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''From Protest to Politics'' : Community Control and Black Independent Politics in Philadelphia, 1965-1984 Matthew J. Countryman Journal of Urban History 2006 32: 813 DOI: 10.1177/0096144206289034

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Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 “FROM PROTEST TO POLITICS” Community Control and Black Independent Politics in Philadelphia, 1965-1984

MATTHEW J. COUNTRYMAN University of Michigan

This article traces the origins of black independent electoral activism in Philadelphia during the 1970s to the Black Power movement of the 1960s. Specifically, it argues that Black Power activists in Philadelphia turned to electoral strategies to consolidate their efforts to achieve community control over public institutions in the city’s black working-class neighborhoods. Finally, the article concludes with a brief evaluation of the careers of African American activist state legislators David Richardson and Roxanne Jones and W. Wilson Goode, Philadelphia’s first African American mayor.

Keywords: Black Power; community control; independent politics; Democratic Party

The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and politicians in his own community. —Malcolm X, April 19641

Black priorities have moved from integration in the 1950’s through the 1960’s riots and civil rights movement to control of institutions in the 1970’s. —W. Wilson Goode, January 19722

On April 26, 1970, 900 black political and community activists in Philadelphia attended the founding convention of the Black Political Forum (BPF). BPF’s founder and first president was John White Sr., a salesman and longtime West Philadelphia community activist with a booming voice and an intimidating presence. White told the gathering that the forum’s purpose was to make the black community’s political representatives more responsive to the community’s needs and more accountable to their constituents. “Let the politicians know that we demand representation,” he urged his audience. “Right now, the leaders do not consult the people in the community on anything. They just vote the party line. The people are out of it.”3 To signal the group’s ties to community organizations and the broader black movement, the BPF honored nine prominent community activists from

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Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 814 JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY / September 2006 the city’s black working-class neighborhoods at its founding convention. The honorees included Roxanne Jones, president of the Philadelphia Welfare Rights Organization; Mary Rouse, founder of COPPAR, a citywide anti–police brutality coalition; and David Richardson, a community-based youth organizer who led a citywide black high school student demonstration for community control of the schools in 1967.4 By identifying their organization with local advocates of welfare rights and community control, the forum’s founders were explicitly linking their efforts to end the machine’s control over Philadelphia’s black vote to the ideal of community control of poor black communities and the institutions that served them. At the same time, the convention was designed to demonstrate the potential impact that a black independent political organization could have on the mainstream political arena. BPF thus arranged for the two leading candidates in the 1970 Democratic Party primary for Pennsylvania governor, State Auditor Robert Casey and local businessman Milton Shapp, to speak briefly at the dinner. The BPF’s commitment to pragmatic political action was also evident in its choice of keynote speaker. Richard Hatcher, the recently elected first African American mayor of Gary, Indiana, urged the audience to “get [its] hands on the levers that control power” and to avoid “suicidal notions of armed revolution or [the] creation of separate black communities.” By adopt- ing the “Irish model of political unity,” he declared, the black community could take “control of many of the nation’s cities.”5 John White’s avowed purpose in founding the BPF was to bring an end to what he called the “plantation politics” practiced by the local Democratic Party’s City Committee. Made up of the Democratic leaders of the city’s sixty-six wards, the City Committee was solely responsible for selecting the party’s candidates for public office. The white-dominated City Committee, White and his allies in the BPF charged, selected candidates to run in predominately African American electoral districts based not on their records of service to the black community but rather on their loyalty to the Democratic machine and its white leadership. In other words, white party leaders, not black voters or political activists, were determining the city’s black political leadership. The only way to end this kind of “plantation politics,” White argued, was to run independent black candidates against the machine’s candidates in the Democratic primaries.6

FROM PROTEST TO POLITICS

In most histories of the civil rights movement, electoral activism in the years following the Voting Rights Act of 1965 appears as a kind of coda, just one example among many of the movement’s successes at moving the African American community into the mainstream of American life.7 Similarly, political scientists have tended to analyze the electoral turn as a process of political

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 815 modernization, a process that has allowed for the development of a professional class of black politicians capable of effective participation in the nation’s formal political institutions and in the pluralist competition over government policy and the distribution of public resources. Robert Smith, for example, has described “the most important consequence” of Black Power–influenced electoral activism as “the entrance of black interest organizations into the competitive, pluralist interest-group system characteristic of the ‘middle-level’ of power in the United States.”8 In contrast, those who see the promise of the black freedom movement as largely unfulfilled have tended to depict the electoral strategies of the 1970s as, at best, the co-optation of the movement’s commitment to a radical transformation of the social order and, at worst, the opportunism of a black political class determined to wrap its ambition within the movement’s legitimating cloak. Political theorist Adolph Reed, for example, has argued that electoral strategies led to a form of “political incorporation” in which Black Power politicians accepted the traditional “pro-business, pro-growth priorities” of postwar urban liberalism and thereby abandoned the interests of their “grass- roots” working-class constituencies in a full-scale challenge to “entrenched patterns of racial inequality.”9 This article, in contrast, locates Black Power’s electoral turn within the strategic debates and logic of the black movement. In 1965, legendary movement strategist Bayard Rustin published his famous polemical memo “From Protest to Politics,” in which he argued that the only way that the civil rights movement would be able to turn its legislative achievements into substantive economic gains for the black and poor was to develop an electoral coalition of “Negroes, trade unionists, liberals, and religious groups,” the very New Deal coalition that the architects of the BPF viewed as the prime obstacle to the growth of a truly indigenous black political leadership. Rustin was particularly critical in his essay of “black militants” and their “‘no-win’ policy” of expos- ing “the hypocrisy of white liberals,” a clear reference to the independent political strategies of groups like the BPF. While Rustin charged that those who sought to build “the Negro’s independent political power” lacked “a realistic strategy” for changing the nation’s “social, political and economic institutions,” he still recognized the potential inherent in organizing black electoral power in black-majority communities. “If the movement can wrest leadership of the ghetto vote from the machines,” he wrote, “it will have acquired an organized constituency such as other major groups in our society.” The irony is that the black political activists who proved most effective at developing approaches to electoral politics that complemented black movement protest, in Philadelphia at least, were those who adopted the Black Power critique of racial liberalism. The founders of the Black Political Forum shared with Rustin the belief that a realistic electoral strategy was essential to achieving the “qual- itative transformation of social institutions . . . necessary to satisfy Negro demands for full inclusion in the nation’s socio-economic life.”10

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More specifically, it was the logic of community control that led these activists to the electoral arena. In the brief period between his departure from the Nation of Islam and his assassination in February 1965, Malcolm X articulated a black nationalist political strategy that called for black activists to take control over political, economic, and social institutions in the black community.11 In Philadelphia and other cities, Black Power activists drew on Malcolm’s vision to press for black community control over public institutions and programs from the public schools to federally funded antipoverty programs.12 By the end of the 1960s, however, conservative victories in federal and local elections had begun to threaten the significant progress that Philadelphia activists had made toward the goal of community control. It was in this context that the Black Political Forum’s founders argued for the necessity of developing a strategy for challenging the Democratic machine’s control over Philadelphia’s black vote. By establishing an autonomous black power base within the city’s Democratic Party, the BPF would be able to fulfill the Black Power movement’s demand for community control of public institutions in the black community. As recent scholarship has demonstrated, a diverse range of Black Power activists embraced the strategic link between electoral activism and the quest for community control over public funding for black urban communities during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In Newark, New Jersey, Amiri Baraka’s cultural nationalist Committee for a Unified NewArk allied itself with the city’s first black mayor, Kenneth Gibson, in an effort to win contracts to build low-income housing in the city’s black ghettoes. Similarly, the revolutionary socialist Black Panther Party organized voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives in inner-city Oakland for California Governor Jerry Brown and Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson in return for control over contracts to redevelop the Oakland port. The call for black control over public sector contracts and jobs spurred the political careers of black mayors as diverse as Maynard Jackson, Marion Barry, Harold Washington, and Coleman Young.13 To suggest that there was a strategic logic behind the late 1960s and early 1970s turn to electoral politics is not to argue that all Black Power activists shared this faith in the possibility of achieving fundamental social change through the electoral system. Activists and organizations in the Philadelphia Black Power movement pursued a wide range of strategies and goals from armed self-defense and urban revolution to black capitalism and the development of all-black alternative institutions.14 Nor is it to argue that personal ambition and even opportunism did not play a factor in the black pursuit of electoral office in the 1970s. Individuals brought a broad range of motiva- tions and aspirations to the independent black politics of the era, just as they had to the protest movements of the previous decades. What I am arguing is that the focus of black movement activism turned to electoral activism

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TRADITIONS OF BLACK POLITICAL ACTIVISM IN PHILADELPHIA

The founders of the Black Political Forum were following in a long tradition of efforts to renegotiate the relationship between Philadelphia’s black electorate and the political machines that had dominated city government since the end of the nineteenth century. Thus, in 1907, W. E. B. DuBois crit- icized the city’s black political clubhouses in the Philadelphia Negro for their dependence on the then-Republican machine and its patronage offerings (jobs, constituent services, and Election Day “street money”). Charging that the machine’s payoffs were wholly inadequate to the needs of the impover- ished black community, DuBois called on the city’s black political leadership to throw its support to upper-class Progressive reformers who were seeking to clean up the city’s notoriously corrupt political structure.15 Despite DuBois’s efforts, Philadelphia’s black political leadership remained unequivocally loyal to the party of Lincoln and the local Republican machine until the 1930s. As late as 1932, at the peak of the Depression, the city’s black political clubhouses delivered 70.5 percent of Philadelphia’s black vote to Herbert Hoover. Within a year, however, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal had inspired a black political revolt against the Philadelphia machine. Angered by the machine’s refusal to slate black candidates for public office, a group of black community leaders led by Rev. Marshall Shepard, a Baptist minister from West Philadelphia, organized a public campaign to demand greater black representation on the local electoral slates of each party. The group first approached U.S. Senator William Vare, the unquestioned boss of the Republican machine, to demand that the Republicans slate a black candidate for a position on the city’s Municipal Court. Vare, however, refused, reportedly telling the delegation that black voters would never abandon the Republicans. The long- suffering Philadelphia Democrats were much more responsive to the Shepard group’s demands. “Mr. Vare thinks blacks in this city don’t have enough sense to switch parties,” Shepard told a protest meeting in the fall of 1933, “now is the time to show him that he is mistaken.” Each of the city’s black newspapers endorsed Shepard’s call for black Philadelphians to vote Democratic. The following year, Shepard was elected to the state legislature on the Democratic ticket, beginning a thirty-year career as one of the city’s leading black Democrats. By the 1936 presidential election, Philadelphia’s black vote was staunchly Democratic and would remain so in state and national elections for the rest of the century.16 The situation, however, was quite different in Philadelphia’s municipal elections. Republican patronage and disarray among local Democrats would

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 818 JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY / September 2006 keep the Republicans in firm control of Philadelphia’s City Hall until the late 1940s. In the aftermath of World War II, however, a group of white reformers with patrician backgrounds and New Deal liberal politics emerged to challenge machine politics in the city. Known as the Young Turks, the reformers pursued a vision of a city revitalized through rationalized urban planning and government reform. The call for political reform was led by the local chapter of Americans for Democratic Action, the newly established liberal anticommunist organization, while the Greater Philadelphia Movement (GPM), a nonpartisan group of business officials from the banking, real estate, and insurance industries, pressed for the revitalization of the city’s central business core. By 1951, the reform movement had, in coalition with the local Democratic organization, achieved a virtual revolution in municipal politics. In April of that year, the city’s voters approved by referendum a new home rule City Charter that streamlined municipal government and shifted control over most city jobs from the political patronage system to a newly established Civil Service Commission. And then, in November, the Democrat-reform alliance ended half a century of machine control of the city by electing liberal reformer Joseph Clark mayor by a landslide.17 Black votes proved crucial to both reform victories. During the great migration of the 1940s, Philadelphia’s black population had grown from 13 to 18 percent of the total population.18 Neither black voter turnout nor black support for Democratic candidates was inevitable, however. Black support for the local Democrats was the product both of the maturation of the Democratic Party organization in the city’s growing black neighborhoods and of the reform movement’s willingness to adopt and highlight civil rights issues in its political platform. By the 1940s, the Democratic Organization had successfully integrated a generation of rank-and-file political activists in black neighborhoods across the city. On the national level, the Democratic Party was also becoming increasingly cognizant of the importance of appealing to the civil rights concerns of black voters. In 1946, for example, President Harry Truman appointed a distinguished Committee on Civil Rights to examine the status of the nation’s racial minorities.19 Not insignificantly, one of the two African American members of the Truman committee was Philadelphia lawyer and NAACP activist Sadie M. T. Alexander. Throughout the 1940s, Alexander and her law partner and husband, Raymond Pace Alexander, were central to the emerging alliance between Philadelphia’s civil rights community and the Democrats’ reform wing. In 1941, the Philadelphia NAACP had joined with Jewish and Protestant civic groups to form the Fellowship Commission (FC) to fight racial and religious bias in the city. When white transit workers led a wildcat “hate” strike against the Philadelphia Transportation Company for comply- ing with the federal order to desegregate its workforce in 1944, the FC led an effort to prevent racial violence from breaking out across the city. And in 1948, the Alexanders led the FC’s successful campaign to pass one of the

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 819 nation’s first municipal Fair Employment Practices laws through the still Republican-controlled Philadelphia City Council. But it was in alliance with the reform Democrats that the FC achieved its most significant victories. Beginning in 1949, Sadie Alexander led a successful FC campaign to have provisions banning racial discrimination in all city employment, services, and contracts incorporated into the new Home Rule Charter for the city. And once the voters had ratified the new charter, the Democratic reform movement reinforced its public commitment to civil rights by endorsing two African American candidates for City Council—Rev. Marshall Shepard and Raymond Pace Alexander, both of whom won easy victories in the 1951 Democratic landslide.20

THE DECLINE OF LIBERAL REFORM AND THE RESURGENCE OF THE MACHINE IN BLACK PHILADELPHIA

The 1950s were a heady time for Philadelphia’s liberal reformers and their allies in the civil rights community. During the mayoral administrations of Joseph Clark and his reform successor, Richardson Dilworth, the city pursued an ambitious program of government reform and urban renewal designed to revitalize the city’s central business district and industrial infrastructure. Particularly important to local civil rights activists were the efforts of the city’s newly established Commission on Human Relations (CHR) to bring an end to racially discriminatory employment practices in the city’s public and private sectors. “The City of Philadelphia,” the CHR declared in its annual report for 1953, has “very nearly assembled...the ideal combination of legal authority, organization, funds and community support for an effective attack on racial and religious prejudice and discrimination.” For many black Philadelphians, these liberal reforms produced substantive benefits. The CHR handled an average of 121 cases of employment discrimination per year between 1953 and 1960. Pursuing what civil rights advocates called a “breakthrough” jobs strategy, the CHR focused its efforts on opening up positions that had previously been limited to white workers. It was, however, the reform administration’s decision to place thousands of what once had been patronage jobs under the control of a quasi-independent Civil Service Commission that had the most significant impact on the over- all structure of black employment in the city. By 1963, blacks made up 39 percent of the municipal workforce and 32 percent of public school teachers. Access to public sector employment meant higher incomes, particularly for those black workers with relatively high levels of education. In 1950, only 2 percent of black workers in Philadelphia earned more than $4,000 per year. By 1960, that figure had risen to 12 percent.21 By the end of the 1950s, however, the promise of liberal reform had faded for many black Philadelphians. While the policies of the Clark and Dilworth

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 820 JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY / September 2006 administrations contributed to the revitalization of Center City with a mix of modern office towers, upscale residential neighborhoods, and a historic tourist district, neither urban renewal nor antibias laws could stem the impact of industrial job losses, persistent employment discrimination, and increasing residential segregation on poor and working-class black Philadelphians. And while the CHR could claim significant victories against racially discriminatory hiring practices, the commission was also forced to acknowledge that its efforts had had little quantitative impact on job opportunities for black workers. “In the framework of the present-day administration of the fair employment law,” the CHR wrote in its 1960 Annual Report, “the employer who does not ‘refuse to hire’ because of race may, with impunity, continue to conduct his recruitment, training and advancement of employees with only rare and nominal deviation from the traditional pattern.” Given this combination of factors, it is thus not surprising that black un- and underemployment in the city rose precipitously throughout the 1950s. A CHR study of black workers living in North Philadelphia found in 1956 that 37 percent of workers sur- veyed were unemployed and 42 percent had irregular employment as common laborers, domestics, and service employees.22 Meanwhile, the process of ghettoization in Philadelphia continued apace. By 1960, the black population of North Central Philadelphia had increased from 45 to 69 percent, while a 1958 survey of apartment rentals in Center City Philadelphia found only two nonwhite tenants in a total of 4,202 units. And rather than challenge patterns of residential segregation, the city’s slum clearance program exacerbated the housing problems facing poor and working-class black families. While slum clearance removed “blighted housing” from large areas of North Philadelphia, it failed to attract private devel- opers willing to build new housing for the displaced slum dwellers. All but 1,022 of the 150,000 new housing units built in postwar Philadelphia were marketed on a whites-only basis.23 The late 1950s also saw a resurgence of machine politics in Philadelphia. In 1956, for example, white opposition to neighborhood integration led machine Democrats on the City Council to block the Dilworth administration’s plan for scattered-site public housing. Moreover, the Democratic City Committee (DCC) selected as its new chairman William Green Sr., a congressman from the white working-class neighborhoods of Kensington and Fishtown and a master of patronage politics. Green felt little need to continue to curry the favor of the party’s reformers or their professional class constituencies. As the party out of power forced to take on a long-established, well-oiled Republican machine, the Democrats had desperately needed the support of reform voters. Once in power, however, the party organization could use the spoils of victory to win the support of constituencies that had long felt beholden to the Republicans. Reform had become a hindrance to the party’s consolidation of power in the city.24

