Nicest Kids in Town

by Delmont, Matthew F.

  Interestingly, Bandstand’s inclusion of black R&B music increased at the same time that the show limited the admission of black teenagers. The R&B breakthrough on Bandstand came in the summer of 1954 with “Sh-Boom” by the Chords, a black vocal harmony group from New York. Following the common practice of radio stations at the time, Horn initially played a copy of the song by the Crew Cuts, a white group that often covered black R&B songs. The show’s regulars complained that the Crew Cuts’ song was not the real version and persuaded Horn to test the Chords’ version on the show’s rate-a-record segment. After the Chords’ record received a high rating, Horn agreed to play the original.119 The introduction of R&B and rock and roll progressed slowly on Bandstand, and R&B artists like the Chords and the Red Tops continued to share airplay with white crooners like Tony Bennett and Vic Damone. By late 1955 and 1956, though, Horn’s playlist influenced, and was influenced by, the rise in prominence of R&B and rock and roll, and included not only white singers like Bill Haley and His Comets and Elvis Presley, but also black performers like Little Richard and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.

  FIGURE 8. Photos in the Bandstand yearbook, oral histories, and Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations files indicate that by 1955 Bandstand became a space for white teenagers. The Official 1955 Bandstand Yearbook.

  Still, by 1955 teenagers had local knowledge that Bandstand was primarily a space for white teenagers. Lee Andrews, Weldon McDougal’s friend who attended West Philadelphia’s Bartram High School with his vocal group the Hearts and also lived in one of West Philadelphia’s black neighborhoods, told historian John Jackson in a 1993 interview that there was “ ‘ always some reason black kids couldn’t get into’ the WFIL studio. It may have been because they did not have a membership card, or perhaps they did not meet the dress code, but for whatever reason, ‘everybody began to understand [that] this is a show for white people.’ ” 120 Similarly, when asked if the show was integrated, Jerry Blavat, a South Philadelphia native who was one of the show’s best dancers and became the leader of the show’s committee of regulars from 1954 to 1956, recalled: “Well, there was no integration back then. And I guess sponsor-wise … you have to understand it was white television back then in the 1950s, because dollar-wise, advertisers were not beaming into the black community.”121 Reporting on the drunk driving arrest that cost Horn his job, the Philadelphia Tribune also noted the show’s segregation: “The news of Horn’s arrest came as a distinct shock, both to the hundreds of white parents whose children have appeared on the show and to countless Negro parents, who have sought in vain to have Horn consider their children on his televised ‘Bandstand.’ ” 122 For Philadelphia teenagers, then, Bandstand as both a local dance space and as a regional television show became a site for white youth, and television viewers across WFIL–adelphia saw evidence of Bandstand’s segregation on a daily basis.

  While other scholars have called attention to the ability of music and dance in the early rock and roll era to promote intercultural exchange, the local years of Bandstand demonstrate that the show’s potential to serve as a space for changing racial attitudes was circumscribed by its regional commercial goals and discriminatory admissions practices.123 Bandstand connected many of the city’s white teenagers with music performed and influenced by black artists, but at the same time, the show became almost totally segregated by its third year as a local program. This contradiction highlights the importance of examining media within its local context. Philadelphia teens, like teenagers across the country, found meaning and value in R&B and rock and roll music, and in the presentation of music on television. They did so, however, in social spaces that often divided them on the basis of race. While Bandstand was not the only youth space that practiced racial discrimination, the impact of its discrimination was unique because the show reached a large television audience in Philadelphia and WFIL’s four-state broadcasting region. Through this WFIL–adelphia broadcast platform, Bandstand influenced the styles and attitudes of teenagers in ways that strictly neighborhood youth spaces could not. In electing to play black R&B music on television, Bandstand took a risk that was repaid handsomely as the show’s regional and national commercial influence expanded. In electing to take the segregationist side of the local fights occurring over housing, schools, and youth spaces, Bandstand obfuscated the neighborhood changes taking place outside of its studio doors.

  In disseminating this anti-integration vision, Bandstand reinforced the defensive localism practiced just blocks from the studio by white homeowners. Both WFIL and white homeowners associations justified segregation by foregrounding financial interests, and this simultaneous monetization and racialization of space provided a foundation for the maintenance of de facto segregation. Bandstand’s version of defensive localism sought to maximize advertiser revenue by shielding regional television viewers from images of young people of different races dancing and socializing. For white homeowners associations and those who sought to protect their racial privilege by moving to suburban developments that excluded blacks, property values trumped black civil rights. The actions of WFIL and the homeowners associations did not need to be coordinated to be mutually influential. Groups like the Angora Civic Association fostered hostile racial attitudes in Bandstand’s backyard. These local housing fights, combined with WFIL’s expressed commitment to give advertisers access to regional viewers in segregated suburban developments like Levittown and Fairness Hills, made it profitable for Bandstand to adopt racially discriminatory admissions policies. At the same time, Bandstand’s policies further entrenched segregation as a custom in the Philadelphia area. De facto segregation in the North was maintained through a series of everyday decisions like these, rather than strictly through a set of laws. Bandstand’s anti-integration stance was hardly unique in Philadelphia in this era, as the analysis of school segregation in chapters 3 and 4 makes clear. Within this system of de facto segregation, Bandstand conveyed an anti-integrationist perspective to a large television audience in a way that local supporters of segregation could not. In making Philadelphia safe for WFIL–adelphia, Bandstand helped to normalize the racist attitudes and policies that limited black access to housing, education, and public accommodations. As chapters 6 and 7 examine, the number of teenagers and adults who viewed Bandstand’s exclusively white image of youth increased far beyond WFIL–adelphia when American Bandstand started broadcasting nationally in 1957. Bandstand’s position on integration, however, was not a given. By looking at They Shall Be Heard, a local teenage television program produced by the Fellowship Commission, the next chapter demonstrates that Bandstand’s producers could have selected a path other than segregation.

