Jason T. Bartlett holds a Ph.D. in history from Temple University. His dissertation, “The Politics of Community Development: A History of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation,” examines the fifty-year history of the nation’s first comprehensive community development corporation.
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 unify policies, ...
In the 1960s, after leading protest campaigns to expose discriminatory hiring and open thousands of skilled jobs to African Americans, the Reverend Leon Sullivan founded the Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC), a vocational, educational, and life-skills training program to teach young men and women marketable skills. Going beyond protest to address the barriers of poverty and ...
Connecting the Past with the Present, Building Community, Creating a Legacy