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An ironic factor in the declining influence of reform politics within the Democratic coalition was the increasing importance of black voters to the Democratic Party’s fortunes. It was black party workers—whose mastery of the patronage process enabled them to deliver needed services to poor and working-class black voters, and in turn deliver those voters to the polls—who benefited from the local Democrats’ increasing reliance on the black vote, not civil rights stalwarts like City Councilmen Raymond Pace Alexander and Marshall Shepard. By the end of the 1950s, support for the party hierarchy, rather than civil rights credentials, determined both who chaired the ward committees in black neighborhoods and who was slated to run for office in black-majority legislative districts. The first public sign of this shift in local black electoral politics came in 1958. When the white Democratic incumbent in the city’s majority- black Second Congressional District announced his retirement, it was thus widely assumed that the Democratic City Committee would select City Councilman Raymond Alexander to run in the second district. The city committee, however, passed over Alexander in favor of a little-known South Philadelphia ward leader and party loyalist named Robert N. C. Nix. Extraordinarily, Nix was not a resident of the second district, nor did his ward lie within the district’s boundaries. The machine’s triumph over the party’s reform wing could not have been clearer when Alexander chose to endorse Nix rather than mount an independent challenge to the party’s nominee. Others in the reform wing—including the Philadelphia chapter of Americans for Democratic Action—refused to accept the party’s choice and instead backed the independent candidacy of black attorney Harvey Schmidt, a former assistant district attorney in the Dilworth administration. Schmidt, however, simply could not compete with the support that Nix received from the district’s Democratic ward leaders and committeemen. The party loyalist easily won both the May Democratic primary and the November general election to begin what would be a twenty-year congressional career.25 In Congress, Nix earned a reputation as a mostly invisible supporter of the party leadership. During one of the most turbulent periods in African American history, Nix never sought an active role in national or local black concerns. And although he eventually rose to the chairmanship of the House Civil Service and Post Office Committee, not once in his twenty years in Congress did Nix serve as the lead sponsor on a major piece of legislation. As the dean of Philadelphia’s black Democrats, Nix’s approach to political representation—loyalty to the party hierarchy over all else and near total silence on the dominant racial issues of the time—would set the tone for local black elected officials throughout the 1960s.26

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UP SOUTH: THE BLACK FREEDOM MOVEMENT IN PHILADELPHIA

Meanwhile, civil rights advocacy in Philadelphia had reached an impasse by the end of the 1950s. The city’s black elected leaders chose not to raise fundamental issues of race relations because of their dependence on the support of the Democratic machine, while the city’s traditional civil rights groups were so bound to civil rights liberalism that they were loath to raise concerns about the effectiveness of antibias institutions and strategies. It was within this void that a local protest movement began to develop. On June 6, 1960, Rev. Leon Sullivan, the pastor of the city’s largest black Baptist church, announced that a new coalition of black ministers he called the 400 Ministers were planning a new initiative in the fight against employment discrimination. The ministers called their initiative Selective Patronage and modeled it on 1930s-era “Don’t buy where you can’t work” protests. Specifically, they urged black Philadelphians to be ready to boycott retailers that refused to meet their demands for the hiring and promotion of black workers. And, in a sharp break from the interracialism of the city’s civil rights groups, the ministers limited their boycott appeals to the black community, communicating their message solely through black church and community networks and the local black-owned press.27 One week later, the ministers told their congregants that they had selected their first Selective Patronage target: the Tasty Baking Co., makers of Tastykake cupcakes and other snack products popular in the city’s corner groceries. After a nearly two-month boycott, Tastykake agreed to meet all of the ministers’ demands, including the hiring of the first blacks to the lucrative position of salesman-driver. During the next three years, the ministers called seven more successful boycotts and reached hiring and promotion agreements with an additional 300 companies. All told, they would claim to have “opened up” 2,000 jobs that had been closed to black workers.28 In 1963, a second protest campaign mounted an even more direct attack on the city government’s failure to enforce the City Charter’s antibias provisions. That spring, Cecil Moore, a criminal attorney and the recently elected president of the local NAACP, led a series of demonstrations at a public school construction site in North Philadelphia to protest the lack of black workers employed in skilled positions on municipal construction projects. Like Selective Patronage, the construction protests drew the support of a wide cross-section of black Philadelphians—from college students and middle- class professionals to members of the Laborers’ Union and working-class residents of the neighborhood surrounding the school. “This is a false democracy,” one picketing construction worker told the Philadelphia Tribune, “when qualified colored people can’t get a job building schools for their own kids.” After two weeks of daily demonstrations, the contractors’ association agreed to hire five black workers to skilled positions on the school construction

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 823 site. In addition, the contractors and leaders of the city’s building trades unions agreed to continue negotiating with the NAACP on a long-term plan to address the lack of black workers in the skilled building trades.29 Despite these victories, Selective Patronage and the construction protests raised as many questions as they answered. On one hand, protest strategies rooted within the city’s black institutions and neighborhoods had won employment breakthroughs that surpassed all of the achievements of the Commission on Human Relations during its first ten years. And yet, the goals of these two protest strategies remained firmly within the logic of the “breakthrough” jobs strategy. As much as these victories meant to individual black workers, neither 2,000 retail positions nor five skilled construction jobs were going to fundamentally transform the racial structure of employment in the Philadelphia area. While the local NAACP and the Philadelphia chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) would continue to mount protests against employment discrimination in the years after 1963, black movement activism in Philadelphia would increasingly shift away from rights-based activism and toward more collective and community-oriented solutions to the problems of persistent black poverty. Frustration with the pace of racial change boiled over in black Philadelphia during the last weekend of August 1964. Beginning on the evening of Friday, August 27, a three-day race riot rocked North Philadelphia. By that Sunday, 308 people had been arrested, 2 killed, and 339 wounded, including 100 police officers and 239 black civilians. As significantly, the crowds of young people who roamed the streets of North Philadelphia greeted with derision the many black community leaders who urged them to disperse. The crowd even heckled NAACP President Cecil Moore despite Moore’s carefully cultivated reputation as a populist critic of black bourgeois sensibilities. “We don’t need Cecil Moore,” one protester yelled at Moore on the first night of rioting. “We don’t need civil rights. We can take care of ourselves.”30

BLACK POWER AND COMMUNITY CONTROL IN PHILADELPHIA

It was in the aftermath of the 1964 riot that the first “Black Power” organizations began to emerge in Philadelphia. That fall, a former Student Non- violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizer named John Churchville opened a storefront “Freedom Library” just blocks from the epicenter of the riot. A self-identified black nationalist and supporter of Malcolm X, Churchville conceived of the library as a base for community-organizing initiatives similar to those undertaken by SNCC in the South. “The notion,” he would later say, “was to have books by and about black people. We could have black history lectures. We could then begin to develop programs, deal with the problems in the neighborhood.” In addition to an after-school tutoring program for neighborhood children, one of Churchville’s first initiatives was a series of evening

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 824 JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY / September 2006 forums on the state of the civil rights movement. The purpose of the forums was to carve out a new strategic vision for the black movement, a vision based not on maintaining alliances with white liberals but rather on the Black Nationalist tradition.31 Most histories of the civil rights era cast Black Power advocates in mono- lithic terms. Such a view overlooks what historian William Van Deburg has called Black Power’s “diversity and richness of character.” Black Power’s adherents ranged from black capitalists to Third World socialists, from electoral organizers to proponents of urban guerrilla warfare, from racial sepa- ratists to advocates of a revolutionary alliance among activists of color, poor whites, and the student New Left.32 From the beginning, Churchville’s study group attracted an ideologically diverse group of local activists frustrated by what they perceived to be the middle-class orientation and excessive concern for white sensibilities of mainstream civil rights groups. Some were, like Churchville, veterans of student and “militant” protest organizations like SNCC and CORE who were now committed to applying SNCC’s approach to community organizing and indigenous leadership development to poor and working-class black neighborhoods in the urban North. Others were local advocates of traditional Black Nationalist causes such as the teaching of black history curricula in the local public schools and substituting Afro-American for the racial label Negro. There were also, as Churchville described them, “old Garveyites, people who remembered Marcus Garvey, who said...‘I’m ready to come out and do something now. It’s been years.” Finally, there were longtime neighborhood activists, many of them women, who viewed the city’s traditional black leadership as out of touch with the concerns of the black poor.33 After meeting for a year, participants in the study group decided to found a new organization, the Black People’s Unity Movement (BPUM), to pro- mote their vision of a movement based on the principles of intraracial unity. In a radio interview promoting the new group, Churchville called on black activists to unite across differences of ideology, class, and religion. “The civil rights movement was never the black man’s movement,” he charged. “It was a movement of white liberals...using us...as a tool to get power for themselves....We must own and control the black movement.”34 BPUM held its founding mass meeting on February 5, 1966. The rally’s keynote speaker was longtime SNCC activist Julian Bond, who had recently been elected to the Georgia State Senate on a platform of accountability to the concerns and interests of the entire black community, not just its middle- class leadership. BPUM’s monthly rallies featured African drumming and dancing along with speeches from local activists and national figures like Stokely Carmichael, Amiri Baraka, and Dick Gregory. Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, attended BPUM’s August 1966 tribute to her husband. “I know what black means in this country,” a BPUM activist told the rally.

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“It means inferiority. It means slums. It means slime. But when [Malcolm] said ‘black’ and I heard him say it, I felt like a man.”35 BPUM rooted its political ideology and strategy on two fundamental black nationalist principles: first, that white supremacy and racial inequality were not unfortunate distortions of the American democracy, but rather were con- stitutive of the nation’s culture and social structure; and second, that the only way for African Americans as a people to achieve meaningful progress within such a society was to develop intraracial political unity across differences of ideology, class, and religious beliefs within the black community. Less a formal political organization than a network of local organizers, BPUM was remarkable for its ability to bring together diverse groups of activists to work on projects that cut across the ideological divisions within the emerging Black Power movement. BPUM activists simultaneously sought to build independent black institutions and to press for community control over public institutions that served black communities. Thus, BPUM activists supported the development of a number of independent schools—including John Churchville’s Freedom Library, which would evolve into the Freedom Day School—at the same time that they were demanding the implementation of black studies curricula in black neighborhood schools. “My perception of black power was never straight separatism,” Churchville remembers.

You’ve got to get out there in the real world where other people are. When you’re trying to impact public education, you should be able to say, “This is how the curriculum should look, look at how it’s working with these kids.”36

In the summer of 1967, David Richardson, a nineteen-year-old youth activist from the Germantown section of the city, asked for BPUM’s help in training high school students to press for changes in school curricula and dress codes—the students wanted the right to wear African clothes and jewelry; for more black teachers and administrators; and for recognition of black student unions as legitimate school clubs. By the beginning of the school year, the students had formed a network of activists from high schools across the city and were prepared to make their demands to school administrators. In late October, BPUM-affiliated students organized walkouts at five different black high schools across the city. The student protests reached their apex on the morning of Friday November 17, when 3,500 black students marched out of high schools across the city and converged on the Board of Education building in Center City. One of the city’s daily newspapers described the mood of the student protesters as “festive” and more befitting “a picnic” than a protest. As they marched around the school board, the picketers shouted out their school affiliations and called to friends from other schools. Some chanted, “Beep, beep, bang, bang, boom, boom, Black Power,” while others carried signs calling for “more Black Power in the School System.”37

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The response of school board and city officials to the student march served to highlight the fissures that were emerging within the city’s New Deal coalition. Mayor James H. J. Tate was an organization Democrat who had become Philadelphia’s first Catholic mayor when he succeeded the patrician reformer Richardson Dilworth in 1962. Just weeks before the student march, he had won a second term thanks in large part to the large pluralities he received in the city’s black wards. An old-fashioned ethnic power broker, Tate filled his administration with appointees from every wing of the Democratic Party. To appease liberals—and rid himself of a potential rival— he appointed his predecessor, Richardson Dilworth, to serve as president of the school board. To win black votes, he named the city’s first black deputy mayor. And to appeal to the party’s white ethnic constituencies, he promoted Frank Rizzo, an avowed proponent of law-and-order policing, to the post of police commissioner in the spring of 1967. The inherent difficulties of this sort of coalition politics in the turbulent 1960s would never be more evident in Philadelphia than on November 17, 1967.38 To reform the city’s racially segmented schools, Dilworth recruited liberal educator Dr. Mark Shedd from the Englewood, New Jersey, school district, where he had earned a national reputation for his stewardship of the district’s successful school desegregation program. For Dilworth and Shedd, the student march was both a challenge and an opportunity to win black community support for their reform program. Almost as soon as the students arrived, the superintendent dispatched his aides to invite the march leaders into the building to present their demands. The student leaders and their adult allies met with the school superintendent for nearly two hours, with one student periodically yelling updates out of the window to the marchers below. Before the two sides could complete their talks, however, the negotiations were interrupted by the sounds of a police charge into the mass of students at the front of the building. Concerned by the larger-than-expected size of the crowd, Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo hurriedly bused 111 newly sworn-in rookie officers in full riot gear from City Hall to the Board of Education building. When a group of students attempted to prevent four plainclothes officers from arresting another demonstrator for running across the top of parked cars, the commissioner ordered the officers to charge the crowd. Many of the students fled the baton-wielding police by running into the streets of the Center City business district at the height of lunch hour. By the end of the afternoon, fifty-seven demonstrators had been arrested and an estimated thirty protesters, twelve police officers, and twenty-seven white pedestrians had been treated for injuries.39 In the days that followed, Superintendent Shedd continued to pursue negotiations with the student activists, quickly agreeing to fund a series of six retreats for student and community activists to meet with principals from predominately black high schools. The remainder of the school year saw the establishment of community-parent-student committees in a number of high

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 827 schools to oversee improvements in both school curricula and racial climate.40 These achievements were overshadowed, however, by a politically charged debate over whether the school administrators or the police officials had responded properly to the student demonstration. When a broad range of black political leaders called on Mayor James Tate to fire Rizzo for “beating children,” the police commissioner fought back. Dilworth and Shedd, he charged, had failed to “control their pupils.” The two “were absolutely remiss,” Rizzo concluded. “Why don’t they do their jobs?” And while the debate raged, hun- dreds of phone calls began to flood City Hall switchboards in support of the commissioner and his determination to “crush” black militancy. Rizzo’s emergence as a populist defender of white ethnic communities against the demands of black activists and their elite liberal allies would soon prove to be the greatest threat to the gains achieved by community-control activists. With Mayor Tate reaching the end of his two-term limit in 1971 and Rizzo preparing to run for the mayor’s office on the promise to sweep the liberals out of the central school administration, it was clear that community control advocates would not be able to defend their gains in the city’s schools without an effective electoral strategy.41

COMMUNITY CONTROL AND THE WAR ON POVERTY IN PHILADELPHIA

Black Power activists in Philadelphia also sought to apply the principle of community control to the city’s antipoverty programs. Black Power organizing on poverty issues followed a similar trajectory to the campaign to establish community control over the schools. With the support of sympathetic liberal government officials, Black Power activists and their allies won a number of important victories for the principle that control over public sector antipoverty initiatives targeted at black communities should reside within those communities rather than within City Hall. These victories, however, depended entirely on the goodwill of government officials and the ability of those officials to remain in power. When more racially conservative politicians replaced the Black Power activists’ liberal allies, first on the national level and then in local elections, the structures of community control that had been so laboriously established quickly disappeared. Here again was experiential evidence that an electoral strategy was essential to establishing sustain- able community control over the public institutions in the black community. Two aspects of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty made it appealing terrain for the efforts of Black Power activists to establish the principle of community control over public institutions and programs in the black community. First, the infusion of public dollars into poor neighborhoods con- formed to the Black Power vision of racial progress through the economic and social development of black communities rather than through integration

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 828 JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY / September 2006 into white America. Second, the War on Poverty legislation contained a strong mandate for the inclusion of community residents in the planning and management of antipoverty programs. Designed to insure that the poor felt a sense of investment in the success of the War on Poverty, the mandate for the “max- imum feasible participation of the poor” invited Black Power and civil rights activists to help dictate how federal funds were spent in their communities.42 In cities from New York to San Francisco, black activists did in fact win a significant amount of control over federally funded antipoverty programs. The history of the War on Poverty in Philadelphia, however, was quite different. Despite establishing an impressive-looking architecture for the participation of poor residents in the construction and management of Philadelphia’s antipoverty agency, the Tate administration in fact stymied every activist effort to establish independent community influence over the direction of the local antipoverty program. In the spring of 1965, residents in Philadelphia’s poor neighborhoods were invited to elect representatives to fill twelve of the twenty-seven seats on the Philadelphia Anti-Poverty Action Committee (PAAC), the city’s antipoverty agency. Within a year, however, local activists and the Office of Economic Opportunity, the federal agency responsible for administering the War on Poverty, would charge that Samuel Evans, a black Democratic activist and one of the mayor’s five appointees to the PAAC board, had transformed the entire PAAC program into just another component of the Democratic machine’s patronage operation.43 Evans was masterful in his use of patronage to control the PAAC board. He won the support of board members from social service agencies by promising that their agencies would receive a major portion of the program’s grant funds as long as they supported him. As a result, 80 percent of the PAAC’s grant funds went to “established” social welfare agencies during the program’s first three years of operations. Evans was equally successful in his efforts to win the support of the poor people’s representatives on the board. Those who agreed to support him received jobs for themselves and their family members, while those who opposed him found that little of the PAAC funds made it to the neighborhoods they represented.44 Black Power activists in Philadelphia got a second opportunity to establish community control over a major antipoverty initiative when the Tate administration announced in 1966 that it was preparing to apply for funding from the Model Cities program, the last of President Johnson’s major antipoverty initiatives. And this time, local activists enjoyed support from officials in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the federal agency responsible for oversight of the Model Cities program, who shared their local activists’ determination not to allow the Tate administration to once again undercut the mandate for community participation in the management of antipoverty programs. Passed in 1966, the purpose of the Model Cities Act was to demonstrate that government funds used correctly could spur the physical and economic redevelopment of the nation’s ghettoes.

