Nicest Kids in Town

by Delmont, Matthew F.

  The respective efforts of WFIL and the white homeowners associations to maintain segregated spaces constituted overlapping and reinforcing versions of “defensive localism,” a term used by sociologist Margaret Weir and historian Thomas Sugrue to describe the way homeowners associations emphasized their right to protect their property values and the racial identity of their neighborhoods.2 As historian David Freund has shown, white homeowners in the postwar era expressed a deeply held belief that black people posed a threat to white property values. This way of viewing race was significant, Freund argues, “because it allowed whites to address their racial preoccupations by talking about property instead of people.”3 In Forbidden Neighbors, his 1955 study of racial bias in housing, Charles Abrams noted the pervasiveness of this link between race and property values:

  Homeowners, home-builders, and mortgage-lenders seemed convinced that people should live only with their own kind, that the presence of a single minority family destroys property values and undermines social prestige and status. National and local real estate organizations were accepting these assumptions as gospel, as were popular magazines, college texts, and technical journals.4

  As Abrams notes, the federal government and private mortgage lenders directed housing loans to maintain segregated housing markets. At the neighborhood level, white homeowners associations used covenants and violence to protect what they viewed as their right to live in racially homogenous neighborhoods. The term defensive localism is useful to understanding white mobilization for segregation because it links the monetization and racialization of space. As in other northern cities, anti-integration forces in Philadelphia seldom used explicitly racist language to defend their position. Rather, racial integration was rejected as a threat to property values. This logic applied not just to homeowners, but also to the television stations and advertisers that sought to reach them. Figured in this way, the pursuit of profit, in this case through home equity or advertising revenue, could be used as a defense of racial prejudice and de facto segregation. Indeed, while homeowners associations fought to protect their home investments by keeping their neighborhoods exclusively white, WFIL fought to protect the commercial prospects of the fledgling Bandstand by making the show’s representations of Philadelphia teenagers “safe” for television viewers in WFIL–adelphia.

  WFIL’s description of its four-state broadcast area as WFIL–adelphia points to the fact that postwar television was both urban and regional, that it was both a physical site of production and a network of viewers and advertisers responding to televisual images. Media studies scholar Anna McCarthy describes this as television’s capacity to be both “site-specific” and “space-binding.”5 These qualities were in tension for WFIL. The everyday actions in Philadelphia and the images broadcast across WFIL–adelphia influenced each other in important ways. The station and its advertisers wanted access to the population, spending power, and creative potential of the nation’s third largest market without any of the perceived problems of broadcasting from an urban area with a racially diverse population. With Bandstand, WFIL resolved this tension by drawing on Philadelphia’s interracial music scene to create an entertaining and profitable television show, while refusing to allow the city’s black teenagers into the studio audience for fear of alienating viewers and advertisers. Like the white homeowners associations’ concerns about property values, WFIL’s version of defensive localism built on a belief that integration would hurt the station’s investment in Bandstand. When WFIL’s Bandstand broadcast images of white teens on a daily basis, it disseminated the anti-integrationist views held by homeowners associations across a large regional broadcasting area. This broad view of defensive localism, stretching from the local homeowners associations around WFIL’s West Philadelphia studio to the station’s racially exclusive admissions policies on Bandstand, illustrates how housing and television formed overlapping and reinforcing sites of struggle over segregation and how the everyday material reality of race in Philadelphia intersected with media representations of race in WFIL–adelphia.

  HOUSING FIGHTS IN WEST PHILADELPHIA

  WFIL opened its West Philadelphia studio at 46th and Market Street just before Bandstand debuted in 1952. The studio housed all of the station’s radio and television operations and sat next to the Market Street elevated train that connected West Philadelphia with center city to the east and Upper Darby to the west.6 While Market Street featured primarily storefronts, the area surrounding Bandstand’s West Philadelphia studio included a mix of residential housing, including two- and three-story row homes, three-story Victorian semidetached “twin homes,” low-rise apartment complexes, and a smaller number of detached single-family homes. Although the area was less densely populated than South Philadelphia and North Philadelphia in the early 1900s, West Philadelphia experienced a period of rapid urbanization from 1910 through 1940; by World War II, the area housed almost 20 percent of the city’s total population.7 The racial demographics of the city, and especially the area around WFIL’s West Philadelphia studio, were changing rapidly when Bandstand debuted.

