Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia

Contents » African Americans

African American Migration

People of African descent have migrated to Philadelphia since the seventeenth century. First arriving in bondage, either directly from Africa or by way of the Caribbean, they soon developed a small but robust community that grew throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although African Americans faced employment discrimination, disfranchisement, and periodic race riots in the ⇒ Read More

Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens

The Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens, Threatened with Disfranchisement, to the People of Philadelphia attempted to persuade Philadelphians to vote against the ratification of a new constitution for Pennsylvania in 1838 because the word “white” had been inserted prior to “freemen” as a qualification for voting. Written by African American leader Robert Purvis (1810-98), the ⇒ Read More

Armstrong Association of Philadelphia

The Armstrong Association of Philadelphia was a social-service organization established early in the twentieth century to assess and address the needs of the African American community. Through its efforts to improve education, housing, and health, the organization addressed social and economic issues facing African Americans. Founded in 1908, the association formed as a branch of ⇒ Read More

Art of Dox Thrash

Dox Thrash (1893-1965) was an accomplished draftsman, printmaker, watercolorist, and painter, whose art reflected his experiences as an African American in Philadelphia. He became well known in the 1940s after developing the Carborundum printmaking technique at the Philadelphia Fine Print Workshop (311 Broad Street) of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. By rubbing coarse ⇒ Read More

Barbershops and Barbers

Throughout much of its modern American history, barbering has been derided as “servile” work, unfit for native-born, white citizens. As such, the profession has been dominated by marginalized groups. In the Philadelphia region, African Americans owned and operated the majority of barber shops during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Since then, waves of immigrant ⇒ Read More

Baseball: Negro Leagues

More than any other city, Philadelphia epitomized the significance of Negro League baseball in urban communities. For a remarkable eight decades, local fans consistently supported a series of black ball clubs whose successes generated racial pride and represented a triumph of African American institution-building.  In Philadelphia, the first all-black baseball teams surfaced in the 1860s. ⇒ Read More

Boxing and Boxers

For over one hundred years, Philadelphia neighborhoods, for better and worse, played a significant role in molding fighters. Over two dozen world boxing champions throughout various weight classes called Philadelphia home. Nearby communities such as Camden, New Jersey, and Easton, Pennsylvania, also produced world champions. Over time, Philadelphia-area boxing was supported by a wide network ⇒ Read More

Chester, Pennsylvania

Located 30 miles down the Delaware River from Philadelphia, the small but once industrially mighty city of Chester emerged in the latter part of the twentieth century as but a shadow of its former prominence in the county and the region. The municipality’s fortunes shifted many times over the 334 years of its existence, evolving ⇒ Read More

Christiana Riot Trial

During the 1850s, Northern abolitionism developed, Southern defense of slavery hardened, and debates over the expansion of slavery gripped the nation. When pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions met at Christiana, Pennsylvania, a mere 20 miles north of the Mason-Dixon Line, the events that followed and the subsequent trial in Philadelphia became flashpoints that deepened the sectional ⇒ Read More

Colonization Movement (Africa)

The African colonization movement, dedicated to resettling North American free blacks in West Africa, caused heated debates in Philadelphia in the early nineteenth century. Proposals to remove free blacks from North America date from the 1770s, but the heyday of African colonization occurred between 1818 and 1865. Often described as a “return to Africa,” the ⇒ Read More

Columbia Avenue Riot

On Friday, August 28, 1964, a scuffle with police at the busy intersection of Twenty-Second Street and Columbia Avenue sparked a three-day riot involving hundreds of North Philadelphians hurling bottles and bricks at police and looting stores. With the Columbia Avenue Riot, Philadelphia joined six other cities, including Jersey City, Paterson, and Elizabeth, New Jersey, ⇒ Read More

Community Development

During the community development movement, which arose in the 1960s in large part in response to years of disruption spurred by government-imposed urban renewal, Philadelphia became an important center of activism and institutions devoted to locally-based improvement programs. Community development programs sought to provide greater control over the future of neighborhoods at a time when ⇒ Read More

Doo Wop

Philadelphia was one of several key cities where, in the 1950s and early 1960s, singers created the small-group vocal harmony style of rhythm and blues known as doo wop. Doo wop was an urban style, sung on city street corners and in school hallways. Its name, derived from a type of sound singers made in ⇒ Read More

Fair Housing

Years before the United States Congress put housing discrimination law into effect with the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968, Philadelphia and its suburbs grappled with the cumulative effects of policies that severely limited African Americans’ housing options. By the mid-1960s, new laws and policy initiatives addressed the situation in the Greater Philadelphia area with ⇒ Read More

Free African Society

Headed by black founding fathers Richard Allen (1760-1831) and Absalom Jones (1746-1818), the Free African Society was founded on April 12, 1787, as a nondenominational mutual aid society and the first dedicated to serving Philadelphia’s burgeoning free black community. Members contributed one shilling per month to fund programs to support their social and economic needs. ⇒ Read More