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Unlike previous urban redevelopment programs, Model Cities would require the active participation of the residents of targeted communities in every stage of the redevelopment process, from planning to implementation. As HUD official Ralph Taylor told a Philadelphia audience in October 1966, the agency was determined that “demonstration city programs...be planned and operated by local people, based on their own evaluation of their total need.”45 HUD rejected the Tate administration’s first proposal for a Model Cities planning grant because it lacked a meaningful citizen participation component. To meet HUD’s concerns, city officials approached Alvin Echols, executive director of the North City Congress (NCC)—a Ford Foundation–funded coalition of fifty-eight North Philadelphia neighborhood groups—for assistance in appointing community residents to its Model Cities planning committee. Echols, however, refused to cooperate with the city unless it agreed to give the NCC full “responsibility for developing and maintaining citizen participation” in every aspect of the local Model Cities program. Determined to avoid what he called “the antipoverty trap” in which community representatives lacked any real influence over City Hall’s decision making, Echols demanded that the NCC and its representatives be treated as “equal partners . . . in making decisions, setting the goals and policies, and allocating the funds.” With HUD officials insisting on substantive citizen participation in the planning process, Mayor Tate had little choice but to accede to Echols’s demands. “For the first time,” Echols declared in a press release announcing the NCC’s agreement with City Hall, “we have the opportunity to influence a major development program from the inside where our decisions will count.”46 On April 20, 1967, a 500-person mass meeting formally established an Area-Wide Council (AWC) “to involve and organize the community for participation in the MCP [Model Cities Program],” and named William Meek, a longtime North Philadelphia settlement house worker, as the AWC’s executive director. Meek was not known as an advocate for Black Power; his most prominent previous role in the Philadelphia movement was as the chair of the host committee for Martin Luther King’s visit the city in the summer of 1965. He appointed, however, a number of well-known Black Power activists to the AWC’s staff of community organizers and planners. In Meek’s view, the AWC’s mission was to attempt to implement the Black Power vision of community control. “The very concept,” he would later say, “of the community having control of this decision making is a Black Power concept. The [AWC’s] programs were designed to enhance the political and economic power of the places that people were working in.”47 Under Meek’s direction, the AWC staff organized nearly 200 North Philadelphia neighborhood groups into sixteen planning hubs over the spring and summer of 1967. Each hub was responsible for assessing the housing, economic, and educational planning needs in their area. The Tate administration, however, accused the AWC staff of using the Model Cities planning process as a front for political activism. When it was revealed that an AWC

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 830 JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY / September 2006 staff member had used the group’s mimeograph machine to make fliers for the November 17, 1967, high school student demonstration, the pressure on the AWC intensified further. In mid-December, city officials announced that they were suspending the AWC’s funding because of the group’s refusal to refrain from “political action.” The AWC, however, refused to be cowed. Within days of the city’s announcement, the AWC’s Steering Committee adopted a resolution insisting on the right of poor black communities to govern themselves and explicitly rejecting the Tate administration’s distinction between planning and “political action.” To involve the community in a long-range planning process, the council insisted, it had to be willing to support community efforts for short-term change. “The interplay between community planning and community participation,” the AWC declared, “must be seen as a necessary part of the total planning...required for...a Model City Community.”48 The support that the AWC enjoyed from key officials in the Johnson administration enabled the council to win this skirmish with City Hall. In February 1968, HUD ordered the city to restore the AWC’s funds and gave the group full veto power over all aspects of the city’s Model Cities applica- tion. By the end of the year, the AWC and the Tate administration had jointly submitted to HUD a $49 million proposal for the Philadelphia Model Cities program. The proposal provided for the establishment of nine nonprofit cor- porations to manage different aspects of the Model Cities program, from housing development and venture capital to health services and urban education. To insure community control of the program, a majority of seats on the corporation boards were to be reserved for AWC representatives.49 The AWC’s victory proved to be very short-lived, however. Six months after Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential election, HUD ended its support for the AWC. On May 27, 1969, HUD officials announced that they were halting funding for the Philadelphia Model Cities Program because the Tate administration was insufficiently involved in the program’s management. “Inexperienced community groups,” HUD declared, were not qualified to implement the Model Cities program. The AWC responded by suing the Nixon and Tate administrations in federal court for violating the citizen participation provisions of the Model Cities Act. More than a year later, in July 1970, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the AWC’s favor. By then, however, the lack of government funding and paid staff had led to the council’s collapse, and the Tate administration had replaced the AWC with a purely advisory citizen participation board.50

CONTAINING BLACK POLITICS

Conspicuously absent from the Philadelphia civil rights and black power movements were the city’s black elected officials. Nor was the local movement able to incorporate electoral politics into its strategies for winning substantive

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 831 improvements in black employment, housing, or education in the city. It was not, however, for a lack of trying. Year after year, black activists sought to mount independent campaigns against candidates endorsed by the Democratic City Committee, but with little impact. The demographic changes and racial upheavals of the 1960s did force the DCC to incorporate increasing numbers of black politicians into the party hierarchy even as it sought to punish those who challenged its political dominance. But it did so only at its own pace. As political scientist John Hadley Strange concluded in a 1966 study of black politics in Philadelphia, “[T]he City Committee, and its Chairman, not the Negroes...decide when a Negro can have a particular elected office.”51 The machine’s strategy for controlling the black vote began at the ward level. Between 1956 and 1965, the organization tripled the number of Democratic black ward leaders from seven to twenty-one, as the number of majority black wards in the city doubled from twenty to forty. Still, nearly half of the party’s ward organizations in black neighborhoods remained white-led. At the same time as it was promoting black leadership, the DCC was prepared to use every weapon in its arsenal to protect longtime white ward leaders, particularly in the formerly Jewish neighborhoods of West Philadelphia. Thus, when the chairmanship of the 52nd ward, which by then was 65 percent black, opened up in January 1965, the organization selected Herbert Fineman, the brother of the ward’s former leader, over the ward’s second-in-command, a longtime black party loyalist named Edgar Campbell. When Campbell chose to campaign for the job among the ward’s seventy- one committeemen, forty-one of whom were black, the DCC made it clear that it would not countenance any opposition. Not only did Campbell receive only nine of fifty-nine votes in the ward election, but both he and one of his key supporters also lost their city jobs as a result. Among the black committeemen who supported Fineman was Jack Saunders, an aide to Congressman Nix who as a Tribune political columnist had called on the party leadership to replace the white leaders of black wards with blacks. After Campbell again challenged the party leadership by backing Milton Shapp’s independent campaign for governor in 1966, the DCC punished him again, this time by backing Saunders over him for the chairmanship of West Philadelphia’s reconfigured 4th ward in June 1966. Not surprisingly, Saunders won the election by a large margin. Within a year, however, Campbell had been rein- corporated into the party hierarchy. In May 1967, he received the DCC’s endorsement for the At-Large City Council seat that had been held by the recently deceased Rev. Marshall Shepard. From then on, Campbell would remain a loyal supporter of the party hierarchy.52 The DCC’s hegemonic control over black Philadelphia politics did not prevent its opponents from continuing to mount independent electoral challenges throughout the 1960s. The most significant challenge came in 1964. In a campaign that would prefigure the Black Political Forum challenge to the Democratic Party hierarchy, five candidates formed the city’s first all-black

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 832 JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY / September 2006 independent slate to mount a primary challenge to the party’s nominees in five different majority-black legislative districts, including Robert Nix’s congressional district. While this strategy would prove successful by the end of the decade, the party machinery remained much too powerful in 1964. Not only were the five routed in the election, but also much of the city’s traditional black leadership responded with horror to their argument that the black community’s political leadership should be chosen by black community organizations, rather than the Democratic City Committee.53 Individual black candidates continued to mount primary challenges to the party’s nominees through the remaining years of the decade—in, for example, the 1965 races for city controller and district attorney, and the 1966 primary for Congressman Nix’s seat.54 More closely tied to local movement activism were two third-party electoral initiatives. NAACP President Cecil Moore led the first of these. In 1966, Moore formed the Human Rights Party to challenge Robert Nix for his congressional seat. A year later, Moore campaigned for mayor as the head of a Political Freedom Rights Party slate that included four candidates for City Council. Neither of these initiatives would have much success at the ballot box. But the 1967 mayoral campaign in particular had a significant impact on local movement activism. Aligning himself for the first time with local Black Power advocates, Moore’s campaign rallies drew large crowds of young people who thrilled to his ridicule of the “white power structure” and his calls for Black Power and black community control over political representation in the city’s black neighborhoods. It was, however, the third-party initiative undertaken by the Philadelphia staff of the SNCC in 1966 that made it clear just how far city leaders were prepared to go to prevent the development of a mass-based political organization in black Philadelphia. Six months after an SNCC- organized campaign to build an all-black political party in rural Lowdnes County, Alabama, drew national media attention in the spring of 1966, longtime SNCC organizing Fred Meely arrived in Philadelphia to test whether the Lowdnes County model could be applied in a northern city. Specifically, Meely and his largely volunteer all-black staff hoped to establish the Philadelphia Freedom Organization (PFO) as an all-black alternative to the Democratic machine. According to Charyn Sutton, a Philadelphia native who joined the Philadelphia project after working in SNCC’s Atlanta headquarters, Meely trained the project staff in an organizing model in which “the organizer...goes into the community, mobi- lizes the community, but does not make him or herself a permanent part of that structure, the idea being that you could walk out of it, and it would continue.” Canvassing the city’s black working-class neighborhoods, the SNCC staff sought, in Sutton words, “to use the southern model to get

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 833 people registered to vote and [to become] involved in electoral politics.” One PFO booklet developed for the staff’s canvassing work asked, “[D]o you know someone who lives on your street who would make a good city councilman, a good state senator, a good congressman, a good mayor, or a good judge?”56 Of course, Philadelphia SNCC faced a vastly different political terrain than the group had in the rural South. In contrast to southern blacks who had been denied the right to vote for two generations, Philadelphia’s black voters had long participated in the ward-based patronage politics. In its organizing efforts, therefore, Philadelphia SNCC had to convince the residents of the city’s poor black communities not only that the electoral process was the key to achieving racial change but also to stop voting for Democrats—even those with black faces—despite the tangible benefits the machine had to offer. Philadelphia’s Black Democrats, the local SNCC staff argued, were beholden not to the black voters who had elected them, but to the white leadership of the local machine. “If we could elect people who are not ashamed of us or of being black or Negro,” the PFO booklet concluded, “they would work for us.” SNCC organizers specifically pointed to Mayor Tate’s recent appointment of Frank Rizzo to the post of deputy police commissioner as evidence of how little influence black voters had within the Democratic Party. The only way to get rid of racist public officials like Frank Rizzo, Philadelphia SNCC argued, was for the black community to build its own political party and to elect politicians who were accountable only to the black community.57 Unfortunately for SNCC, the Philadelphia project staff would never have the opportunity to fully test its third-party organizing strategy in Philadelphia. On the night of August 13, 1966, the Philadelphia police raided SNCC’s local offices along with the Freedom Library and an apartment belonging to a key leader of the Young Militants, a group with close ties to Cecil Moore. According to Deputy Commissioner Rizzo, the police were acting on an informant’s tip that the local SNCC staff had acquired dynamite as part of a plot to blow up Philadelphia’s City Hall. Despite finding only one stick of dynamite—in the apartment of the Young Militants leader—and no blasting caps, the police quickly acquired warrants for the arrest of every male member of the local SNCC staff. Fearing for their safety, all but one of the staff members quickly slipped out of town before they could be arrested. Within a month, newspaper investigations had revealed that the police had little evidence of an SNCC conspiracy, but it would take eight months for the charges against the SNCC activists to be dismissed for lack of evidence. By then, SNCC’s Philadelphia project was moribund. As SNCC Executive Secretary James Forman would later write, “[T]he police [had] won a larger battle. The momentum generated...in the black community declined and SNCC lost its base in Philadelphia.”58

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BLACK POWER, COMMUNITY CONTROL, AND ELECTORAL POLITICS

The Black Political Forum’s (BPF) approach to electoral organizing differed from previous efforts to end the Democratic machine’s stranglehold on black electoral politics in Philadelphia in two crucial ways. First, the forum’s organizers believed that the mass mobilization strategies that had been so central to the achievements of the civil rights movement were not, by themselves, sufficient to defeat the Democratic machine. Black candidates who were independent of the machine would win elections in Philadelphia when, and only when, the city had a cadre of black movement and community activists trained in the very electoral organizing skills that made the Democratic Party’s ward organizations so effective. This was also the message that Richard Hatcher brought to the BPF in private meetings before the 1970 BPF dinner. “Mayor Hatcher told us to organize our community well,” BPF founding member Wilson Goode remembers, “pick a good candidate, and don’t expect to win the first time around. Chip away and...when you organize right, you’ll get it done.”59 From a West Philadelphia storefront, BPF activists trained potential candidates, street campaigners, poll watchers, and voter registration canvassers from black neighborhoods across the city. In addition, the BPF held seminars after each election to analyze the returns and the effectiveness of its candidates’ campaign strategies. Leaders of these training sessions included John White Sr.; Hardy Williams, a West Philadelphia attorney and political activist; Wilson Goode, the leader of the Paschall Betterment League (a black community organization in a racially transitional West Philadelphia neighborhood); and Bernard Watson, a deputy superintendent of schools. Among those who would attend BPF training sessions in the early 1970s were future elected officials Rev. William H. Gray III, Marian Tasco, David Richardson, Roxanne Jones, Chaka Fattah, and John F. White Jr., as well as rank-and-file activists like former Philadelphia SNCC organizer Charyn Sutton and Shirley Hamilton, John White Sr.’s neighbor and fellow block captain who would later serve as Mayor Goode’s chief of staff.60 As importantly, the founders of the BPF decided to challenge the Democratic machine by running independent challengers in the May Democratic primary elections rather than by mounting third-party campaigns in the November general elections. The lesson of BPUM’s and the AWC’s campaigns to establish community control over essential public institutions in the black community could not have been more obvious to advocates of black independent electoral politics. Without the ability to place allies in key government positions, struggles for community control remained dependent on the goodwill of white elected officials and their bureaucratic appointees. “The key characteristic of independent black development,” BPF activist Paul Vance told a forum on black electoral activism in January 1972, “is the achievement of

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 835 self-sufficiency [through] community control.” Specifically, Vance called for the “politiciz[ation of] neighborhood and civic organizations” so that they would recognize electoral action “as the best means to achieve” community control. Running candidates in the Democratic primary was thus essential to the BPF’s electoral strategy because it offered the most effective means for taking control over the public institutions that shaped day-to-day life in black urban neighborhoods.61 The BPF’s first electoral initiative was directed at the party’s ward committees. Electing its activists first as committeemen and then as ward leaders would not only give the BPF an instant street-level organization but also begin to undercut the party organization in the city’s predominately black wards. In June 1968, BPF founder Hardy Williams upset party loyalist Dorothy Brennan to become leader of West Philadelphia’s 3rd Ward Democratic Committee. Williams’s victory demonstrated the vulnerability of the machine in black neighborhoods and set the stage for BPF campaigns for elected office.62 In the spring of 1969, Williams joined with the thirteen other black ward leaders to demand that the DCC endorse a black candidate—either Williams or Joseph Coleman, who had challenged Congressman Nix as an independent three years earlier—for district attorney or city controller in that year’s Democratic primary. For Williams and the BPF, securing the nomination for one of those two offices would have been significant for two reasons. First, with the exception of judgeships and the five at-large City Council seats, the Democratic City Committee had never endorsed a black candidate for citywide office. Moreover, a city committee endorsement for Williams would have meant recognition for the BPF as an independent power base within the party. To no one’s surprise, however, the City Committee refused to endorse either Williams or Coleman. Nor was anyone surprised when the thirteen other black ward leaders quickly fell in line and endorsed the two white candidates selected by the DCC.63 Having failed to secure the party’s endorsement for public office in 1969, Williams decided to take on the machine directly in the May 1970 Democratic primary by challenging Paul Lawson, the black incumbent in a West Philadelphia State House district. In taking on Lawson, Williams campaign faced a number of formidable obstacles. A labor activist, and chairman of the House Labor Relations Committee, Lawson enjoyed a strong base of support in the city’s trade unions. He was also the protégé of longtime 60th ward leader Isadore Shrager. The white leader of a West Philadelphia ward that was by 1970 95 percent black, Shrager was, in the words of the Philadelphia Tribune, “a power of the Democratic City Committee” with an extremely disciplined ward operation.64 To overcome Lawson’s institutional advantages, Williams and his campaign managers Wilson Goode and Paul Vance took to heart Mayor Hatcher’s advice to build an effective campaign organization. As Williams put it, “hard work and not just talk” was necessary to defeat the machine. In the weeks

