers, all of whom have shaped this project in profound ways. Thank you to David Farber, who challenged me daily and supported me when it mattered most; who let me figure out my own process, while holding me accountable to his high standards. You pushed me to slow down and think about the big questions; you have taught me how to be an historian. To Beth Bailey, who reminded me to pay attention to contingency, and to always think about what’s at stake. To Bryant Simon, for forcing me to see what wasn’t yet there. To Kevin Kruse, whose own work showed me that the study of space could be a vehicle for so much more. To Richard Immerman, who, when I first arrived at Temple, helped me navigate the bureaucratic waters of a large university to create this joint JD/PhD program. Quite v simply, I couldn’t have done this without you. To Nancy Knauer, Kathy Stanchi, Susan DeJarnatt, and David Hoffman, for helping me think about the legal construction of the social world, and the social construction of the legal system. To Bruce Lenthall, who nurtured the curiosity of a raw undergraduate sociology major, and who showed me what it means to do history. You helped me understand why studying the past matters; you are the teacher I hope to become. To Jeff Barg, Christina Cooke, Mira Ptacin, Brendan Hughes, Kate Walker, Donna Galluzzo, Polly Bennell, Teya Sepinuck, and Paul Hendrickson, for turning me on to the art of a good story. To my colleagues and friends in the Temple history department, who made graduate school an engaging and exciting and, yes, even fun place to be. You have offered someone who gains energy from the people around her an intellectual and social community in what otherwise could have been a very isolating academic experience. Thanks, in particular, to Matt Johnson, Tim Cole, Kelly Shannon, Michele Louro, Ben Brandenberg, Sarah Hughes, Zach Lechner, and Kate Scott, who challenged me to think about why my story matters. Finally, to my family and friends outside of the academic world. Thank you for your guidance and support, for the coffee dates, the long runs, and the marathon phone calls and movie sessions. Thank you for helping me get outside of my own head. To Steve Perkiss, who has shown me the value of boundless energy, who has supported me with his quiet presence, his thoughtful questions, and his long walks in the woods. To Cindy Perkiss, for her uncanny ability to make the big picture clearer; for being the world’s greatest sounding board; and for teaching me the value of making lists. I wouldn’t have gotten through grad school without them. To Marta Perkiss, for allowing vi me to see the world through a different set of eyes, and for our shared love for afternoon double features. And to Brent Freedland, who came into my life just as this project was taking shape, and turned me into an adventurer. My world is far better with you in it. Joan Didion once said, “we tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Thank you all for teaching me to tell stories. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................... iv LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................... viii INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ ix CHAPTERS 1. ‘A HOME OF ONE ’S OWN :’ THE BATTLE OVER RESIDENTIAL SPACE IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICA ..................................................................................................... 1 2. FINDING CAPITAL IN DIVERSITY : THE CREATION OF RACIALLY INTEGRATED SPACE ........................................................................................................................ 38 3. MANAGED DIVERSITY : THE MEANING OF INTEGRATED SPACE ............................ 89 4. SPATIAL DISLOCATION AND RACIAL AUTHENTICITY : INTEGRATION , SEPARATION , AND THE FIGHT FOR BLACK IDENTITY ..................................................................... 123 5. WELL -TRAINED CITIZENS AND GOOD NEIGHBORS : EDUCATING AN INTEGRATED AMERICA ................................................................................................................. 162 6. EXTERNAL PRESSURES AND INTERNAL TENSIONS : THE CRISIS OF INTEGRATION ….. .................................................................................................... 211 EPILOGUE MEMORY , REPRESENTATION , AND MEANING : THE LEGACY OF INTEGRATION ....... 248 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................... 260 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure One: Map of Consolidated Philadelphia (1854) .....................................................11 Figure Two: Location of West Mount Airy .......................................................................33 Figure Three: The Lincoln-Pelham Corridor .....................................................................41 Figure Four: West Mount Airy’s Integrated Core .............................................................74 ix INTRODUCTION On June 20, 1975, at the sixth annual meeting of National Neighbors, an initiative bringing together racially integrated communities across the country, Eleanor Holmes Norton took the podium as the keynote speaker. In front of a packed ballroom, filled with

Load more