Civil Rights and Working-Class Pottstown, Pennsylvania, 1941-1
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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: “JIM CROW, YANKEE STYLE”: CIVIL RIGHTS AND WORKING-CLASS POTTSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA, 1941-1969. Matthew G. Washington, Doctor of Philosophy, May 2019. Dissertation Chair: David Taft Terry, Ph.D. Department of History, Geography, and Museum Studies Between 1941 and 1969, activists in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a small working- class borough in Montgomery County, organized and conducted African-American civil rights work. Through the efforts of organizations like the Pottstown NAACP, YMCA, Pottstown Civic League, and the Pottstown Committee on Human Relations, African American and white civil rights activists coordinated such black-centered activism. Also important to these efforts toward combating racial inequality was the advocacy of the town’s major newspaper, the Pottstown Mercury. Although Pottstown, which sits approximately forty miles to the northwest of Philadelphia, was not a large city, this dissertation will demonstrate that it served as an important locale of civil rights activism all the same. Indeed, Pottstown activists’ work and influence even had national impact. By conceptualizing Pottstown as such, this dissertation strays from a dominant interpretive approach utilized by scholarship that examines civil rights work in the twentieth-century urban North. Generally speaking, these studies have stressed large northern cities as the principal centers of civil rights activism. Yet, as this dissertation asserts, if Pottstown never exceeded 27,000 residents from 1941 to 1969, like other small locales in the North, its impact on the nation’s civil rights history was outsized. “JIM CROW, YANKEE STYLE”: CIVIL RIGHTS AND WORKING-CLASS POTTSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA, 1941-1969. by Matthew G. Washington A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY May 2019 ii “JIM CROW, YANKEE STYLE”: CIVIL RIGHTS AND WORKING-CLASS POTTSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA, 1941-1969. by Matthew G. Washington has been approved March 2019 DISSERTATION COMMITTEE APPROVAL: ______________________, Chair David Taft Terry, Ph.D. ______________________ Robert W. Morrow, Ph.D. ______________________ Lawrence Peskin, Ph.D. ______________________ Peter Levy, Ph.D. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has benefited from the help and support of many. I express a sincere thanks to Dr. David Taft Terry for chairing the work and his many insightful suggestions. I am also grateful to Drs. Lawrence Peskin and Robert W. Morrow, my committee members, for their recommendations. In addition, I express gratitude to Dr. Peter Levy, the outside reader of this dissertation, whose expertise has benefited this work tremendously. Further, I am thankful to the many archivists at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., the Special Collections Research Center at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and others, who have assisted me in the research of this dissertation. Special thanks to the Benjamin A. Quarles Humanities and Social Science Institute at Morgan State University for naming me a Graduate Fellow during the period of August 2018 to May 2019. I am appreciative of the funding received from the institute, which has allowed me to conduct extensive research for this dissertation. I am also grateful for participating in the institute’s fall 2018 conference as a presenter, where I was able to share my research on Pottstown with a community of scholars. In addition, I express gratitude to the Department of History, Geography, and Museum Studies at Morgan State for receiving the Isabel McConnell Memorial Scholarship, as well as the School of Graduate Studies for funding, which has supported me during my time as a doctoral student. iv Finally, I express gratitude to family. I thank my parents, Deborah and Phillip Washington Sr., for their unwavering support. Thanks also to my siblings, Jennifer and Phillip Washington Jr., the extended Washington family, and friends. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: WORLD WAR II AND THE DAWNING OF CIVIL RIGHTS WORK IN POTTSTOWN ..............................................................................................39 CHAPTER 3: THE POTTSTOWN MERCURY AND THE BEGINNING OF CIVIL RIGHTS ADVOCACY ....................................................................................................84 CHAPTER 4: THE PINNACLE OF INTERRACIAL CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISM IN POTTSTOWN……………………………………………………………………..140 CHAPTER 5: THE POTTSTOWN NAACP AND THE NEW CHALLENGES OF SMALL-TOWN CIVIL RIGHTS WORK IN THE NORTH ...................................199 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION......................................................................................238 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..........................................................................................................245 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION When thinking about civil rights history in the United States and its centers of geographical importance during the twentieth century, the working-class borough of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, located in Montgomery County and approximately forty miles to the northwest of Philadelphia, does not usually come to mind.1 However, Pottstown was a paramount location of civil rights activism. Between 1941 and 1969, local activists —black and white—mounted multiple campaigns centered upon ameliorating conditions of African Americans. Utilizing organizations both inside and outside of the borough— churches, civil rights groups, and the town’s main newspaper, the Pottstown Mercury— activists not only achieved success in Pottstown, but nationally as well. Capturing the ways local activists mobilized and implemented civil rights work, this dissertation demonstrates that Pottstown was an important locale of civil rights organizing and activism—just as important as other regions throughout the urban North, including those with larger populations. From 1941 to 1969, Pottstown African Americans and whites organized and advanced civil rights initiatives that combatted racial prejudices indigenous to the region. During World War II, local activist organizations worked to address civil rights needs of local African Americans. At the forefront of these efforts, of course, were black 1 Paul Chancellor, A History of Pottstown Pennsylvania, 1752-1952 (Pottstown: Historical Society of Pottstown, 1953), 46. For quote in title of dissertation, see Normand Poirier, “Jim Crow, Yankee Style, Stalks Streets of Pottstown,” Pottstown Mercury, June 28, 1954, 1, 9. 2 community institutions like Pottstown’s Second Baptist Church (founded in the mid- 1890s), and organizations like the Pottstown branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was established in November 1942. 2 Another organization whose efforts were heavily influenced by black activists was the Pottstown Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), and its “Negro Extension 2 Michael T. Snyder, “The history of Pottstown's Second Baptist Church,” Mercury, February 5, 2012, http://www.pottsmerc.com/article/MP/20120205/LIFE01/120209715; “Negroes Here Plan Cemetery,” Pottstown Mercury, November 4, 1942, 3; “Negroes Organize Group in Pottstown,” Pottstown Mercury, November 23, 1942, 3. Work” program, which launched in January 1945.3 Similarly, the black-led Pottstown Civic League (PCL) was established in 1950, and tackled various issues relating to African-American improvement. 4 Institutions like Second Baptist, and local organizations like the NAACP branch, the Negro Extension Work program of the YMCA, and the PCL not only provided local civil rights work with grassroots activists, but also became an important proving ground for local African-American leadership. These same leaders went forward to great success in future local civil rights endeavors.5 Whites, too, were activated in support of democratic racial change. Organized only months following Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) the Pottstown Committee on Human Relations (PCHR), for example, an interracial organization of advocates and activists, had great impact. The PCHR was a byproduct of both national and local civil rights work. Whereas Brown influenced the Pottstown Mercury to begin publishing reports that exposed discrimination against African- 3 “Final Plans Made for Negro Center,” Pottstown Mercury, January 26, 1945, 10. Also see “Negro Activity Plans Pushed: Committee to Recruit Leaders for Groups to Be Sponsored by Local YMCA,” Pottstown Mercury, January 11, 1945, 1, 14. 4 “Negro Leaders Form Pottstown Civic Group For Self-Improvement,” Pottstown Mercury, April 4, 1950, 1. 5 “Negroes Here Plan Cemetery,” Pottstown Mercury, November 4, 1942, 3; “Negroes Organize Group in Pottstown,” Pottstown Mercury, November 23, 1942, 3; “Final Plans Made for Negro Center,” Pottstown Mercury, January 26, 1945, 10; “Negro Leaders Form Pottstown Civic Group For Self-Improvement,” Pottstown Mercury, April 4, 1950, 1; The Pottstown Plan: A First Step, Other Orgs: Pottstown Human Relations Council, 1955, Subseries 1.8: Other Organizations, 1949-1986, 82/84, Fellowship House (Philadelphia, Pa.) Records, SCRC 281, Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania [hereinafter, FHPA_Temple]. 3 Americans on the local front, the newspaper’s reporting, in turn, served as the impetus of the PCHR.6 The efforts of PCHR members and the impact of its programs were amplified by the