  Demographic figures convey the scope of racial change in Philadelphia in this era. From 1930 to 1960, the city’s black population grew by three hundred thousand, increasing from 11.4 percent of the city’s total population to 26.4 percent. The changes were similarly dramatic in West Philadelphia. The black population expanded in West Philadelphia after World War I and settled primarily in the area between 32nd and 40th Streets and from University Avenue to Lancaster. This eastern section of West Philadelphia, then called the “black bottom,” expanded again in the 1940s and 1950s. Working-class blacks were drawn to the area because of strong neighborhood institutions and opportunities to rent apartments and houses denied them in other parts of the city. By the 1950s, the “black bottom” was a vibrant neighborhood of businesses and row homes, 15 to 20 percent of which were owned by black families.8 Through the 1940s and 1950s, as many white residents moved to new suburban developments in other areas, West Philadelphia’s black population continued to expand further west and north. The increase first occurred above Market Street, an area with many subdivided housing units and lower rents. Through the 1950s and 1960s, black families expanded to the west of the “black bottom” on the south side of Market Street, where homeownership opportunities were greater.9 By 1960, the black population in West Philadelphia was the second largest in the city.10

  These statistics, however, do not adequately convey the block-by-block struggle over housing. Racially discriminatory housing practices fueled the concentration of blacks in West Philadelphia and other neighborhoods. Private housing developers openly discriminated because they believed their white customers wanted segregated neighborhoods. As the former president of the Philadelphia Real Estate Board acknowledged, “most of the people when purchasing or renting homes place great value upon exclusiveness in terms of religion and ancestry, and particularly to color. These desires are in conflict with the basic concept of the open market.”11 Fair-housing advocate Charles Abrams also noted that builders could accommodate white home buyers’ racial prejudice without raising the price of the home. “Unlike the tiled bathroom, venetian blinds, and television outlets,” Abrams noted, “the promise of racial exclusiveness cost the builder nothing.”12

  These real estate practices severely limited the housing options for black Philadelphians. A 1953 Commission on Human Relations study of new private housing in the Philadelphia metropolitan area found that only 1,044 of more than 140,000 recently constructed units (less than 1 percent) were available to blacks.13 From 1946 to 1953, only forty-five new homes were offered for sale to blacks. With their options limited by racially restrictive covenants and mortgage redlining, the other twenty thousand black families who became homeowners in this period bought secondhand houses at higher financing charges.14 Historian Beryl Satter has shown how speculators profited by selling houses to African American on exploitative terms. “The reason for the decline of so many bla
ck urban neighborhoods into slums was not the absence of resources,” Satter argues, “but rather the riches that could be drawn from the seemingly poor vein of aged and decrepit housing and hard-pressed but hardworking and ambitious African Americans.”15

  This widespread housing discrimination posed a challenge for the city’s Commission on Human Relations (CHR). The city’s voters passed a city charter in 1951 that established the CHR to administer antidiscrimination provisions in employment and public accommodations. The CHR’s first annual report declared that, with support from the city’s administration, the CHR’s “substantial powers of investigation,” and “strong community backing mobilized by the Fellowship Commission,” the city had assembled the tools for an “effective attack on racial and religious prejudice and discrimination and for building rich and wholesome relationships among the racial, religious and nationality groups that make up America.”16 The creation of the CHR encouraged many Philadelphians to see their city as a leader in racial equality. At the same time, however, the CHR lacked the power to address housing or educational discrimination, and its case-by-case approach to employment discrimination was overwhelmed by the number of complaints received.17 For its part, the Fellowship Commission, the city’s leading civil rights coalition, prioritized fair employment legislation over fair-housing legislation before eventually lobbying the state to enact a narrowly tailored housing bill (excluding private sales of owner-occupied houses) in 1961.18 Without fair-housing legislation, black residents in West Philadelphia and other neighborhoods continued to face a restricted housing market throughout the 1950s.

  TABLE 1 PHILADELPHIA POPULATION BY RACE, 1930–1960

  SOURCE: U.S. Census.

  TABLE 2 PHILADELPHIA POPULATION BY RACE AND NEIGHBORHOOD, 1960

  SOURCE: Commission on Human Relations, “Philadelphia’s Non-White Population 1960, Report no.i, Demographic Data,” CHR collection, box A-621, folder 148.4, PCA.

  In addition to restrictive housing covenants, white homeowners organized in neighborhoods across the city in order to block what they viewed as the encroachment of black families in all-white neighborhoods. These groups emphasized their right to protect their property values and the racial identity of their neighborhoods. In West Philadelphia, the Angora Civic Association (ACA) sought to prevent black families from moving into the Angora-Sherwood sections of West Philadelphia, along Baltimore Avenue from 50th to 60th streets. The ACA resembled white homeowners’ groups that mobilized to maintain segregated neighborhoods in Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and elsewhere across the country.19 These groups used a range of tactics to achieve their aims, including mob violence and physical and mental harassment. While the homeowners’ groups were a nationwide phenomenon, the Angora Civic Association is noteworthy because of its proximity to the WFIL studio and because the group’s founding coincided with Bandstand’s debut.

  FIGURE 1. Philadelphia, “The Exemplary City of Human Relations,” turns up its nose at Detroit, “The Cauldron of Race Hatred.” This 1952 editorial cartoon questioning the appointment of Detroit’s George Schermer to head Philadelphia’s Commission on Human Relations captured the feeling that Philadelphia was a leading city in antidiscrimination laws and programs. December 30, 1952. Jerry Doyle / Philadelphia Daily News.