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 836 JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY / September 2006 before the primary, Goode and Vance organized a six-day per week door-to- door canvassing operation involving more than 400 volunteers, many of them high school students.65 In his campaigning, Williams sought to contrast his involvement in community issues to what he charged was Lawson’s lack of accessibility to his constituents. Declaring that Lawson “is never...around” for his constituents, Williams pointed to the problem of youth gangs to highlight how his approach to political representation would differ from Lawson’s. “Gangs are a symbol of political default,” he told the Tribune. “A responsible official must try to work with the community to aid young people and turn destructive energies into constructive ones.”66 In what the Tribune called “one of the most stunning upsets in Philadelphia political history,” Williams received nearly 60 percent of the 5,741 votes cast in the 1970 election, thus becoming the first black candidate ever to defeat a candidate endorsed by the Democratic City Committee. Then, in November, he was elected to the State House against nominal Republican opposition. Williams’s victory validated the BPF’s strategic approach to electoral organizing. In two short years, the BPF had succeeded in building a network of community-based activists committed to electoral politics, and now, with Williams’s election, it had demonstrated that it was capable of defeating the Democrat machine.67

THE MAYORAL CAMPAIGN OF 1971

At this very moment of triumph, however, Hardy Williams embarked on a mayoral campaign that seemed to violate every tenet of the BPF strategy for challenging the Democratic machine’s control of the black vote. Williams announced his candidacy for mayor on the eve of the February 1971 Black Political Convention. Organized jointly by BPF activists and advocates of an all-black political party, the convention was an attempt to develop a common platform and a single slate of black, antimachine candidates for the upcom- ing primary. The convention platform, which every candidate seeking the convention’s endorsement was required to sign, called for community control over all publicly funded social service programs and the establishment of a citywide black political organization to select and hold accountable all black candidates for public office. Most importantly for Williams, the convention endorsed not only his candidacy for mayor but also his rationale for running in the crowded primary.68 The 1971 Democratic mayoral primary would prove to be an epic struggle for control over the local Democratic Party. On one side stood the endorsed candidate of the Democratic City Committee, former Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo. On the other stood Williams and two challengers from the party’s liberal reform wing, Congressman William Green Jr. and City Councilman David Cohen. As police commissioner, Rizzo had become the leading local

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 837 voice for the law-and-order, backlash politics that blamed the city and nation’s ills on black militants and long-haired antiwar protesters. One Rizzo opponent would later summarize the police commissioner’s campaign platform as “I’ll stop the black people, who represent crime in the streets and the problems in the school system and whatever else is bad about Philadelphia.”69 Rizzo’s two white challengers, in contrast, were both committed to reviv- ing the liberal reform tradition within the local Democratic Party—albeit in very different ways. Bill Green was the thirty-two-year-old son of longtime Philadelphia Congressman and City Committee Chairman William Green Sr. After his father died in 1964, the younger Green was elected to fill his seat in Congress. In Washington, Green had developed a reputation as a traditional liberal, a defender of government aid to cities and the poor, and an opponent of the Vietnam War. In the 1971 campaign, Green hoped to be able to combine these liberal credentials with his family ties to the Democratic machine in order to revive the coalition of white working-class, white liberal, and black voters that had sparked the party’s local resurgence in the 1950s.70 In contrast to Green’s traditional New Deal liberalism, Cohen based his candidacy on the social movement politics of the 1960s. A longtime Democratic committeeman in middle-class Northwest Philadelphia, Cohen was elected to the City Council in 1967 in an upset victory over a DCC-endorsed candidate. In his four years on the City Council, Cohen emerged as an outspoken opponent of Mayor Tate’s racial policies and Police Commissioner Rizzo’s police practices. His 1971 campaign platform promised protection of the civil liberties of political protesters, police reform, and support for black community control of public institutions. It was, however, Cohen’s pledge to fire Commissioner Rizzo that formed the heart of his campaign. “Philadelphia,” he declared, “must end repressive police practices that have made blacks feel as if they are hostages held by some outside power.”71 With the Democrat’s liberal wing already divided between two candidates, why then did Williams decide to run? Frank Rizzo enjoyed the support of the party infrastructure, including seven of the sixteen black ward leaders, while Green and Cohen each possessed significantly more political experience and citywide name recognition than Williams. In fact, Green and Cohen both enjoyed significantly more support within the city’s black political leadership circles than Williams. Not one black elected official or black ward leader would endorse Williams in the primary. By its own criteria, the BPF had yet to develop the organizational strength and campaign skill necessary to compete with the machine in a citywide election.72 Williams would later describe his decision to run in 1971 as “a straight- up empowerment move,” an effort to demonstrate that a black candidate could run a credible citywide campaign. Similarly, Wilson Goode, Williams’s campaign manager, argued in his memoir that none of Williams’s supporters “believed Hardy could win the mayor’s office.” Given the BPF’s commitment to developing a winning electoral strategy as well as the widespread

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 838 JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY / September 2006 fear of a Rizzo victory within the black community, however, it seems unlikely that Williams would have entered the race unless he and his supporters believed he had a reasonable chance of winning a four-way primary contest. In fact, Rizzo biographer S. A. Paolantonio quotes Goode as remembering that the Williams campaign’s

view at that time was that there were three whites running and a black and perhaps the black candidate had a chance to win. The strategy was to divide the white vote, pull the black vote, and be able to win the election.

As campaign volunteer and former Philadelphia SNCC staff member Charyn Sutton remembers it, the feeling among the campaign staff was both that Williams could win a divided primary and that his candidacy was crucial to the long-term political empowerment of Philadelphia’s black community. Williams himself argued in a January 1971 speech to the local chapter of Americans for Democratic Action that the presence of “a black candidate [in the race] would motivate [voter] registration, a larger turnout in the elections, [and] the hope that the political system offers a method of change and would offer vehicles to involve the non-involved.” Pointing to Richard Hatcher’s election as mayor of Gary, Indiana, and Louis Stokes’s victory in Cleveland’s 1967 mayoral election, he declared that the “best way to beat Rizzo is with [a] good black candidate as in Gary, Cleveland, etc. where white liberals supported [a] black candidate.”73 In a four-way primary, the Williams campaign believed it could win by combining a large black turnout (black voters now made up 40 percent of registered Democrats) with at least a portion of the liberal reform vote (an estimated 15-20 percent of the Democratic electorate). What Williams and his supporters failed to foresee, however, was just how much the specter of a Rizzo victory would deprive his campaign of the opportunity to implement the Hatcher/Stokes strategy. Little known outside of the candidate’s West Philadelphia base and poorly funded, the Williams campaign struggled to bring his message to black voters outside movement circles. The campaign was particularly hurt by a whispering campaign that asserted that the Rizzo campaign was secretly funding Williams to divide the party’s liberal vote along racial lines.74 Two weeks before the election, David Cohen pulled out of the race with a strong endorsement of Bill Green. “The election of Bill Green is not just a stop Rizzo tactic,” he declared. “It will put to bed fears of a police state...and will clear out every vestige of the old Tate machine. It will be a new day of hope for Philadelphia.” Williams, in contrast, soldiered on, despite the increasing anger of the Green camp. “Why should [the] black [candidate] be the one to get out of the race?” he asked in a direct challenge to white activists to abandon the racial hierarchies of traditional cross-racial coalitions. Moreover, he insisted that only he could defeat Rizzo. “It is mathematically

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 839 impossible to beat Rizzo unless the 75 percent of the people who usually don’t come out to vote do come out on primary day. Bill Green can’t get those people out. I can.”75 On Election Day, the worst fears of Green’s supporters and Williams’s crit- ics came true. Rizzo defeated Green by 48,000 votes, while Williams came in third with 50,000 votes—12 percent of the total—the vast majority from the black wards of North and West Philadelphia. Although Green defeated Williams in the city’s sixteen majority-black wards by more than 10,000 votes, it can certainly be argued that the Williams campaign provided Rizzo with his margin of victory over Green in the Democratic primary. Without Williams in the race, Green may well have been able to withstand Rizzo’s backlash appeal among white Catholic and Jewish middle- and working-class voters. And to the extent that Williams’s candidacy contributed to Rizzo’s victory, it constituted a clear setback for the movement for community control. Given Bill Green’s liberal congressional record, Black Power activists could reasonably have expected that his administration would have given at least a sympathetic hearing to their demands for control over government programs and dollars within the black community. But with Rizzo as mayor, the goal of community control as envisioned by groups like the Model Cities Area-Wide Council rapidly faded into a bygone dream of the 1960s.76 Still, Williams had demonstrated that a black candidate could run a seri- ous and effective citywide campaign. His vote total was more than 40,000 higher than any other black candidate had ever received in a mayoral election.77 Moreover, his campaign had a significant expressive and experiential impact on black political activism in the city. Thousands of campaign staffers and volunteers had gained valuable campaign experience. And, perhaps most importantly, the BPF network had demonstrated to the Democratic Party that a “lesser-of-two-evils” strategy was no longer sufficient to maintain its base of black voters. From then on, black activists and voters would have to be seen as an independent and powerful constituency within the party. The November General Election gave the BPF the perfect opportunity to demonstrate the newfound independence of the city’s black voters. After hearing from Rizzo’s Republican opponent, City Councilman and former Philadelphia Urban League President Thatcher Longstreth, at an August 1971 planning retreat, the forum endorsed Longstreth; two black Republican candidates for City Council, including Dr. Ethel Allen, a physician running for the North Philadelphia council seat held by black party loyalist and Rizzo supporter Thomas McIntosh; and one Republican candidate for city commissioner.78 To support Allen’s candidacy, a group of women who had been active in the BPF and the Williams campaign formed the Black Women’s Political Alliance. And a week before the election, Hardy Williams announced his personal endorsements of Longstreth and Allen. Longstreth, he declared, “offers us a chance of hope.”79

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The result of the BPF’s efforts was an impressive display of ticket split- ting in the city’s black wards on Election Day. Although Rizzo won a narrow 47,000-vote victory, Longstreth swept all but one of the city’s twenty-three black majority wards. According to one estimate, 64 percent of registered black voters turned out for the election, and, of those, 77 percent voted for Longstreth. In addition, Dr. Allen defeated McIntosh by 4,000 votes. Support from the Black Women’s Political Alliance and Hardy Williams, she told the Philadelphia Tribune, were particularly important to her victory.80

ACTIVISTS IN THE LEGISLATURE

Hardy Williams’s defeat did not impede BPF’s continuing efforts to elect independent candidates in black-majority legislative districts. In 1972, David Richardson, a leader of the 1967 Black Power high school student march, followed Hardy Williams into the State House at the tender age of twenty-three. John White Jr., the son of BPF founder John White Sr., joined Williams and Richardson two years later. In the 1976 Democratic primary, Rev. William H. “Bill” Gray III, the 33-year-old pastor of North Philadelphia’s Mt. Hope Baptist Church, challenged Robert N. C. Nix for the congressional seat he had held since 1958. Although Gray lost to Nix by 339 votes, he would successfully oust the ten-term incumbent two years later.81 The careers of each of these legislators were characterized by a fierce commitment to what they perceived to be the interests of the city’s black poor as well as a staunch independence from the Democratic Party establishment. Of all the BPF-affiliated legislators, however, David Richardson proved the most determined to bring movement aspirations and strategies into the legislative process. Following the 1967 student protests, Richardson formed a youth group called Young Afro-Americans of Germantown and opened a neighborhood storefront called the Ebony Shop from which his group sold handmade African clothing and jewelry while preaching racial unity to the area’s warring gang. The Young Afros—as they were known—focused on three goals that were characteristic of Black Power youth organizing in the city: (1) establishing truces between neighborhood gangs; (2) challenging abusive police practices, including practices that they charged were designed to instigate tension among rival neighborhood gangs; and (3) pressing for the expansion of the black studies curriculum at Germantown High School. During the 1971 public schoolteachers’ strike—a strike opposed by Philadelphia’s black activist community—Richardson helped to organize the Germantown Area Schools Project, an alternative educational program for neighborhood children, and continued to teach in the program after the strike was settled.82 In the April 1972 Democratic primary, Richardson set out to oust party loyalist and three-term incumbent Francis X. Rush from Germantown’s seat in the state House of Representatives.83 An Irish Catholic realtor, Rush

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 841 was clearly ripe for a defeat by a black candidate. White flight and black in- migration had transformed Germantown’s racial demography in the previous decade.84 Moreover, the neighborhoods of Northwest Philadelphia had proved a bastion of antimachine and anti-Rizzo sentiment in the 1971 election.85 But could a twenty-four-year-old black militant whose only electoral experience had come in the Hardy Williams campaigns of 1970 and 1971 overcome the advantages enjoyed by a machine-backed three-term incumbent?86 From the first, the Richardson campaign took on a social movement ethos. His supporters—the majority of whom were teenagers—began canvassing the district three months before the April 1972 Democratic primary. As one community activist put it,

Some of the people working for Dave were voting for the first time....At last they found a reason to go to the polls. At last they found a man who could relate to them, who convinced them that they count, that they are important.87

For his part, Richardson couched his campaign in the language of racial unity. “Black family unity and self-help [were]...his message,” the candidate told The Bulletin, the city’s afternoon newspaper. “We need to love black people, but that does not mean hate white people.”88 Election Day confirmed that the Richardson campaign had achieved a political revolution in Germantown. Voter turnout in the 201st district was fifteen points higher than in the rest of the city. Not only did Richardson defeat Rush by a landslide, but his supporters also won a majority of seats on the district’s three ward committees. Richardson credited his victory to the efforts of his youth supporters. “All the kids in Germantown,” he told jour- nalists, “were working for me. They made their parents vote.”89 Richardson’s election made him the most prominent “black militant” in the city. Throughout the 1970s, he sought to infuse his legislative work with social movement strategies and tactics. One supporter described Richardson’s Germantown district office as “the only office around here open 24 hours.” Befitting his emphasis on youth issues, Richardson led a series of campaigns to challenge the police department’s antigang policies and to reform the Youth Study Center, the city’s juvenile detention center.90 In a 1976 protest against discriminatory treatment of black street vendors, Richardson was arrested alongside Milton Street, the outspoken president of the Black Street Vendors Association. Two years later, Richardson and Street told thousands of protesters that they intended to lead “a poor people’s crusade against racial repression in Philadelphia” following a violent confrontation between the police and the black radical sect MOVE that left one police officer dead, another wounded, and MOVE activist Delbert Africa severely beaten by the police. Specifically, Richardson and Street called for a black boycott of the Gallery, a new Center City Philadelphia shopping mall. The racist priorities of the Rizzo administration, the two activists charged, were as evident in the

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 842 JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY / September 2006 decision to use federal urban renewal funds to subsidize the privately owned Gallery, rather than to redevelop the city’s black neighborhoods, as they were in the violent practices of the police department.91 From his seat in the 201st district, Richardson also worked to elect independent candidates who shared his movement ethos. Among the Richardson allies elected to public office were West Philadelphia labor leader Lucien Blackwell, elected to the City Council in 1975, and Chaka Fattah, the son of longtime West Philadelphia activist Sister Falaka Fattah, who won a seat in the state house in 1982.92 Perhaps his most unexpected success came in 1978 when he supported Milton Street, whose combination of economic self-help, outra- geous street tactics, and virulent attacks on Mayor Rizzo had made him into a notorious local figure, in his successful campaign to unseat the Democratic incumbent in a North Philadelphia state house district. The following year, Street’s younger brother John was elected to represent North Philadelphia on the City Council. In 1980, David Richardson was elected chair of the fifteen- member Black Legislative Caucus, and Milton Street ran for and was elected to a North Philadelphia seat in the State Senate.93 Richardson’s alliance with Street, however, fell apart in dramatic fashion just one year later after Street switched his party allegiance in the State Senate to the Republican caucus. Street’s switch gave the Republicans control over what had been an evenly divided senate. In return, Street received a Senate Committee chairmanship. Here was a direct challenge to the BPF’s independent Democratic strategy. To Street, his decision to switch caucuses reflected his commitment to the Black Power principle that black politicians should place the interests of the black community above party loyalty. Unlike black legislators who spoke the language of political independence while loyally voting with the Democrats, his act of political independence, Street con- tended, had produced immediate benefits for his district—a district, as he declared repeatedly, that was the blackest and poorest in the city. “Who is more independent than me?” he asked. “I sit with Democrats, agnostics, Republicans. What difference does it make if I get things done?”94 To Street’s closest political allies, however, his caucus switch represented the worst kind of political treachery. Richardson, who ironically had a long record of support for third-party politics and had even discussed switching his party affiliation to the National Black Political Assembly, accused his longtime ally of betraying his constituents. “I don’t think it is ethical,” he told one of the city’s daily newspapers, “for political leaders to change their party affiliation for short-term political gain.” The Republicans were “racist,” Richardson declared, and had “absolutely nothing to give” to the black community. What most incensed Richardson was that Street’s switch had given Republican Governor Richard Thornburg the votes he needed to pass a pack- age of sweeping welfare reforms. “Thornfare,” as welfare advocates derided the governor’s reform proposals, established stringent work requirements on “able-bodied” welfare recipients in the state, irrespective of labor market