Free Black Communities

In the nineteenth century, Philadelphia and the region surrounding it came to contain free black communities that by most measures were the most vibrant, dynamic, and influential in the United States. Free African Americans relied on each other to confront the persistent power of slavery and white supremacy in Philadelphia and the region. At the ⇒ Read More

Fugitives From Slavery

Immediately after passing the nation’s first gradual abolition law in 1780, Pennsylvania became a haven for fugitive slaves from neighboring states, putting the state at odds with slaveholders throughout the South and causing tension with Maryland in particular. Though New Jersey also attracted escaping slaves, and whites in both states had mixed reactions to the ⇒ Read More

Garies (The) and Their Friends

Published in London in 1857, Frank J. Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends is among the earliest novels written by an African American. Although it is not strictly a historical novel, The Garies reflects the deteriorating conditions of the free black community in Philadelphia during Webb’s childhood and early adulthood, in particular, the 1838 disenfranchisement ⇒ Read More

Girard College

The history of Girard College, a boarding school for children from poor families headed by single parents or guardians, reflects the history of Philadelphia and the nation.  Opened in 1848, Girard College was established under a bequest from wealthy philanthropist Stephen Girard (1750-1831), whose will specified a school for “poor white male orphans.” Girard College ⇒ Read More

Industrial Workers of the World

In the early 1900s thousands in greater Philadelphia belonged to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)—a militant, leftist labor union.  Local 8, which organized the city’s longshoremen, was the largest and most powerful IWW branch in the Mid-Atlantic and the IWW’s most racially inclusive branch.  Indeed, there might not have been a more egalitarian ⇒ Read More

Infectious Diseases and Epidemics

Despite Philadelphia’s prominence, throughout its history, as a center for medical education and care, the region has experienced numerous epidemics of infectious disease. British America’s largest city in the eighteenth century, Philadelphia suffered dreadful outbreaks of smallpox and yellow fever, while the nineteenth century brought an exotic new disease—cholera—that killed hundreds. By the early twentieth ⇒ Read More

Jazz

Jazz began to emerge as a distinct musical style around the turn of the twentieth century, a merging of two vernacular African American musical styles—ragtime and blues—with elements of popular music. New Orleans, the “cradle of jazz,” was the most important city in this process, with Chicago and New York playing particularly significant roles in ⇒ Read More

Kwanzaa

Because of its large African American population and the presence and influence of prominent Black Nationalist individuals and organizations, the Philadelphia area has been especially active in celebrating Kwanzaa, an African cultural holiday that emerged out of the Black Nationalist Movement of the 1960s. Kwanzaa emphasizes remembering and reconstructing African identity, which was forcibly erased ⇒ Read More

Liberia; Or, Mr. Peyton’s Experiments

Liberia; Or, Mr. Peyton’s Experiments (1853) is a hybrid work containing fiction, history, and biography along with transcriptions of documents on Liberia. The work argued that free blacks could not prosper in North America but had opportunities for advancement and self-determination in Liberia, a black Christian republic. The Americo-Liberian settlers would not only rise themselves ⇒ Read More

Liberians and Liberia

Greater Philadelphia has had close links to Liberia historically. Free blacks and abolitionists from the region helped colonize and underwrite the nation of Liberia’s founding in the early nineteenth century. Yet Philadelphia and Liberia had little connection between the mid-nineteenth and late twentieth century. Most Liberian settlement in the region resulted from the Liberian civil ⇒ Read More

Listen to the Mocking Bird

Written in 1855 by a Philadelphia songwriter who was inspired by the whistling of a street musician, “Listen to the Mocking Bird” was one of the most popular songs of the nineteenth century. It sold millions of copies of sheet music and was sung (and whistled) throughout the United States and parts of Europe. Philadelphia ⇒ Read More

Lynching

Lynching, the extralegal killing of a victim by individuals or a mob, notably by hanging or burning, was commonplace in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Though accounts vary, in the heyday of lynching following the Civil War, at least 3,500 incidents were recorded; more than 80 percent occurred in the ⇒ Read More

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Philadelphia has had a greater influence on Martin Luther King Jr. holiday traditions than any city other than King’s birthplace, Atlanta. Observed on the third Monday in January since 1986, the federal holiday commemorates King (1929-68) and his civil rights activism. Ceremonies at the Liberty Bell and a focus on community service are among Philadelphia’s ⇒ Read More

Model Cities

The Model Cities program was the last major urban aid initiative of the Great Society domestic agenda of President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73). The legislation called for the coordination of federal services to redevelop the nation’s poorest and least-served urban communities. In 1967, North Philadelphia was designated for renewal under this program.  Rather than serving to ⇒ Read More