  Starting in 1952, the ACA distributed fliers and held meetings encouraging its neighbors to exercise their rights as homeowners. A contemporary study of the racial change in this West Philadelphia neighborhood noted: “The entry of nonwhites appears to have come as a heavy shock to white residents, and a severe panic existed through 1954.”20 Indeed, the language in the association’s meetings and fliers stressed the white homeowners’ anxiety at the prospect of a racially changing neighborhood. One meeting notice invited residents in this section of West Philadelphia

  [t]o discuss some very serious problems which are confronting your neighborhood NOW. One of these problems may be right in your block, or even as close as next door. At any rate one of them cannot be very far away. One thing we can assure you of is that they are not mythical or imaginary, but very real, and will require very real concentrated and realistic attention if you want your neighborhood to remain as it now is.21

  Another flier asked: “Do you like your home and neighborhood? Then why not protect them?”22 Aware that members of the CHR and Fellowship Commission covertly attended their meetings, the homeowners’ groups avoided racist epithets in favor of thinly veiled references to neighborhood “problems” and “undesirable” neighbors. In the ACA’s view, keeping black families from buying houses in the neighborhood would protect both the racial identity of the neighborhood and the property values of the homes. Since homeownership represented a significant financial investment in this working-class and middle-class area, fears of blockbusting and panic selling fueled the ACA’s economic anxiety. A meeting announcement warned: “If you are ready and willing to throw away thousands of $$$ for what you now have and own, then throw this notice away and don’t read any further.”23 The ACA regularly drew between fifty and three hundred people to its monthly sessions, and as many as seven hundred attended its most popular meetings.24 Although the historical evidence does not allow a close analysis of the association’s membership, meeting records include names such as Petrella, DeRosa, Callahan, Vandergrift, Craig, Stahl, and Rabinowitz, suggesting that individuals from several white ethnic groups participated.25

  At its best-attended meetings, the ACA invited leaders of similar white homeowners’ groups from other parts of the city to share tactical ideas and offer support. The leader of the eleven-year-old Overbrook Improvement Co., for example, told the ACA of his group’s success in keeping blacks out of the Overbrook neighborhood in the northwest section of West Philadelphia. The Overbrook group president, Harold Stott, recommended “putting pressure on real estate men, banks and mortgage companies,” and he advised the ACA to raise money to buy houses in the neighborhood so that they could be resold to whites rather than blacks. While these homeowners’ groups did not openly advocate violence, they suggested that white residents should try “psychological methods.” These methods included repeated visits by white neighbors asking the “undesirable” family to move, vandalism of property, and threats of violence to dissuade black families from moving into the neighborhood and to convince those who did manage to buy houses to sell their homes to the corporation and move out.26

  Throughout these meetings, the ACA, Overbrook association, and other groups stressed both the urgency and the legality of their cause. “Help!! Help!!” proclaimed one meeting notice. “These are words we hear every day from the Property Owners of our Community. Our Association can render you this help If You Want It!” This notice ended with an ominous evaluation: “IT’S LATER THAN YOU THINK!”27 This language resonated with similar appeals to antiblack prejudice in Philadelphia during and after World War II. Historian James Wolfinger has shown that Republican campaign brochures that circulated in Irish and Italian sections of West Philadelphia during 1944 used similar language to warn residents that “black domination” threatened their city. “Will you stand by and see our homes, schools and our entire neighborhood taken away from you and your children by a race stimulated by RUM— JAZZ—WAR EASY MONEY?” the pamphlet read. “Vote a straight Republican Ballot next Tuesday and save your salvation.”28 Additionally, fliers linked to a resurgent Ku Klux Klan in Philadelphia in the early 1950s urged white men to join forces for “the protection of homes and loved ones.”29 Despite appealing to racist sentiments, the white homeowners’ groups defended their calls to action by asserting what they viewed to be their legal rights as truly American homeowners. The Overbrook group president told the 120 residents at the meeting that the members of the ACA “are 100% Americans. All they are asking is to keep the high standards of their own neighborhood and to pick their neighbors besides protecting their property. In doing this they are exercising their rights under the Bill of Rights a
nd there certainly is nothing un-American about that.”30 This rights rhetoric cast the homeowners’ groups as possessing an Americanness—and whiteness—threatened by black interlopers. As David Freund notes in his study of suburban Detroit, this language of property rights enabled whites to mobilize for segregation as homeowners, citizens, taxpayers, and parents while maintaining that they were not racist.31 In his study of California’s ballot initiatives, political scientist Daniel Martinez HoSang describes this rights rhetoric as central to a set of “norms, ‘settled expectations,’ and ‘investments’ [that] shape the interpretation of political interests, the boundaries of political communities, and the sources of power for many political actors who understand themselves as white.” Like the “political whiteness” HoSang identifies in postwar California, white homeowners associations fought to protect “our neighborhoods,” “our kids,” “our property values,” and “our rights,” while claiming to be innocent of racism.32

  FIGURE 2. The Angora Civic Association distributed thousands of fliers like these to recruit community members to its meetings. White homeowners’ groups and civic associations from other neighborhoods attended these meeting to show support and share tactics. November 18, 1954. Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives, Philadelphia, PA.