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 843 conditions or recipients’ family status and job skills. As a result, 90,000 welfare recipients lost their cash benefits.95 Richardson would have to wait until the end of Street’s four-year term to enact political retribution on his former ally. In the fall of 1983, he and Congressman William Gray recruited Roxanne Jones, the state’s best-known welfare rights advocate, to run for Street’s seat in the April 1984 Democratic primary. A single mother from South Philadelphia’s Southwark Housing Project, Jones was elected president of the Philadelphia Welfare Rights Organization (PWRO) in 1968. She soon earned a national reputation for leading a successful protest campaign to pressure four local department stores to provide credit cards to PWRO members. In 1971, George Wiley, the executive director of the National Welfare Rights Organization, called the PWRO under Jones’s leadership “the most dynamic local group in the country.” A fiery speaker and a tireless advocate, Jones championed the welfare rights movement’s insistence that the poor, and in particular poor mothers, have a right to income support from the government. “I don’t call it being on welfare anymore,” she would often declare; “I’m getting a subsidy just like those farmers.” In 1973, Jones stepped down from the PWRO presidency to found a new statewide organization, Pennsylvania Citizens in Action (PCIA), to continue the push for expanded government assistance for the poor. By the 1980s, however, Jones and PCIA had been reduced to waging a defensive campaign against Thornfare.96 In many ways, Jones’s candidacy epitomized the ideals of black independent politics in Philadelphia. What she lacked in electoral experience, she made up for with her more than fifteen years of community activism in Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods and welfare rights advocacy in the halls of the state legislature. And yet her campaign to unseat Senator Street also demonstrated how the boundaries between political independence and party loyalty had collapsed in the fourteen years since Hardy Williams was first elected to the state legislature in 1970. Williams and David Richardson were among the most senior Democrats in the state House of Representatives. Bill Gray was now a member of the Democratic Party leadership in the U.S. Congress, Wilson Goode had been elected Philadelphia’s first African American mayor just one year earlier, and BPF founder John White Sr. was one of the new mayor’s chief aides. With the control over the State Senate at stake, the Democratic City Committee eagerly endorsed Jones as the candidate most likely to defeat Street. Among her most important financial supporters in the race was South Philadelphia State Senator Vincent Fumo, an ally of former Mayor Rizzo. Fumo’s Democratic State Senate Campaign Committee provided nearly half of Jones’s $26,000 campaign budget.97 Convinced that a Republican—even one as independent as he—could not win in North Philadelphia, Street decided to seek the Democratic Party nomination, while making it clear that he intended to remain a member of the Senate Republican caucus. “I believe firmly in the two-party system—just as

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 844 JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY / September 2006 long as I can be part of both parties,” Street joked. “I want to position myself so I can affect the policy of the Democrats in Philadelphia and the Republicans in Harrisburg....Genuine political power brokers don’t worry about my label.” In response, Jones campaigned as “the true Democrat” in the race, referring to Street only as her “Republican opponent.” Conducted in the midst of Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign, the Jones-Street contest was particularly heated, with each candidate accusing the other of selling out to the political establishment.98 On primary election day, Jones won an easy victory over Street with an astounding 61 percent of the vote. Once in the state legislature, Senator Jones joined Richardson in leading the fight against Governor Thornburg’s welfare cuts. Declaring that “it’s the poor people who elected me,” she immediately proposed legislation to restore to the welfare rolls many of the thousands of people who lost their benefits as a result of Thornfare. Her bill, however, had no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Senate. During Senator Jones’s eleven years in the Senate, she would lead the fight against the efforts of three different governors to significantly reduce the state’s public assistance programs. But only once, in 1992, would she be able to defeat a proposed cut in welfare benefits.99 David Richardson and Roxanne Jones would remain forceful advocates in the state legislature for inner-city young people and the black poor until the mid-1990s. On August 21, 1995, Richardson died in his sleep from a heart attack. He was forty-six years old and had spent half of his life in the state legislature. At the time of his death, Richardson was the third-ranking Democrat and senior African American in the state House, and the lead Philadelphia organizer for Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March. The Philadelphia Tribune described Richardson’s funeral as a reflection of his political legacy:

Dave Richardson left the way he lived—among the people....The masses came out to say farewell. All day long, a steady flow filed past his coffin to say a last goodbye to a brother, to a father, to a great boss...to a guy who crossed all economic and social levels.100

Less than a year after Richardson’s death, Roxanne Jones also died from a massive heart attack. Jones’s death came just days after she led the unsuc- cessful fight to prevent then-Republican Governor Tom Ridge from cutting state Medicaid benefits to 220,000 unemployed welfare recipients and less than a week after President William Clinton signed the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. “I hope to God you never have to face what so many poor people face,” Senator Jones had told her Senate colleagues during the debate over the Medicaid bill, “The truth is, you couldn’t take it, because you’re too weak.” By instituting stringent work requirements and greatly reducing benefits, the welfare reform bills of 1996 not only forced millions of families off public assistance but also represented a significant reduction in the welfare rights for which activists like Roxanne Jones had so long fought. Once

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 845 an entitlement benefit available to everyone who met certain criteria, public assistance had become a discretionary program that could be distributed according to state policy. In the days after her death, her friends and family described Senator Jones as the first casualty of the welfare cuts. “She was so upset by what was about to happen to the people she represented,” one of her aides told a local newspaper. “Her arms and legs were shaking. She was crying. She was short of breath.”101

IN PURSUIT OF THE MAYOR’S OFFICE

As important as the legislative careers of activists like David Richardson and Roxanne Jones were to the growth of black independent politics in Philadelphia, the central focus of black political activism in the city during the 1970s and 1980s remained on the mayor’s office. In hindsight, it is easy to depict the black political quest for mayor’s offices in cities across the country as, at best, naïve and, at worst, a diversion from the real struggles of poor and working-class blacks in the nation’s cities. The federal government’s abandonment of any commitment to cities and the fight against poverty had reduced northeastern and midwestern mayors to managing industrial decline and offering up public subsidies for any and all forms of private investment, from casinos and new sports stadiums to upper-crust entertainment districts. In the early 1970s, however, big-city mayors were still major power brokers in the national Democratic Party and, most importantly, still had control over large federally financed economic development and antipoverty programs. In this sense, the emphasis that black political activists placed on the symbolic importance of electing black mayors masked the substantive potential of municipal political power. Growth Liberalism, as practiced by both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, responded to the process of private disinvestment in urban industrial economies by investing local government with the financial resources necessary to dominate local economic development. It was more than reasonable for black activists and politicians to see control of city government as the key to negotiating with federal and state governments for public investment programs to reduce poverty and build economic power in the black community.102 It would take twelve years of black political activism and three more campaigns to elect Philadelphia’s first African American mayor. And in that period, the local black political community would have to continually renegotiate the relationship between its activist and traditionalist wings, between those who saw the achievement of community control over the Democratic ward organizations in black neighborhoods as an essential step toward the transformation of the city’s racialized political economy and those who sought only to renegotiate relations between the Democratic machine and the city’s black political class. It is the tragic irony of the Philadelphia Black

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Power movement’s turn to electoral politics that the man who in the end would benefit from all those years of work, Wilson Goode, began his career as a prominent leader of the activist wing but would enter the mayor’s office as a con- summate insider, a politician whose moderate image reassured business and political leaders who feared what black political power could mean for the city. Frank Rizzo’s eight years in the mayor’s office were marked by racial and political conflict both on the city streets and in the smoke-filled backrooms of the local party organization. Rizzo’s base of support continued to contract even as his administration mastered the politics of growth liberalism, using federal money to modernize the city’s transportation infrastructure and expand many of the city’s hospitals, universities, and other large nonprofit institutions, thereby delivering jobs to his supporters in the building trades unions. The mayor even extended his pro-labor policies to the city’s black- led municipal workers’ union, in effect buying the union’s silence in his 1975 reelection campaign with a lucrative multiyear contract.103 In the 1975 Democratic mayoral primary, the local party hierarchy refused to endorse Rizzo, punishing him for his 1972 endorsement of President Nixon. Instead, the Democratic City Committee endorsed Louis Hill, a local judge and the stepson of liberal reformer Richardson Dilworth. Rizzo easily defeated the charismatically challenged Hill by ten points, in large part because of a low black turnout. Still, the bitter primary did suggest that a candidate capable of adding just enough votes from white ethnic communities to a solid base of black and white liberal voters could defeat the mayor.104 Charles Bowser thought he could be that candidate. The city’s first black deputy mayor and the longtime executive director of the nonpartisan Philadelphia Urban Coalition, he believed that he had the credentials to appeal both to the moderate and militant wings of the city’s black political community and to voters in upper-income white neighborhoods. Angry that the DCC had chosen Hill rather than their candidate to challenge Rizzo in the Democratic primary, Bowser’s supporters plastered North Philadelphia with signs that read “Bowser in November” in the days before the May primary. Following Hill’s defeat, Bowser decided to mount a third-party challenge to Rizzo in the November General Election. Wilson Goode served as coordina- tor of volunteers for Bowser’s Philadelphia Party; John White Sr. and William Meek, the former director of the Area-Wide Council, were among Bowser’s key campaign strategists. From the beginning, however, inadequate fundraising— he was only able to raise $200,000 for the campaign—prevented Bowser from seriously threatening Rizzo’s reelection. Still, the former deputy mayor received 138,783 votes, enough to finish second in the race, ahead of the Republican candidate, City Councilman Thomas Foglietta. In four years, Bowser had added 100,000 votes to Hardy Williams’s 1971 vote total.105 When Mayor Rizzo announced in 1978 that he would lead a drive to change the City Charter to allow him to run for a third term, a broad coalition of black

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 847 activists and white liberal opponents of the mayor formed the “Vote No to Charter Change” campaign with Charles Bowser at its helm and successfully defeated the charter change amendment by a two-to-one margin. The breadth of the anti-Rizzo coalition convinced Bowser that he would enjoy his best chance to win a Rizzo-less election as the only black candidate in a multi- candidate Democratic primary. He therefore announced that he would run for mayor in 1979 as a Democrat rather than as the candidate of the Philadelphia Party. In its early stages, the campaign went precisely as Bowser had planned. Three white candidates entered the race—Rizzo aide Albert Gaudiosi, City Controller William Klenk, and, seeking the office that had eluded him eight years earlier, Congressman Bill Green Jr.—while the other potential black candidates backed off after Bowser received the endorsement of a citywide black political convention organized by David Richardson and other Black Power activists.106 In the campaign’s final weeks, however, Bowser found himself outmaneuvered as Gaudiosi and Klenk both withdrew from the race and endorsed Green. Despite winning resoundingly in the city’s black wards, Bowser had little hope of defeating a white liberal candidate in a one-on-one contest. He lost by a margin of 53 to 44 percent.107 The black political unity that had characterized Bowser’s two campaigns and the effort to defeat the charter change could not, however, survive negotiations with the Green campaign over how to mobilize the black vote for the November general election. The likely return of the mayor’s office to liberal control offered the black political community its first opportunity in nearly a decade to have a voice in municipal policy making. Richardson and others in the community’s activist wing saw this as the perfect opportunity to establish the principle that the black political agenda should be determined by the community as a whole, through the mechanism of political conventions, rather than by “leaders” working outside of public view. Richardson therefore announced that he would convene a second political convention on July 15 to formulate a list of policy demands that Green would have to support in return for the group’s endorsement. On the eve of the convention, however, it was preempted by a more traditional form of political negotiation. On July 14, Green announced that he had reached an agreement with Bowser and Bowser’s longtime mentor, Sam Evans, to appoint blacks to top positions in his administration in return for their support. “I have already told community leaders,” Green announced, “that I welcome the opportunity to appoint this city’s first managing director—the number two position in city government—who is qualified, talented and happens to be black.”108 The convention organizers were furious. “I think it is clearly an attempt to preempt the convention,” David Richardson told one of the city’s daily newspapers. “That old-line political crowd saw the convention as a threat to their existence.” At the convention’s opening session, the convention co-chair, Sister Falaka Fattah, denounced “self-serving power brokers agreeing in secret

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 848 JOURNAL OF URBAN HISTORY / September 2006 meetings to deliver the black community in exchange for a few high-placed appointments.” Still, the damage had been done. For the rest of the campaign, Green avoided discussion of the black convention’s policy agenda by emphasizing his pledge to appoint a black managing director. Richardson and other black activists would eventually back the third party candidacy of West Philadelphia City Councilman Lucien Blackwell, but Blackwell’s campaign had little impact on Green, who easily won the November election.109 What Adolph Reed has called the process of political incorporation was completed shortly after the election, when Mayor-elect Green announced that he had chosen Wilson Goode, Hardy Williams’s former campaign manager, to serve as managing director. By 1979, Goode had transformed himself from a community activist and political insurgent into a respected technocrat. Following Williams’s defeat, Goode largely kept his distance from electoral politics, instead building his reputation as a skilled manager of nonprofit organizations. Under his leadership, the Philadelphia Council for Community Advancement (PCCA) became known as a provider of essential technical assistance to community groups seeking to develop not-for-profit low-income housing. In 1978, Democratic Governor Milton Shapp appointed Goode to the state Public Utilities Commission, and from there he entered the Green administration. As managing director, Goode remained largely outside of Mayor Green’s inner circle. Instead, he successfully cultivated a reputation as an effective government official with a populist touch through his highly vis- ible support for neighborhood-based crime prevention and community development efforts.110 By the time Mayor Green unexpectedly announced that he would not run for a second term in 1983, Goode had become his obvious heir apparent. The entire black political class of the city, from militants like Richardson to the party loyalists at the ward level, quickly lined up behind Goode. At the same time, a coalition of many of the most prominent business leaders in the city, including the CEOs of Smith & Kline, Provident and PSFS banks, Rohm & Haas, and ARCO Chemical Company, formed to support Goode’s campaign. And yet in a city that was nearly 60 percent white, Goode still had to defeat Frank Rizzo, the still popular icon of law-and-order racial conservatism, to claim the Democratic nomination for mayor. Targeting black churches and civic groups in the city’s liberal Center City and Northwest districts, the Goode campaign generated a spirit that reminded many of the movements of the 1960s. In the Democratic primary, Goode won a surprisingly easy victory by a margin of 60,000 votes, including 98 percent of the black vote and 22 percent of the white vote. In the November general election, he doubled his victory margin to 123,000 votes.111 The mayoral administration of Wilson Goode is most often remembered for the 1985 police bombing of the West Philadelphia headquarters of the black radical group MOVE. A full evaluation of the MOVE episode or other

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 849 aspects of Goode’s mayoral tenure is beyond the scope of this article. A couple of observations can be made, however, about the legacy of the BPF vision of black independent politics in the Goode administration. First, Mayor Goode could not have picked a worse time to become the city’s first African American mayor. During his eight years in office, the Reagan and Bush administrations eviscerated the urban programs that had been at the core of his predecessors’ economic policies. By the end of Goode’s first term, the federal revenue-sharing programs that had enabled Mayor Rizzo to add thousands of workers to the city payroll and to provide jobs for the local construction industry had fallen to one half of 1 percent of the city’s budget.112 Second, Mayor Goode can be and was faulted for his preternaturally cautious approach to governing and for an unwillingness to pursue the kind of institutional changes that advocates of community control had envisioned during the 1960s. Goode’s political cautiousness was devastatingly evident in his handling of the MOVE crisis. As even he has acknowledged, once the mayor decided to approve the eviction of the MOVE members for failing to maintain their home according to the city’s housing code, he turned full control over the eviction to a police command with a history of racist brutality and a bitter grudge against the group. But it is in Mayor Goode’s decision to order the eviction that we can see the truncated legacy of community control. Goode had avoided the MOVE issue for months—until he felt he could no longer hold off the concerted lobbying of the radical group’s black neighbors. These lower-middle-class homeowners from the heart of Goode’s West Philadelphia political base had long been fed up with MOVE’s late-night denunciations, broadcast from rooftop loudspeakers, of American materialism as well as the group’s practice of feeding rodents and other household pests. They not surprisingly expected the city’s first black mayor, a politician who began his career as an advocate for the needs of West Philadelphia’s black neighborhoods, to be responsive to their concerns about the welfare of their children and the value of their most important financial asset. What did community control mean if not that black elected officials should be responsive to the concerns of organized groups of black residents?113 There are many lessons to be taken from the tragic confluence of an irate black neighborhood group, a politico-religious Black Nationalist commune, a politically cautious black mayor, and angry and trigger-happy police officers. Each of these forces was the product of the unfulfilled vision of the civil rights and Black Power movements. In the absence of mass political activism for racial justice, what had once seemed the transformative potential of black independent politics was consumed in the same fiery combustion that took the lives of six MOVE members and five of their children and the homes and dreams of sixty-one neighboring families.

