American Bandstand
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AMERICAN BANDSTAND AND SCHOOL SEGREGATION IN POSTWAR PHILADELPHIA BY MATTHEW F. DELMONT B.A., HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 2000 M.A., BROWN UNIVERSITY, 2004 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION AT BROWN UNIVERSITY PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY 2008 © Copyright 2008 by Matthew F. Delmont This dissertation by Matthew F. Delmont is accepted in its present form by the department of American Civilization as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date______________ ____________________________________________ Professor Matthew Garcia, Co-director Date______________ ____________________________________________ Professor Susan Smulyan, Co-director Recommended to the Graduate Council Date______________ ____________________________________________ Professor Lynne Joyrich, Reader Date______________ ____________________________________________ Professor Carl Kaestle, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date______________ ____________________________________________ Dean Sheila Bonde, Dean of the Graduate School iii CURRICULUM VITAE MATTHEW F. DELMONT Date of Birth: December 15, 1977 Place of Birth: Minneapolis, Minnesota Education: Ph.D., American Civilization, Brown University, Providence, RI, May 2008 M.A., American Civilization, Brown University, Providence, RI, 2004 B.A., Social Studies, magna cum laude, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2000 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Matt Garcia and Susan Smulyan for being excellent mentors and advisors, as well as helpful critics of my work. I learned a lot from Lynne Joyrich and Carl Kaestle during our discussions for field exams and as readers of this dissertation. Thanks to Evelyn Hu-Dehart for giving me a place to work at the Brown University Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in the Americas, and for her job advice. Thanks to my graduate school colleagues in the department of American Civilization for many friendly and challenging discussions. Special thanks to Marcia Chatlain and Mario Sifuentez for being great officemates and friends in graduate school. Thanks to my mom, Diane Delmont, who will be really excited to see her name in print. She taught me the importance of showing up to work everyday and being nice to people. I could not ask for a more dedicated and caring parent. The Brown University Graduate School, Temple University Urban Archives, and Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center all provided financial support to defray research costs. Margaret Jerrido, Brenda Wright, John Pettit, and the other staff members at the Temple University Urban Archives were very friendly and helpful on several early mornings and late-afternoons. The staffs at the Philadelphia City Archives, Philadelphia Schools District building, Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center, and African-American Museum in Philadelphia were also very generous with the time and expertise. Thanks to Terry Scott at West Philadelphia High School, Don Synder at South Philadelphia High School, and the librarians at William Penn High School and Northeast High School for v keeping their schools’ yearbooks in safe places and for allowing me to look at them after their long school days. Thank you to everyone who took the time to talk to me about their memories of growing up in Philadelphia. Arlene Sullivan deserves a special thank you for putting me in touch with several other American Bandstand folks. A big thank you to Jacque Wernimont for her love and travel buddy-ship. Our two summers in Philadelphia made research a lot of fun. We’ll always have 4500 Springfield Avenue. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER 1………………………………………………………………......................13 Making Philadelphia Safe for “WFIL–adelphia”: Bandstand, They Shall Be Heard, and the Divergent Histories of Local Teenage Television in Philadelphia, 1952-1957 CHAPTER 2……………………………………………………………………………..84 Massive Resistance, Northern Style: The Fight over De facto Segregation in Philadelphia Public Schools, 1951-1964 CHAPTER 3……………………………………………………………………………153 “They’ll Be Rockin’ on Bandstand, in Philadelphia, PA”: American Bandstand, Rock and Roll, and Civil Rights CHAPTER 4……………………………………………………………………………233 “The Plight of the Able Student”: Local Strategies to Expand Access to Higher Education in Philadelphia, 1955-1965 CHAPTER 5……………………………………………………………………………287 A Change is Gonna Come?: American Dreams, Hairspray, and the Mediated History of the American Bandstand Era CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………322 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………326 vii INTRODUCTION American Bandstand was also a force for social good. —Fred Bronson, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand 50th Anniversary, 20071 American Bandstand made Philadelphia the epicenter of teenage popular culture in 1957 when it became the first national television program directed at teenagers. The show broadcast nationally from Philadelphia every afternoon from 1957 to 1963 and featured performances by the biggest names in rock and roll. In addition to these musicians, the local Philadelphia teenagers who danced on the show became stars. For the millions of teenagers across the country who watched the program every day on television, these Philadelphia teens helped to shape the image of what youth culture looked like. Fifty years after the show first broadcast, American Bandstand’s representations of youth culture remain closely linked both to the show’s legacy and to larger questions about popular culture, race, and civil rights. Billboard magazine journalist Fred Bronson, for example, argues that American Bandstand was a “force for social good.” Bronson bases this claim on Dick Clark’s memory that he integrated the show’s studio audience when he became the host in 1957. “I don’t think of myself as a hero or civil rights activist for integrating the show,” Clark contends, “it was simply the 1 Fred Bronson, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand 50th Anniversary (New York: Time Life, 2007), 9. 1 2 right thing to do.”2 The real story of American Bandstand and Philadelphia in this era, however, is much more complicated than Clark suggests. This dissertation, a social and cultural history of media and education in postwar Philadelphia, examines the concurrent struggles against racial discrimination on American Bandstand and in the city’s public high schools. Unlike studies that look at either popular culture or education, I look at how media producers and school board officials racialized young people as both media consumers and students and how teenagers responded to this racialization. Through archival documents, oral histories, and socio-historical analysis of television programs, films, and photographs, I examine how young people experienced popular culture and education differently according to their race, and how national and local media represented these teenagers. By concentrating on popular culture and schools as important sites in the fight against racial discrimination, I show how the policies and practices of American Bandstand’s producers and the Philadelphia school board facilitated de facto segregation in television and high schools while being nominally progressive on issues of race. I also show how American Bandstand constructed an image of a national youth culture that excluded young people of color and obscured the work of Philadelphians who fought against racial discrimination. By situating American Bandstand in postwar Philadelphia this project locates new points of intersection among urban history, media studies, youth history, civil rights history, and educational history. The location of American Bandstand’s studio offers one way to understand the connections among these areas of analysis. Bandstand was a 2 This quote is included in the two American Bandstand popular histories co-authored by Dick Clark and Fred Bronson, see Dick Clark and Fred Bronson, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand (New York: Collins Publishers, 1997), 19; Bronson, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand 50th Anniversary, 9. 3 popular local television show in Philadelphia from 1952 to 1957. After this successful local run, ABC broadcast American Bandstand nationally from Philadelphia until 1964 when the show moved to Hollywood. During these years American Bandstand broadcast from a studio in West Philadelphia, an area undergoing dramatic demographic changes and struggles over racial discrimination in housing and education. American Bandstand relied heavily on both the black deejays and black teenagers who promoted the development of rock and roll in Philadelphia, but the show’s producers viewed the racial tensions in American Bandstand’s West Philadelphia neighborhood as a threat to the show’s marketability. As a result, American Bandstand’s producers implemented racially discriminatory admissions policies which segregated the show’s studio audience. While American Bandstand’s producers ensured that the show’s televisual representations were “safe” to broadcast into homes across the country, fights over housing and educational equality raged in Philadelphia. Black families seeking to move into West Philadelphia faced organized resistance from white homeowners associations, and civil rights advocates challenged educational discrimination in the city’s public schools. The location of American Bandstand’s television studio and the images that were broadcast from that studio blur the boundaries between urban history and media studies. On one hand, my analysis