Mother Bethel AME Church:
Congregation and Community

Established in the crucible of the American revolutionary era, Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is recognized as the genesis of black religious organizing spirit. The church is mother church of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, formed in 1816. Located at Sixth and Lombard Streets in Philadelphia’s Society Hill neighborhood, the church sits on the ⇒ Read More

Mount Airy (West)

For more than sixty years, West Mount Airy, nestled in the northwest corner of Philadelphia, has earned a reputation as a national model of racial integration. In the years following World War II, when many American neighborhoods were experiencing rapid racial transition, homeowners in West Mount Airy worked to understand and put into practice the ⇒ Read More

MOVE

MOVE, a controversial Philadelphia-based organization often associated with the Black Power movement, combined philosophies of black nationalism and anarcho-primitivism to advocate a return to a hunter-gatherer society and avoidance of modern medicine and technology. The group’s very loud and public quest for racial justice, as well as its strong views on animal rights, led to ⇒ Read More

Murder of Octavius Catto

A tumultuous, racially polarized Election Day in Philadelphia set the stage for the October 10, 1871, murder and martyrdom of Octavius V. Catto (b. 1839), an African American leader who struggled against segregation and discrimination in transportation, sports, politics, and society. Election Day in 1871, just one year after the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. ⇒ Read More

National Freedom Day

Created in 1942 by a Philadelphian born in slavery, the annual National Freedom Day commemoration each February 1 calls attention to the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which ended slavery, and the continuing struggle for African American justice and equality. National Freedom Day began in the early months of U.S. involvement in World ⇒ Read More

National Negro Convention Movement

During the antebellum period, when Philadelphia was home to one the North’s largest free African American communities, the city’s black leaders launched the National Negro Convention Movement to address the hostility, discrimination, exclusion, and violence against African Americans by whites in northern cities. As national forums, the National Negro Conventions held from 1830 to 1864 ⇒ Read More

New Year’s Traditions

New Year’s celebrations in the Philadelphia region have often included parties, formal wear, fireworks, and parades as part of a two-day, secular celebration from December 31 to January 1. The changing of a calendar year from one to the next has long been cause for commemoration and reflection, and the city’s diverse communities have shaped ⇒ Read More

ODUNDE Festival

The ODUNDE Festival, held in South Philadelphia each year on the second Sunday in June, celebrates the history and heritage of African people around the globe and serves to instill and encourage cultural pride. Taking its name from the word meaning “Happy New Year” in the Yoruba language (placed in all capital letters by the ⇒ Read More

Oh, Dem Golden Slippers

“Oh, Dem Golden Slippers,” the unofficial theme song of the Philadelphia Mummers Parade, is both an enduringly popular song and a revealing example of the complex, multilayered interplay between black and white music in America. Written by African American songwriter James Bland (1854–1911) as a parody of a Negro spiritual, “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers,” published ⇒ Read More

Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC)

In the 1960s, after leading protest campaigns to expose discriminatory hiring and open thousands of jobs to African Americans, the Reverend Leon Sullivan (1922-2001) founded the Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC), a vocational, educational, and life skills training program designed to prepare young men and women for full-time employment. Moving beyond protest to address the barriers ⇒ Read More

Pennsylvania Emancipation Exposition (1913)

Held in 1913 in South Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Emancipation Exposition marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation with events and exhibits celebrating African American progress. At a time when the African American population in Philadelphia was growing and gaining in political influence, the event’s organizers also experienced a backlash of criticism as they secured ⇒ Read More

Pennsylvania Hall

Pennsylvania gained a reputation as the birthplace of American abolition soon after the American Revolution, but that status caused unrest as debates over slavery grew contentious in the antebellum years. The tension led to a number of riots, one of the most notable being the 1838 destruction of Pennsylvania Hall, a meeting place for antislavery ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia Negro (The)

In 1899, the University of Pennsylvania published The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, the first scholarly race study of an urban place in what became a growing trend of Progressive-era social surveys. The massive report about Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward became a distinctive (and still relevant) landmark in the annals of sociological study and social advocacy. ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia Social History Project

The Philadelphia Social History Project (PSHP) was a large and ambitious interdisciplinary project that played a central role in transforming the study of urban and social history. From its inception in 1969 until the project’s closure in 1985, the PSHP employed dozens of research associates and computer programmers, as well as hundreds of undergraduate students, ⇒ Read More

Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC) Strike

The Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC) strike, a five-day stoppage of the city’s mass transit system during World War II, resulted from longstanding racial animosities. Preceded by years of protest and ending only after the dispatching of federal troops, the strike exposed the dangers of workplace discrimination while threatening the material output of the nation’s third-largest ⇒ Read More

Price of a Child (The)