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CONCLUSION

The history of Philadelphia’s Black Political Forum and the community- based activism that preceded it suggest that Black Power’s electoral turn should be seen not as an abandonment of “the movement” but as an explicit strategy for defending and advancing the achievements of a local Black Power movement. In the context of urban deindustrialization and capital flight, there was a strategic logic to seeking political control over the elected offices that managed the public sector “growth machine.” Not only was the public sector more vulnerable to popular pressure than private sources of investment, but also, in an older industrial city like Philadelphia, public sector investment appeared essential to the creation of the kind of working-class jobs needed by the majority of black Philadelphians. In this sense, both community control movements and Black Power–influenced electoral campaigns reflected the emerging spatial strategy of urban black politics. Political control over the ghetto seemed to provide the best hope for redirecting government resources to the fight against institutionalized racial privilege within local labor and housing markets.114 Moreover, the desire to control federal economic dollars provided the strategic logic behind the Black Political Forum’s decision to focus on the Democratic Party primaries. The demand for community control was rooted in both Malcolm X’s vision of black self-determination at the community level and Bayard Rustin’s argument that only a fundamental reorganization of government priorities and spending could address the issue of persistent black poverty. While an all-black third party might achieve a form of self- determination, many Black Power advocates in Philadelphia came to see winning community control over the Democratic Party’s infrastructure within black communities as necessary toward achieving the twin goals of black community control and massive public reinvestment in inner cities. Just as SNCC’s 1964 Freedom Summer campaign in Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) had targeted the Democratic Party as the institution capable of securing black voting rights, BPF advocates saw the Democrats as crucial to the struggle for black community control over government programs and resources in the urban North. In the more than thirty years since the founding of the Black Political Forum, black electoral strategies have done little to slow the growth of black poverty and inner-city decay in Philadelphia. It is thus easy to dismiss the vision of a citywide organization of independent black Democrats in Philadelphia building on the gains of the local civil rights and black power movements as, at best, hopelessly naïve, and, at worst, a façade for the personal ambitions of a small group of political opportunists. But while the dan- gers of electoral strategies to a mass social movement should not be overlooked, the history of groups like the BPF also suggests the potential role that electoral strategies can play in achieving social movement goals.

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NOTES

1. Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” in George Breitman, ed., Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (New York: Pathfinder, 1965). 2. Goode, who would be elected Philadelphia’s first African American mayor in 1983, made these com- ments at a January 1972 forum on black independent politics in Philadelphia. Memorandum to Committee on Black Political Development from Robert J. Sugarman, February 9, 1972, Americans for Democratic Action [ADA] papers, box 38, folder 3, Temple University Urban Archives (hereafter, TUUA). 3. “Black Political Forum Dinner Speakers Accuse Politicians of Ignoring the Constituents,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 28, 1970; “Black Political Power in Phila. Has Come Far in a Generation,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 16, 1998; and “In for the ‘Long Haul’: John White, Raised in Politics, Civil Rights,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 23, 1999. On John White, see “J. White Sr., Dies,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 16, 1999; “Farewell Brother: John White Sr. Dies; He Helped Bring End to ‘Plantation Politics,’” Philadelphia Daily News, September 16, 1999; and “A Legend Eulogized at His Funeral: John White Sr. Remembered as Great Leader,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 21, 1999. 4. The other honorees were Bertha Brown, president of the Our Neighbors Association; George “Freedom” Brower, leader of the Young Militants, a local Black Power group; Robert Russell, executive director of FOLK; Alice Walker of the ARD Educational Self-Help Center; Rose Wylie, president of the Resident Advisory Committee of the Philadelphia (public) Housing Authority; and Novella Williams of Citizens for Progress, a West Philadelphia neighborhood group. “Black Political Forum to Honor 10 Community Leaders at Dinner,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 15, 1970. 5. Richard Hatcher quoted in The Bulletin, April 27, 1970. Turnout for the convention would have been even higher, the forum’s organizers charged, had not the city’s Democratic mayor, James H. J. Tate, ordered leading black Democrats to stay away. For a discussion of the impact of Mayor Hatcher’s visit on the Black Political Forum, see W. Wilson Goode with Joann Stevens, In Goode Faith (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson, 1992), 104-5. 6. “Farewell Brother”; and “A Legend Eulogized at His Funeral.” 7. See, for example, Robert Weisbrodt, Freedom Bound: A History of America’s Civil Rights Movement (New York; Penguin, 1990), 313-14. 8. Robert C. Smith, “Black Power and the Transformation from Protest to Policies,” Political Science Quarterly 96, no. 3 (Autumn 1981): 431-43. For two important reviews of the political science literature on black electoral politics in the 1970s and 1980s, see Linda Williams, “Black Political Progress in the 1980s: The Electoral Arena,” in Michael B. Preston, Lenneal J. Henderson Jr., and Paul L. Puryear, eds., The New Black Politics, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1987), 97-135; and Adolph Reed, Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-segregation Era (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 1-51. Although a critic of most modernization studies of black politics, Reed’s analysis of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign—Adolph Reed, The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-American Politics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986)—faults the campaign for its movement-oriented campaign style and culture and for failing to adopt the rationalized campaign practices of professional politicians. 9. Reed, Stirrings in the Jug, 4-6. In a similar vein, Manning Marable has argued that the break between the generation of African American elected officials inspired by the Black Power movement and the movement itself came following the 1972 National Black Political Assembly in Gary, Indiana. Black elected officials, Marable contends, opted to accept the American political system’s offer of a kind of “neocolonial” political control over black urban communities, rather than continuing the movement’s prophetic drive to dismantle the nation’s racialized political economy. Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990, rev. 2nd ed. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991) 119-50. For a superb analysis of the impact of the incorporation of black politicians on the interests of the black poor, see Cathy Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 10. Bayard Rustin, “From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement,” Commentary (February 1965): 25, 30. 11. On Malcolm X’s formulation of community control, see Michael C. Dawson, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 97-105; and on his posthumous influence on Black Power activism, see William L. Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 1-10.

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12. For other examples of Black Power activists working for community control over federal programs and other public institutions, see Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003); and Thomas Jackson, “The State, the Movement, and the Urban Poor: The War-on-Poverty and Political Mobilization in the 1960s,” in Michael B. Katz, ed., The “Underclass” Debate: Views from History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 407. 13. On Amiri Baraka and the Committee for a Unified NewArk in Newark, see Komozi Woodard, A Nation within a Nation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), esp. 219-54. On the electoral activism of the Black Panther Party in Oakland during the 1970s, see Self, American Babylon; and Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story (New York: Pantheon, 1992). On Maynard Jackson’s administration in Atlanta, see Reed, Stirrings in the Jug, 163-77. On Coleman Young’s political career, see Heather Ann Thompson, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor and Race in a Modern American City (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001.), esp. 192-216. On Harold Washington’s term as mayor of Chicago, see Robert T. Stark and Michael Preston, “The Political Legacy of Harold Washington,” National Political Science Review, no. 2 (1990): 161-68. 14. Black Power–influenced organizations active in Philadelphia ranged from Leon Sullivan’s Opportunities Industrialization Centers (OIC), a federally funded job training program that promoted Black Capitalism by spinning off a number of black-owned, for-profit companies to local chapters of revolutionary organizations like the Black Panther Party, the Revolutionary Action Movement, and the Black Economic Development Conference (BEDC). See Matthew J. Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia, 1940-1975 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). On the breadth of Black Power ideologies and activism, see Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon, esp. 112-91; Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, (Boston: Beacon, 2002), 60-134; and Peniel E. Joseph, “Black Liberation without Apology: Reconceptualizing the Black Power Movement,” Black Scholar 31 (3-4): 2-19. 15. W. E. B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899; reprint, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 368-84. On the Philadelphia Republican machine, see Peter McCaffery, When Bosses Ruled Philadelphia: The Emergence of the Republican Machine, 1867-1933 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993). For a historical account of the black Citizens’ Republican Club, see “Citizens’ Republican Club Was Gathering Spot of the Black Elite during Its Glamorous Heyday,” Philadelphia Tribune, June 29, 1971. 16. Nancy J. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), 30-31, 92-93; and John F. Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920-1974 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 28-29. On Vare, see McCaffery, When Bosses Ruled Philadelphia, 97-188. 17. James Reichley, The Art of Government: Reform and Organization Politics in Philadelphia (New York: Fund for the Republic, 1959), 66-70; and Kirk R. Petshek, The Challenge of Urban Reform: Policies and Programs in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973). 18. U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population, 1940: Population, Second Series, Characteristics of Population, Pennsylvania (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1940); and U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Population, 1950 Vol. II, Characteristics of Population (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1940), ch. 38. 19. United States President’s Committee on Civil Rights, To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1947). On the Truman committee, see Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 79-84. On Sadie Alexander’s appointment to the President’s Committee, see Kenneth W. Mack, “A Social History of Everyday Practice: Sadie M. T. Alexander and the Incorporation of Black Women in the American Legal Profession, 1925-1960,” Cornell Law Review 87, no. 6 (September 2002). On the growing recognition of the importance of northern black votes to the Democratic Party’s national aspirations in the post–World War II period, see Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion, 13-39; Jack M. Bloom, Class, Race and the Civil Rights Movement: The Changing Political Economy of Racism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 74-86; and William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America since World War II, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 17-25, 86-88. 20. Reichley, The Art of Government, 66-70; Petshek, The Challenge of Urban Reform, 33-40; and Charles Ekstrom, “The Electoral Politics of Reform and Machine: The Political Behavior of Philadelphia’s ‘Black’ Wards, 1943-1969,” in Miriam Ershkowitz and Joseph Zikmund II, eds., Black Politics in Philadelphia (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 84-108. On the City Charter’s Human Rights

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 853 provisions, see Philadelphia Fellowship Commission, “Report to the Community,” vol. 1, no. 6, April 1950, Fellowship Commission [FC] papers, box 53, folder 7, TUUA. 21. Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal, 154; and John Hadley Strange, “The Negro in Philadelphia Politics: 1963-65” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1966), 133-34. Employment gains in the public sector masked continued racial inequities in government employment in the city. Despite the disproportionate numbers of black municipal employees, 99 percent of city employees making more $7,000 per year were white, while more than 50 percent of black employees made less than $4,000. Similarly, only 5.5 percent of public school employees making more than $10,000 per year were black. On racial segmentation in post–World War II Philadelphia’s labor market, see also Carolyn Adams, David Bartlett, David Elesh, Ira Goldstein, Nancy Kleniewski, and William Yancey, Philadelphia: Neighborhoods, Division, and Conflict in a Postindustrial City (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 35-42. 22. Adams et al., Philadelphia, 36-38; Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal, 84-86; and Strange, “The Negro in Philadelphia Politics,” 138. 23. “Philadelphia’s Negro Population: Facts on Housing,” Commission on Human Relations (CHR) papers, box 148, folder 4, Philadelphia Municipal Archives (hereafter, PMA). On the increasing rates of residential segregation in post–World War II Philadelphia, see also Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal, 149-90; and Nancy Kleniewski, “Neighborhood Decline and Downtown Renewal: The Politics of Redevelopment in Philadelphia, 1952-1962” (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1981). 24. On the defeat of the scattered site housing plan, see Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal, 160-66. On the Democratic Party’s declining support for the reformers’ agenda, see Reichley, The Art of Government, 15-72. 25. Reichley, The Art of Government, 15-18, 45-46, 68-72; The Bulletin, January 22, 1958; “Alexander Admits Strong Opposition in Congress Race,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 7, 1958; “Demos Slate Nix for Congress Seat,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 18, 1958; “People in Both Parties Hail Slating of Bob Nix,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 18, 1958; “Labor May Block Election of 1st Negro Congressman,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 1, 1958; “Historical Election: City This Year Will Select First Negro Congressman,” The Bulletin, March 30, 1958; “Senator Clark Endorses Schmidt for Congress,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 6, 1958; press release, Harvey N. Schmidt for Congress Committee, May 13, 1958, ADA papers, box 17, folder 20, TUUA; “Everybody Was against Congressman Bob Nix but Ward Leaders, Committeemen, and Voters,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 24, 1958; and “Nix Defeats Moore by 38,683; Negro Vote Here 176,431,” Philadelphia Tribune, November 8, 1958. On Alexander’s appointment to the Common Pleas Court bench, see “Alexander Is First Negro Common Pleas Judge in This City,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 6, 1959. 26. On Nix’s career, see “Negroes in House Joins Forces to Speak for Black Interests,” Wall Street Journal, March 31, 1970; “The Ambassador, the Congressman and the Problem,” Washington Post,May 2, 1978; and “Minister Proves Skillful Politician,” Washington Post, January 21, 1979. 27. “‘Buy Where You’re Hired’ Campaign Getting Results,” Philadelphia Tribune, June 11, 1960. Leon H. Sullivan, Build Brother Build (Philadelphia: Macrae Smith, 1969), 67-68. 28. Sullivan, Build Brother Build, 76-77. The drivers of Tastykake’s delivery trucks also acted as the company’s salesmen to retail outlets and thus were able to make a commission on top of their regular salaries. “Preachers Reject Baking Firms’ Letter: ‘Tighten Up’ on Retail Stores Boycott,” Philadelphia Courier, July 2, 1960. On the ministers’ claims about the number of jobs opened up by Selective Patronage, see “1,000 New Jobs Worth $4 Million Won by Drive,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 22, 1962. 29. “Protest Links Pickets with Common Bond,” and “Bricklayer Balks at Crossing Picketers,” Philadelphia Tribune, June 1, 1963. 30. Quoted in The Bulletin, August 30, 1964. On the 1964 North Philadelphia riot, see Lenora Berson, Case Study of a Riot: The Philadelphia Story (New York: Institute of Human Relations Press, 1966). 31. Interview with John Churchville, February 16, 1994, Philadelphia. Churchville had worked as an SNCC field secretary in Georgia and Mississippi, but left SNCC to coordinate community outreach for the Nation of Islam (NOI) mosque in Atlanta before moving to Philadelphia. He left the NOI following Malcolm X’s expulsion because he felt himself “outgrowing the Muslims.” According to an FBI informant, though, he attended the NOI’s Philadelphia mosque until at least January 1965. The informant’s report is from the FBI files that Rev. Paul Washington obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and that are in the author’s possession. On Rev. Washington’s FBI files, see Paul M. Washington with David McI. Gracie, “Other Sheep I Have”: The Autobiography of Father Paul Washington (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 43.

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32. Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon, 11-27, 112-91. 33. Interviews with John Churchville, February 16, 1994; Mattie Humphrey, March 12, 1994, Philadelphia; Walter Palmer, August 12, 2004, Philadelphia; and Edward Robinson, August 24, 2004, Philadelphia; see also “Philadelphia—NSM Freedom Library,” Freedom North, nos. 4/5: 27, Student Christian Movement (SCM) papers, Yale Divinity School Archives (hereafter, YDSA). Among the key figures in BPUM were Walter Palmer, founder of the Society for the Preservation of Afro-American History; and Edward Robinson, an insurance executive who made frequent presentations on black history to school and community groups. 34. Quote from an FBI transcript of the appearance of Churchville, William Strickland, and Rev. Paul Washington on the February 2, 1996, Joe Rainey show on WDAS in Philadelphia. The transcript was included in Rev. Washington’s FBI file, which is in the author’s possession. 35. Washington, “Other Sheep I Have,” 41-48, 49-52; interview with Paul M. Washington, March 14, 1994, Philadelphia; interviews with John Churchville and Mattie Humphrey; “Rally Honoring Malcolm X Hears of Negro Plans Here,” The Bulletin, August 5, 1966; and “Phila Is a ‘Racist City,’ Carmichael Tells 2,000,” The Bulletin, August 31, 1966. On BPUM’s rallies, see also “‘Black Power,’ Beauty Unity Rally Themes,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 19, 1966; and “Shun Flag, Militants Urge Negroes,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 2, 1967. Despite his victory, the Georgia Senate refused to seat Bond after he refused to disavow SNCC’s opposition to the Vietnam War. Bond would only assume his Senate seat after the courts ruled the Senate’s action to be unconstitutional. See Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981),166- 68, 189-95, 231-32. 36. Interview with John Churchville. BPUM activists Walter Palmer and Edward Robinson expressed similar positions on the importance of changing public sector institutions. Interviews with Walter Palmer and Edward Robinson. Among the black community institutions established by Freedom Library activists was the Heritage House Freedom Theater in North Philadelphia. See “Freedom Theater Works to Improve Black Culture,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 31, 1971. 37. “Gratz Student Injured during Demonstration,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 28, 1967; “Police Arrest 5 Student Protest Leaders at Bok; Tension Grows as Faculty Mulls Negro Demands,” Philadelphia Tribune, November 18, 1967; “Black Power Pickets Battle Police,” The Bulletin, November 17, 1967; “Leaflets Made in Model Cities Headquarters,” The Bulletin, November 18, 1967; interview with Mattie Humphrey, March 12, 1994; and Washington, “Other Sheep I Have,” 62-69. The nephew of BPUM founder Ed Robinson, Richardson had graduated from Germantown High School in 1965. 38. On Dilworth’s appointment to the school board, see “View Dilworth as School Board Head with Mixed Emotions,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 4, 1965; “NAACP Prexy and Minister Blast Choices,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 7, 1965; “NAACP Blasts Lack of Women,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 11, 1965; and “School Board Member Calls Dilworth ‘Timid,’” The Bulletin, November 20, 1967. On Rizzo’s appointment, see Greg Walter, “Rizzo: A Fearless Cop Has His Work Cut Out for Him in Philadelphia in 1967,” Greater Philadelphia Magazine, 1967; and S. A. Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo: The Last Big Man in Big City America (Philadelphia: Camino, 1993), 87. On Tate’s appointment of the city’s first black deputy mayor, see interview with Charles Bowser, March 10, 1994, Philadelphia. 39. Interviews with Walter Palmer and Mattie Humphrey “Black Power Pickets Battle Police,” and “Dilworth Blames Police; Rizzo Cites Warning,” The Bulletin, November 17, 1967; “Cops Brutality Protests Flood Tribune Office,” Philadelphia Tribune, November 18, 1967; “Mathis Says He Was a Peacemaker, Not Agitator in Disorders,” The Bulletin, November 21, 1967; “Rizzo Blasts Black Power, Tells Court of Pupil ‘Mob,’” The Bulletin, December 12, 1967; Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 91-94; and Washington, “Other Sheep I Have,” 63-66. On Shedd’s appointment, see “3 Considered by Board for Whittier’s Job,” The Bulletin, November 18, 1966. 40. “Leaders Paid $350 Each to Discuss Race Problems and the School System,” Philadelphia Tribune, December 19, 1967; Richard H. De Lone to Charles Simpson, March 8, 1968, FC Papers, box 35, folder 29, TUUA; “Ten Days of Disorders: Pupils, Neighbors, and Faculty Describe Crisis,” The Bulletin, October 20, 1968; and “PCCA: Schools Project Source Book: Change in the Philadelphia Public Schools,” n.d., PCCA papers, box 1, TUUA. On Shedd’s reform efforts, see also Bernard C. Watson, Colored, Negro, Black: Chasing the American Dream (Philadelphia: JDC Books, 1997), 107-27. 41. Interview with Charles Bowser, March 10, 1994; “Black Power Threatens City, Rizzo Says,” The Bulletin, November 23, 1967; “Rizzo Blasts Black Power, Tells Court of Pupil ‘Mob’”; and Paolantonio,

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Frank Rizzo, 93-96. On white support for Rizzo following the November 17, 1967, demonstration, see “White Citizens Flock to Sign Petition Backing Commissioner Rizzo’s Action,” Philadelphia Tribune, November 21, 1967. 42. See Alan J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 243-71. 43. Quoted in Matusow, The Unraveling of America, 257. For Matusow’s analysis of the War on Poverty in Philadelphia, see The Unraveling of America, 255-65. On the War on Poverty in Philadelphia, see also “Mayor Defends Antipoverty Program,” The Bulletin, February 8, 1965; “Political Use of Antipoverty Funds Is Charged,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 16, 1965; “Poor Lacked Power in Philadelphia,” New York Times, November 6, 1965; “Year of War-on-Poverty Ends on a Note of Discord,” The Bulletin, May 29, 1966; and “Philadelphia’s Plan to Give Poor a Voice in Poverty Drive Called a Failure,” New York Times, July 17, 1966. For an analysis of community action programs in the War on Poverty that views programs like PAAC as the norm, see Jackson, “The State, the Movement, and the Urban Poor,” 407. 44. Evans was able to provide these jobs because civil service requirements—including antinepotism rules—were suspended for most PAAC jobs to give poor people a greater chance of qualifying for antipoverty jobs. Thus, according to an OEO investigation, 270 people received jobs with the PAAC or other city agencies on Evans’s order. Samuel Yarborough, the PAAC representative from North Philadelphia’s Area D, was simultaneously employed as a $9,000 per year administrator in the PAAC central office. Alison Bryant, the PAAC representative from Area F, also received a job in the PAAC central office. See “PAAC Urged to Put Salaried Workers under Civil Service or Merit System,” The Bulletin, January 25, 1966; “Most Elected Aides on PAAC Panel Turn Up on Payroll,” Philadelphia Inquirer,July 20, 1966; “Woman Critic of PAAC Gets Seat on Its Board,” The Bulletin, September 20, 1966; “Mrs. Page Quits PAAC Committee, Says Evans Usurped Her Authority,” The Bulletin, December 19, 1966; “PAAC Official’s Dual Role Threatens Funds, U.S. Says,” The Bulletin, January 19, 1967; and “New Philadelphia Story: Hard Times Befall a ‘Model’ Antipoverty Program,” New York Times, June 26, 1967. 45. “A Note on Social Planning,” The Bulletin, November 4, 1966. On the Model Cities Act, see Nelson Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 402-4. 46. Minutes of Committee on Citizen Participation, January 30, 1967, and February 2, 1967; and Philadelphia Crisis Committee, “Chronological Fact Sheet on Model Cities Controversy,” n.d., HADV papers, box 107e, folder 50, TUUA; and North City Congress, “What Is the Model Cities Program?” n.d., Urban League (UL) papers, box 16, folder 24, TUUA. On the North City Congress, see “Testimony to PAAC Hearing: Mrs. Bertha Brown,” July 5, 1967, GPFS papers, box 77, TUUA. 47. Interview with Walter Meek, March 15, 1994, Philadelphia; minutes of the Temporary Committee to Design AWC Structure, February 13, July 24, and August 9, 24, and 31, 1967; and the Area-Wide Council flier, April 20, 1967, Area-Wide Council Staff Resume Summary, n.d., HADV papers, box 107e, folder 50, TUUA. On Meek’s involvement in the King Committee, see Steering Committee minutes, July 27, 1965, Floyd Logan papers, box 5, TUUA. 48. Interview with Walter Meek; minutes of the Temporary Steering Committee of the Area-Wide Council, emergency meeting, November 21, 1967; “Working Draft of Policy Statement by Area-Wide Council,” November 24, 1967; Area-Wide Council of Model Cities Program, general meeting, December 7, 1967, HADV papers, box 107e, folder 50, TUUA; The Bulletin, April 21, 1967; “Area Council Fights Change in Model City Plan,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 9, 1967; “Leaflets Made in Model Cities Headquarters,” The Bulletin, November 18, 1967; “Negro Leaders Hails Student Protest Here,” The Bulletin, December 4, 1967; “Court Orders Wider Ban on School Rallies,” The Bulletin, December 7, 1967; “Model Cities Unit Pledges Attack on ‘Unrest in N. Phila.,’” The Bulletin, December 8, 1967; “Phila. to Get Request for Model Cities Funds,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 10, 1967; “Model Cities Unit Rejects City’s Reduced Budget Plan,” The Bulletin, December 15, 1967; Philadelphia Inquirer, December 20, 1967; and “Restoration of Model Cities Funds Sought,” The Bulletin, December 28, 1967. 49. “Area-Wide Council Meeting at Strawberry Mansion,” February 28, 1968, HADV papers, box 107e, folder 50, TUUA; The Bulletin, January 6, April 17, and April 18, 1968; “Model Cities Group Insists on Bigger Role in Reform Planning,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 26, 1968; Model Cities Program Geared to Make Living Conditions Better for Many Thousands,” Philadelphia Tribune, December 21, 1968; William R. Meek to Mrs. Dolbeare, June 19, 1969, HADV papers, box 107e, folder 50, TUUA; “Ghetto Needs Entrepreneurs,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 12, 1969; and The Bulletin, January 17 and May 7, 1969.

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50. North City Area-Wide Council, Inc. v. George W. Romney, n.d., HADV papers, box 107e, folder 49, TUUA; “Model Cities: The Philadelphia Story,” n.d., HADV papers, box 107e, folder 49, TUUA; Philadelphia Crisis Committee, “Chronological Fact Sheet on Model Cities Controversy,” n.d., HADV papers, box 107e, folder 50, TUUA; “Model Cities Council To Sue City, US Govt. For Program’s Control,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 5, 1969; “U.S. Sued on Grant for Model Cities,” New York Times, August 16, 1969; “Citizens Sue U.S. for Curbs in Model Plan,” The Bulletin, August 17, 1969; and “Plan for Philadelphia Is Ruled a Violation of Model Cities Act,” New York Times, July 19, 1970. 51. Strange, “The Negro in Philadelphia Politics,” 63. According to Strange, every single activist whom he interviewed for his study, whether they were allied with the machine or not, agreed with this conclusion. For an analysis similar to Strange’s, see Jack Saunders, “Jack Saunders Says,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 2, 1963. 52. Strange, “The Negro in Philadelphia Politics,” 65-66; and Philadelphia Tribune, February 25, 1967. On Shapp’s victory over the party nominee in the 1966 Democratic primary, see “Shapp Wins, Independents Lose,” and “Shapp Won, Coleman Lost Because Money Is Root of All Power,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 21, 1966; and “Most Black Wards Supported Shapp in Primary Election,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 23, 1970. On Campbell’s support for Shapp and his loss to Saunders in June 1966, see “West Phila. Ward Fight Poses Problem for Shapp,” Philadelphia Tribune, June 11, 1966. On Campbell’s career on the City Council, see “Dr. Shepard’s Death Is City’s Loss,” and “Decent Housing Uppermost to Councilman Campbell,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 7, 1970. 53. Philadelphia Tribune, May 1964. 54. On the 1965 controller and district attorney races, see “End of White Rule Sought in 2 W. Phila. Wards,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 18, 1965. On the 1966 Democratic primary for Nix’s congressional seat, see “Charge Congressman Nix Wants to Hide His Color,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 3, 1966; “30 Seeking Nominations in Tuesday Primary,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 14, 1966; and “Shapp Wins, Independents Lose,” and “Shapp Won, Coleman Lost Because Money Is Root of All Power.” 55. “Withdrawal of Attorney Will Not Stop Congress Fight Says Cecil Moore,” Philadelphia Tribune, June 7, 1966; “Cecil Moore Girds Party for Election,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 1, 1967; “Candidate Moore Delights Crowds Barnstorming for Black Man’s Vote,” The Bulletin, November 5, 1967; “Election at a Glance,” The Bulletin, November 8, 1967; and “Smalls, Not Moore, Finished Last in Mayoralty Election,” Philadelphia Tribune, December 12, 1967. 56. Interview with Charyn Sutton, March 5, 1994, Philadelphia; “Philadelphia Freedom Organization,” SNCC papers, reel 32, item 102; and “‘New Breed’ Seeks Change; Vows to Go Down Swinging Not Singing with Young Brainwashed Victims,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 26, 1966. On the Lowdnes County Freedom Organization, see Carson, In Struggle, 153-74, 205; and James Forman, “Philadelphia Black Paper,” n.d., 1, SNCC papers, rec. 32, item 102. 57. Interview with Charyn Sutton, March 5, 1994. 58. Ibid.; Terence Cannon, “1,000 Cops with Machine Guns ‘Find’ 2 1/2 Sticks of Dynamite in Philadelphia, Try to Pin It on SNCC,” The Movement 2, no. 8 (September 1966); Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 84-85; James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries (Washington, D.C.: Open Hand, 1985), 460-71; and James Forman, “Philadelphia Black Paper,” 1. 59. Goode, In Goode Faith, 104-5. 60. Philadelphia Tribune, July 24, 1971; Watson, Colored, Negro, Black, 137-38; “Farewell Brother”; interview with Charyn Sutton, Philadelphia, PA, August 12, 2004. On Wilson Goode’s background in community organizing and antipoverty work, see Goode, In Goode Faith, 92-102, 109-20; and Washington, “Other Sheep I Have,” 140. In his memoir, Goode described his approach to community organizing in this way:

No group of ten or twelve people can speak for a whole community. To be truly successful, community activism must empower the people who are being served by involving them in the decision-making process....Everyone needs to feel ownership in a decision that affects their lives. From the senior citizens on down to the children, the total community must be included. (Goode, In Goode Faith, 115)

Bernard Watson would later serve as vice president for academic administration at Temple University and then as president of the William Penn Foundation. See Watson, Colored, Negro, Black, 168-226. 61. Vance’s remarks are summarized in a memorandum to Committee on Black Political Development from Robert J. Sugarman, February 9, 1972, ADA papers, box 38, folder 3, TUUA. At the time, Vance

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 857 was a middle school principal in the Philadelphia school system. He would later serve as superintendent of schools, first in Montgomery County, Maryland, and later in Washington, D.C. On Vance’s career, see Watson, Colored, Negro, Black, 112-13, 115-16, 118-19, 126, 261. For an early articulation of the potential for black electoral politics to address issues of poverty in the urban North, see Robert Vernon, “Black Ghettos Need Political Power,” The Illustrated News, August 24, 1964. For a survey of postwar racial politics in Philadelphia with a somewhat different emphasis, see Adams et al., Philadelphia, esp. 124-53. 62. Jack Saunders, “Jack Saunders Says,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 7 and March 14, 1970. On Brennan’s initial election as ward leader, see “New Third Ward Elects Negro Leader,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 15, 1966. On the role of committeemen and committeewomen in Philadelphia politics, see Reichley, The Art of Government, 15-16, 54-55, 95. 63. “Negro Dems Name D.A., Controller Choices,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 15, 1969; and “Democrats Hurt by Failure to Endorse,” Philadelphia Tribune, November 8, 1969. In the November general election, a historically low black turnout led to the reelection of Republican District Attorney Arlen Specter with 59 percent of the vote and to the election of his running mate, city controller candidate Tom Gola, a 1950s-era basketball star and first-time candidate, by a margin of 57 to 43 percent. 64. Jack Saunders, “Jack Saunders Says,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 7, March 14, May 16, 23, and June 9, 1970. On Lawson’s legislative career, see “Rep. Paul Lawson Moves to Enact $2 per Hr. State Minimum Wage,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 16, 1970. 65. Watson, Colored, Negro, Black, 136; Goode, In Goode Faith, 104-6; Jack Saunders, “Jack Saunders Says,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 7, March 14, May 16, May 23, and June 9, 1970; “Hardy Williams: How I Beat an Incumbent Legislator,” Philadelphia Tribune, June 5, 1970. 66. Philadelphia Tribune, May 16, 1970; and “Hardy Williams.” In February 1970, the principal of West Philadelphia High School complained that twenty-one youth gangs had overrun the school. “21 Youth Gangs Have School Reeling, West. Phila. Principal Moans,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 7, 1970. 67. Williams received 3,408 votes to 2,333 votes for Lawson. Jack Saunders, “Jack Saunders Says,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 7, March 14, June 5, and June 13, 1970; Philadelphia Tribune, May 23, 1970; Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 111-17; and Goode, In Goode Faith, 105. Less than a month after Williams’s primary victory, the machine enacted its revenge in the election for Democratic leader of the 3rd ward. By a single vote, with two committeemen abstaining, Dorothy Brennan defeated Williams and regained her position. “Williams Upset but Coleman Wins in Democratic Ward Leader Fights,” Philadephia Tribune, June 13, 1970. 68. “Convention Planned Here to Form Black Political Unit,” The Bulletin, February 5, 1971; “Black Political Convention Planners See Rizzo’s Candidacy as Good Omen,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 6, 1971; “Hardy Willliams’ Real Intention Subject of Crystal Ball Gazing,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 9, 1971; “Black Political Convention: No Place for Personal Advancement Candidates,” Philadephia Tribune, February 13, 1971; “Black Convention Ignores Machine Politicians,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 16, 1971; and Washington, “Other Sheep I Have,” 155. 69. Thatcher Longstreth, Main Line Wasp: The Education of Thatcher Longstreth (New York: Norton, 1990), 253. Longstreth was Rizzo’s Republican opponent in the November 1971 general election. On the Rizzo campaign, see Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 102-22. 70. On Green’s campaign, see memorandum to ADA board members from Dave Hornbeck, January 18, 1971, ADA papers, box 38, folder 2, TUUA; and Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 113-15. On Green’s election to Congress in 1964, see “Statement by Walter Phillips, Reform Democrat,” April 21, 1964, ADA papers, box 38, folder 22. 71. “Cohen Says He Will Fire Comm. Rizzo, if Elected Mayor,” Philadelphia Tribune, 1971. On David Cohen’s career, see “David Cohen, in City Hall,” Distant Drummer 60 (November 21-29, 1969), in FC papers, box 51, folder 5, TUUA. On the Cohen campaign, see memorandum to ADA board members from Dave Hornbeck, January 11, 1971, ADA papers, box 38, folder 2, TUUA. For an example of his support for black activist demands, see “Cohen Backs NAACP Probe of Police Here,” The Bulletin, May 8, 1970. 72. “Right On! By Pamala Haynes,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 16, 1971. On black support for Green and Cohen, see “Green for Mayor Headquarters Opened by Group Headed by Mt. Olivet Pastor Rev. Shepard,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 12, 1971; “Green Surrounded by Black Followers as He Announces Candidacy for Mayor,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 2, 1971; “Rizzo a ‘Tyrant and Bully’ Black Labor Leader Says, New Political Unit Throws Support to Bill Green,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 16, 1971; and “Congressman Asserts Vote for Williams Helps Rizzo,” Philadelphia Tribune,May