Based on the life of Jane Johnson (c. 1814-22 to 1872) and her escape from slavery, the historical novel The Price of a Child (1995) by Philadelphia writer Lorene Cary (b. 1956) tells the tale of a freedwoman’s journey from bondage to freedom and describes the lives of freed African Americans in 1850s Philadelphia. The ⇒ Read More

Redlining

Redlining, the practice of basing access to capital and financial services on neighborhood characteristics such as race and ethnicity, had destructive effects on older, nonwhite areas of Philadelphia. Especially in areas of South, West, and Lower North Philadelphia that form a ring around downtown, banks and other lending institutions issued proportionally fewer mortgages than in ⇒ Read More

Rhythm and Blues

With its large and diverse African American population and long tradition of black popular and religious music, Philadelphia became a hotbed of the new rhythm and blues style that emerged from jazz, blues, and gospel music in the 1940s and 1950s. The term “rhythm and blues” came into general use in the late 1940s to ⇒ Read More

Rock and Roll (Early Years)

For most Americans in the mid-1950s, rock and roll seemed to come out of nowhere, a raucous new musical style that suddenly burst on the scene. In reality, rock and roll had been taking shape for decades, as uniquely American vernacular musical styles such as jazz, blues, gospel, and country music cross-pollinated. The process unfolded ⇒ Read More

Slavery and the Slave Trade

Slavery and the slave trade were central to the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Philadelphia as the region economically benefited from the institution and dealt with tensions created by slave trading, slave holding, and abolitionism. Early Philadelphia, an Atlantic trading hub, became both a focal point for the slave trade and a community of enslaved ⇒ Read More

Soul Music

A term with varied meanings in popular music, “soul” broadly describes African American music characterized by emotional urgency and racial consciousness. More specifically, a soul style of black music emerged from rhythm and blues and gospel in the late 1950s and became popular with both black and white audiences through the 1970s. Different cities had ⇒ Read More

South Street

Along its east-west course, South Street has been a space where different types of Philadelphians—white and black, poor and wealthy, parochial and urbane, straight and gay—have met and mingled. From its early days as a theater district, it evolved through various incarnations: from a locus for African American life to a center for immigrant-owned garment ⇒ Read More

South Street (Song)

“South Street,” a hit song for the Philadelphia vocal group the Orlons in 1963, celebrates an iconic Philadelphia thoroughfare and is among a select group of songs that came to define the city in popular culture in the late twentieth century. The song’s catchy opening line—“Where do all the hippies meet? South Street, South Street”—became ⇒ Read More

Sullivan Principles

The Global Sullivan Principles, launched in 1977 by Philadelphia civil rights leader Leon H. Sullivan (1922-2001), represent one of the twentieth century’s most powerful attempts to effect social justice through economic leverage. More a sustained movement than a static document, the principles sought to bring the power of American investment in South Africa to bear ⇒ Read More

TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)

In spring 1974, “TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)” became a hit song for Philadelphia International Records, the local record label renowned for its “Philly Soul” sound of the 1970s. Written by Philadelphia International’s owners and chief songwriter/producers, Kenny Gamble (b. 1943) and Leon Huff (b. 1942), and recorded in late 1973 by MFSB with the ⇒ Read More

Twist (The)

“The Twist,” an early 1960s dance hit by Philadelphia singer Chubby Checker (real name Ernest Evans, b. 1941), ushered in a new way of dancing and solidified Philadelphia’s role as a major trendsetter in popular music in this period. Released in the summer of 1960 by Philadelphia-based Cameo Parkway Records, “The Twist” reached number one ⇒ Read More

Union League of Philadelphia

The Union League of Philadelphia, organized in 1862 as a political club for the support of the Union cause during the Civil War, developed into the premier urban social club of Philadelphia. Over time, it also became an important supporter of Republican political candidates and policies locally and nationally, acquired a significant collection of art ⇒ Read More

United States Colored Troops

During the American Civil War (1861-65), Philadelphians raised eleven regiments of the United States Colored Troops (USCT). This division of the United States Army, consisting of black soldiers led by white officers, provided much-needed manpower for federal forces in the final two years of the war. When the Civil War began, many African Americans across ⇒ Read More

Vigilance Committees

As Pennsylvania and other northern states became havens for enslaved people who sought to escape bondage, free blacks and sympathetic whites organized Vigilance Associations, which operated Vigilance Committees (sometimes called Vigilant Committees) to protect fugitives and potential kidnap victims. After black abolitionist David Ruggles (1810-49) formed the first such organization in New York City in ⇒ Read More

West Philadelphia

One of the single largest sectors of the city of Philadelphia at almost fifteen square miles between the Schuylkill River to the east and Delaware County to the west, West Philadelphia at its peak, in the early twentieth century, attracted an influx of new residents to its verdant, suburban-feeling neighborhoods. But over the course of ⇒ Read More

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