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15, 1971. On Williams’s failure to win the endorsement of a single black elected official, see Jack Saunders, “Jack Saunders Says,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 20, 1971. 73. Williams and Goode quoted in Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 113; Goode, In Goode Faith, 106; and interview with Charyn Sutton, August 12, 2004. Williams quoted in memorandum to ADA board members from Dave Hornbeck, January 27, 1971, ADA papers, box 38, folder 2, TUUA. See also “Williams Says He Has Good Chance to Win Mayor Race,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 16, 1971. On the Williams campaign, see Philadelphia Tribune, April 10 and April 17, 1971; “Center City Citizens for Hardy Williams,” n.d., ADA papers, box 38, folder 4, TUUA; Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 111-17; Goode, In Goode Faith, 106; and Watson, Colored, Negro, Black, 136-37. 74. For similar discussions of the Williams campaign strategy for winning the primary, see Watson, Colored, Negro, Black, 137; and Jack Saunders, “Jack Saunders Says,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 2 and May 11, 1971. Williams would eventually be forced to publicly deny reports of secret ties between the Rizzo camp and his campaign. “Link to Rizzo Is Denied by Williams as Primary Nears,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 15, 1971. On rumors of the Rizzo campaign’s support for Williams’s candidacy, see also “Right On! By Pamala Haynes”; Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 112-13; and Watson, Colored, Negro, Black, 137. 75. “Scores Sob as Cohen Pulls Out of Race and Throws His Support to Green,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 8, 1971. Memorandum to ADA board members, David Hornbeck, January 7, 1971; and Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 114. On Green’s anger at Williams, see “Verbal War between Williams, Green Grows Hotter, Hotter,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 17, 1971. 76. “Rizzo’s Big Victory: How, Why, and What It Means,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 22, 1971. See also Jack Saunders, “Jack Saunders Says,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 25, 1971. 77. Cecil Moore received 8,971 votes in his 1967 independent campaign for mayor, just 1.2 percent of the total vote. “Specter Loses by Only 10,892 in 73% Turnout,” The Bulletin, November 8, 1967. 78. “Longstreth to Make Pitch to Black Political Forum Rizzo Decides to Warm Bench,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 31, 1971; “Longstreth Vows He Will Appoint More Blacks to His Cabinet than Democrats if He Is Elected Mayor,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 3, 1971; and “Black Political Forum Endorses Longstreth, Republican Ticket,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 21, 1971. On Longstreth’s efforts to win black votes, see “Thatcher Longstreth Banking on Black Vote to Beat Rizzo,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 22, 1971; “Moore Comes Out ‘Fighting’ for Longstreth, Raps Rizzo,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 2, 1971; and “Rev. Leon H. Sullivan Endorses Longstreth for Mayor; Rizzo’s Election Will Divided City, Minister Asserts,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 23, 1971. On McIntosh’s support for Rizzo, see “8 Ward Leaders Bank on Frank Rizzo,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 25, 1971. 79. Interview with Charyn Sutton, August 12, 2004; “McIntosh Beaten by Anti-Rizzo Tide, Dr. Allen Says,” Philadelphia Tribune, November 9, 1971; and “Longstreth to Get My Vote: Hardy Williams,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 26, 1971. 80. “Blacks Voted against Frank Rizzo but Supported His Running Mates,” Philadelphia Tribune, November 6, 1971; Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 116-21; Longstreth, Main Line Wasp, 249-61; and “McIntosh Beaten by Anti-Rizzo Tide.” See also Jack Saunders, “Jack Saunders Says,” Philadelphia Tribune, November 2, 1971. Estimates of the black vote are based on an analysis of ten wards in which 90 percent or more of the registered voters were black. See Goode, In Goode Faith, 106. In the twenty- three wards with black majorities, Longstreth defeated Rizzo by a margin of 126,768 to 48,620, or 74 to 26 percent. See “Blacks Voted against Frank Rizzo.” 81. On John White Jr.’s political career, see “In for the ‘Long Haul’: John White, Raised in Politics, Civil Rights,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 23, 1999. On Gray’s victory over Nix, see Watson, Colored, Negro, Black, 141. 82. Interviews with Walter Palmer and Edward Robinson; interview with Elaine G. Richardson, August 12, 2004, Philadelphia. On the Young Afro-Americans, see “Black Militants Get Mixed Reaction from Germantown Pupils, Faculty,” The Bulletin, June 25, 1968; “5 Groups Bid for Grant to Control Gangs,” The Bulletin, September 9, 1969; “Private Black School System Goal of Young Afro-Americans,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 23, 1971; “The Incident,” Community Forum: A Publication of the Urban Studies and Community Services Center of LaSalle College (Spring-Summer 1969), in the Police Advisory Board papers (hereafter, PAB), box 2, TUUA; and “Organizational List,” n.d., FC papers, box 62, folder 8, TUUA. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, six black youth gangs operated in Germantown: Clang, Somerville, Dogtown, Haines Street, Brickyard, and Pulaskitown. See Nancy Loving, “Somerville in the Streets,” Community Forum: A Publication of the Urban Studies and Community Services Center of LaSalle College (Spring 1970), PAB, box 2, TUUA; and “United Progressives, Brickyard Youth Council Fight Gang Warfare and Crime in Wister Area,” Philadelphia Tribune, November 2, 1971.

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83. “Rep. Rush Plans Vigorous Campaign in Face of District Reapportionment,” The Bulletin, February 21, 1972; and “Rights Veteran Running for Legislature,” The Bulletin, February 27, 1972. 84. On the growth of the black voting population in Northwest Philadelphia, see Jack Saunders, “Jack Saunders Says,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 9 and April 6, 1971. By 1971, black voters outnumbered white voters in the area’s 8th Councilmanic District 51,887 to 38,358. In 1970, BPF activist and former postal union official Edward S. Lee led a slate of insurgents that successfully took control of the 59th Ward Democratic Committee in West Germantown. Lee, however, broke with the BPF when the group backed George French over him in the 1971 race for the 8th District Council seat previously held by David Cohen. Lee then agreed to back Rizzo and the rest of the Democratic slate in return for the party’s endorsement for the clerk of the Court of the Quarter Session. He thus became the first African American to receive the Democratic City Committee’s endorsement for citywide office. Despite being accused by BPF activist Kelly Miller of selling out the black community in a return for “a few crumbs...[from] the racist Democratic machine,” Lee was easily elected to a position that controlled 130 patronage jobs. Philadelphia Tribune, March 16, 1971. On Lee, see also Philadelphia Tribune, April 27, 1970, and January 2, February 27, March 9, April 10, May 22, and September 25, 1971. 85. On anti-Rizzo sentiment in Northwest Philadelphia, see Philadelphia Tribune, April 6, 1971. Ironically, Rizzo, who was born in South Philadelphia, moved with his family to Germantown as an ado- lescent and would live in the northwest section of the city for the rest of his life. Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 33-36. 86. This description of Richardson’s electoral experience is based on an interview with Charyn Sutton, August 12, 2004. 87. “Rights Veteran Running for Legislature,” The Bulletin, February 27, 1972. 88. “Blacks Celebrate Victories over ‘Machine’ in Legislative Races,” and “Richardson Upsets Rep. Rush in 201st,” The Bulletin, April 27, 1972. 89. “Richardson Upsets Rep. Rush in 201st”; and “Upset House Winner Credits Youth Drive,” Philadelphia Daily News, April 27, 1972. 90. “Squabbling Rizzo Calls Gang Probe ‘Worthless,’” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 23, 1973; and “Rizzo Opposes Blacks, Legislator Charges,” The Bulletin, August 20, 1974. 91. “Legislator Seized in Vendor Protest,” The Bulletin, July 20, 1976; “1,000 Blacks Join Boycott at the Gallery,” The Bulletin, August 25, 1978; and “Funeral Services Set for State Rep. David Richardson,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 22, 1995. There remains significant controversy over whether the bullet that killed Police Officer Joseph Ramp was fired by a MOVE member or from a police gun. On the 1978 MOVE-police confrontation, see Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 224-27; and Washington, “Other Sheep I Have,” 178-81. On Milton Street’s career as a community activist and politician, see “Philadelphia Poor Taking over Houses to Fight City Decay,” New York Times, June 12, 1977; and Kia Gregory and Mike Newell, “Brother from Another Planet,” PhiladelphiaWEEKLY.com, July 2, 2003. 92. On Lucien Blackwell’s career, see “1,000 Black Join Boycott at the Gallery”; Philadelphia Inquirer, October 3, 1987, and November 24, 1991; Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 233-34; and Goode, In Goode Faith, 210, 281-82, 304. On Chaka Fattah’s career, see Philadelphia Inquirer, January 27, 1988; and Goode, In Goode Faith, 278. Ironically, Blackwell and Fattah would face each other in two different campaigns for William Gray’s seat in the U.S. Congress. Following Gray’s 1991 retirement from Congress, Blackwell defeated Fattah in both the special election to complete Gray’s term and the simultaneously held Democratic primary for the following term. Two years later, however, Fattah ousted Blackwell from the seat. Fattah is currently in his fifth term as the representative for Philadelphia’s Second Congressional District. On the Fattah-Blackwell races, see “Fattah to Face $1M Libel Lawsuit: Legal Wrangling Beginning to Overshadow the Issues,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 25, 1994; and Philadelphia Inquirer, September 12, 1994. Sister Falaka Fattah is best known as the founder and director of House of Umoja, an antigang and youth development program in West Philadelphia. See D. Fattah, “The House of Umoja as a Case Study for Social Change,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 494 (1987): 37-41. 93. “Brothers Picket and Protest Way to Power,” New York Times, January 1, 1980; and “Riots Predicted in Welfare List Purge,” The Bulletin, June 5, 1980. After serving on the Philadelphia City Council for twenty years, John Street was elected mayor of Philadelphia in 1999. Gregory and Newell, “Brother from Another Planet.” 94. Philadelphia Inquirer, January 11, 1984; and Gregory and Newell, “Brother from Another Planet.” On Street’s claims that his caucus switch enabled him to better deliver public resources to his constituents, see Philadelphia Inquirer, March 20 and April 6, 1984.

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95. “Party-Crossing Talk Raises the Ire of Rep. Richardson,” The Bulletin, March 9, 1981; Philadelphia Inquirer, April 6, 1984; and Philadelphia Daily News, May 20, 1996. On “Thornfare,” see “Riots Predicted in Welfare List Purge.” 96. On Jones’s career with the Philadelphia Welfare Rights Organization, see Philadelphia Tribune, July 13 and 20, 1968; “Leader of Welfare Sit-In Calls Herself Nonviolent,” The Bulletin, November 17, 1968; Lou Antosh, “Fighting to Liberate the Fountain of Welfare,” Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine,May 16, 1971; “111 Phila. Delegates to Join in WRO Conference,” The Bulletin, July 21, 1971; and Felicia A. Kornbluh, “To Fulfill Their ‘Rightly Needs’: Consumerism and the National Welfare Rights Movement,” Radical History Review 69 (Fall 1997): 76-113. On PCIA’s campaign against welfare cuts, see “Riots Predicted in Welfare List Purge”; and Washington, “Other Sheep I Have,” 83-84. 97. “Activist to Oppose Sen. Street: Welfare Activist Backed by Party,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 11, 1984; Philadelphia Inquirer, April 6, 1984; and Watson, Colored, Negro, Black, 141. On Goode’s support for Jones’s candidacy, see Philadelphia Inquirer, March 20, 1984. 98. Philadelphia Daily News, January 6 and April 6, 1984; “Street to Jones: Let the Voters Decide,” Philadelphia Daily News, March 23, 1984; Philadelphia Inquirer, January 11, 1984, “Donnybrook: Jones and Street Act like Politicians,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 23, 1984; and “Two Street Wars Steal the Spotlight,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 2, 1984. 99. Throughout her tenure in Harrisburg, Jones was also a vociferous critic of the state job training and placement programs for welfare recipients. The state’s programs, she argued, placed too much emphasis on placing recipients in low-skilled, low-paying jobs over providing the education and training people needed to get out of poverty. Philadelphia Inquirer, April 11 and 12, 1984, January 2, 1985, June 25, 1985, March 15, 1988, April 18, 1992, June 22, 1993, and January 24, 1996; Philadelphia Daily News, August 21, 1986, June 9, 1994, March 19, and May 20, 21, and 28, 1996; and “Roxanne Jones: A Fighter Mourned,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 21, 1996. 100. “Washington Prepares for Marchers,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 25, 1995; “Funeral Services Set for State Rep. David Richardson,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 22, 1995; funeral program for David P. Richardson Jr., August 24, 1995, in author’s possession; “He’s Gone but David Richardson Will Not Be Forgotten,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 25, 1995; and “Richardson’s Spirit Was Evident at the March,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 23, 1996. 101. “Roxanne Jones: A Fighter Mourned,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 21, 1996; Philadelphia Inquirer, May 20, 22, and 23, 1996; and Philadelphia Daily News, March 19, 1996, and May 20, 28, and 31, 1996. On the welfare reform debate, see Alejandra Marchevsky and Jeanne Theoharis, “Welfare Reform, Globalization, and the Racialization of Entitlement,” American Studies 41, nos. 2/3 (Summer 2000): 235. 102. For a discussion of the opportunities and constraints inherent in urban government in the 1970s, see Reed, Stirrings in the Jug, 79-116, 163-177. On growth liberalism, see John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 50-98; and John Mollenkopf, The Contested City (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983). For a discussion of these issues in Philadelphia, see Adams et al., Philadelphia, 124-53. 103. On the role of federal aid in the Rizzo administration’s economic policies, see Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 154. On the municipal workers’ contract, see Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 184; and Buzz Bissinger, A Prayer for the City (New York: Vintage, 1997), 106-7. 104. Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 147-63, 180-87. On Rizzo’s mayoralty, see “For Mayor Frank Rizzo, One Issue Has Been Enough,” New York Times, August 19, 1979. 105. Watson, Colored, Negro, Black, 138; interview with Charles Bowser, March 10, 1994; New York Times, September 29, 1975; “Black Political Power in Phila. Has Come Far in a Generation,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 16, 1998; “In for the ‘Long Haul’”; and Charles Bowser, “White Sr., Led Attack on Plantation Politics,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 21, 1999. For the results of the 1975 mayoral election, see “The Art of War: Quaker City Style,” http://www.Cmte70.html. 106. “Blacks Say ‘No’ to Gaudiosi or Green for Mayor,” The Bulletin, January 8, 1979; and Claude Lewis, “A ‘Vague’ Political Pledge,” The Bulletin, January 10, 1979. To win the convention’s endorsement, Bowser pledged to “support the right of the black community to control its own areas and institutions,” as well as a “human rights” platform that included specific demands on issues like housing, education, youth and seniors, and health policy. 107. “The Philadelphia Primary: Is Rizzo Right?” New York Times, May 14, 1979; Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 223-33; and Bruce Ransom, “Black Independent Politics in Philadelphia and the Election of Mayor W. Wilson Goode” in Preston et al., 256-89. According to S. A. Paolantonio, Bowser’s candidacy

Downloaded from juh.sagepub.com at Harvard Libraries on March 22, 2011 Countryman / BLACK INDEPENDENT POLITICS IN PHILADELPHIA 861 was also hurt by tensions between the candidate and current Congressman Bill Gray, who, despite his public endorsement of Bowser, quietly encouraged his supporters to back Green. Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 232-33. 108. “Bowser Accused of Stealing Show,” The Bulletin, July 15, 1979. Tucker had served as secretary of state under liberal Democratic Governor Milton Shapp and as Bowser’s campaign manager in the 1979 primary. Green’s announcement was in part in response to Republican candidate David Marston, who had already pledged to appoint a black managing director. Goode, In Goode Faith, 142. 109. “Bowser Accused of Stealing Show”; and Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 233-34. 110. The Green campaign leaked Goode’s name to the Philadelphia media as the likely managing director before the election, but his appointment was not officially announced until after the election. Goode, In Goode Faith, 121-59; Watson, Colored, Negro, Black, 143-46; and “In for the ‘Long Haul.’” On Goode’s tenure as managing director, see Goode, In Goode Faith, 167-75; and Ransom, 262-65. 111. “Election of Black Mayor in Philadelphia Reflects a Decade of Change,” New York Times, November 10. 1983; Goode, In Goode Faith, 167-87; Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 266-86, and Ransom, 265-78. Population data are from U.S. Bureau of the Census, City and County Data Book (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1983). On the Goode campaign’s movement ethos, see quotes from campaign staff members in Ransom, 265-66. 112. Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo, 312-13. On the impact of cuts in federal urban spending during the 1980s, see Williams, “Black Political Progress in the 1980s,” 129-31; and Hanes Walton Jr. and Marion E. Orr, “African American Mayors and National Urban Policy,” in Hanes Walton Jr., ed., African American Power and Politics: The Political Context Variable (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 341-51. 113. For Wilson Goode’s discussion of the MOVE crisis, see Goode, In Goode Faith, 160-65, 207-51. Rev. Paul Washington and Charles Bowser have both described the difficult relations between MOVE and its West Philadelphia neighbors as well as between MOVE and other black activists in the city. See Washington, “Other Sheep I Have,” 183; and Charles W. Bowser, Let the Bunker Burn: The Final Battle with MOVE (Philadelphia: Camino, 1989), 94-95. Bowser and Washington were both members of the Philadelphia Special Investigations Committee (PSIC) appointed by Mayor Goode to investigate the MOVE bombing. The PSIC’s final report described the mayor’s hands-off approach to the police operation as “grossly negligent” and an “abdication of his authority.” No government official was ever charged with criminal wrongdoing in the MOVE bombing. On issues of moral and legal culpability for the MOVE disaster, Bowser’s recounting of the PSIC’s deliberations is instructive; see Bowser, Let the Bunker Burn, 158-75. 114. For discussions of the urban politics of space, see Robert Self, “‘To Plan Our Liberation’: Black Power and the Politics of Place in Oakland, California, 1965-1977,” Journal of Urban History 26, no. 6 (September 2000): 759-92; and Logan and Molotch, Urban Fortunes.

Matthew J. Countryman is an associate professor of history and American culture at the University of Michigan. A third-generation Philadelphian, he is the author of Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).

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