  CHAPTER 2

  They Shall Be Heard

  Local Television as a Civil Rights Battleground

  For years, the Fellowship Commission has been anxious to get into TV regularly, feeling that it is probably the most effective medium for forming desirable attitudes.

  —Maurice Fagan, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Fellowship Commission and host of They Shall Be Heard, 1952

  They Shall Be Heard is a road not taken. While Bandstand introduced Philadelphia teenagers to new popular music, dances, and fashion styles, another local program used television to educate teenagers about intercultural issues. Produced by the Fellowship Commission, They Shall Be Heard (1952–53) gathered a group of teenagers for a weekly televised discussion about racial and religious prejudice. Unlike Bandstand, which adopted admissions policies that excluded black teenagers, They Shall Be Heard brought together students of different racial, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. As Bandstand marked television as a place restricted to white teenage consumers, They Shall Be Heard introduced its audience to ideas and discussions beyond the limited boundaries of Bandstand’s commercial entertainment.

  While Bandstand’s producers defined local television by the scope of WFIL’s consumer market, the Fellowship Commission’s vision for local television focused on the Philadelphia city
limits. As Philadelphia’s leading interracial and interreligious civil rights coalition, the Fellowship Commission worked through the late 1940s and 1950s to secure antidiscrimination laws and improve race relations in the city.1 The Commission also worked closely with the school board to implement intercultural education materials designed to introduce students to the histories of different racial and religious groups and to counter stereotypes. Maurice Fagan, the executive director of both the Fellowship Commission and the Jewish Community Relations Council, led the group’s education program (Fagan’s work on educational issues is discussed in greater detail in chapters 3 and 4). By the early 1950s, the Fellowship Commission enjoyed a close relationship with the school board, but it still lacked a connection to most neighborhoods and schools. Fagan articulated his concerns about these shortcomings in a speech to the Commission’s members. “We are still far too middle class in our contacts and program,” Fagan advised the group. “We too rarely reach either the upper or lower economic groups and neighborhoods. We are too dependent upon public relations techniques to reach the rank and file members of the groups we contact. We need to find ways to personalize and decentralize our activities.” Fagan went on to suggest a way the group could address this issue. “Radio and television stations offer us more time than we are prepared to use well,” he noted, “but we haven’t even begun to work out ways of using television for educational purposes.”2 With these community relations goals in mind, Fagan and the Fellowship Commission approached They Shall Be Heard with optimism about television’s potential to reach viewers, especially in the racially changing neighborhoods in which they lacked contacts.

  The Fellowship Commission was one of a number of public and private agencies (e.g., DuPont, the Ford Foundation, the Fund for the Republic, and the AFL-CIO) that sponsored civic-oriented programs across the country in television’s early years. These groups, media studies scholar Anna McCarthy has shown, looked to television as a tool to shape viewers’ “conduct and attitudes” toward “rational civic practice.”3 The businessmen, labor leaders, social reformers, and public intellectuals who organized these efforts held differing ideas about good citizenship, but all saw television as a strategy of governance. The shows, McCarthy notes, did not always work as intended, and the groups “often discovered a profound discrepancy between the effects they hoped to achieve and the responses of their viewers.”4 The programs, moreover, frequently addressed viewers as problems to be fixed. As media studies scholar Ien Ang has argued in the context of British broadcasting, producers of public service programs, like commercial programs, frequently view their audience from “above” or “outside” as “objectified categories of others to be controlled.” Whether addressing consumers or citizens, Ang suggests, television producers cannot stop “struggling to conquer the audience.”5 Like these efforts to shape citizenship, the Fellowship Commission looked to television for ways to engage and influence Philadelphians. The program it created, however, consciously tried to avoid the paternalistic tone common to public service programs. To address viewers as citizens without condescending to them, They Shall Be Heard deemphasized expert opinions in favor of unscripted discussions among “ordinary” teenagers. Fagan, in his role as moderator, sat off camera, encouraging viewers to focus on the young discussion participants. They Shall Be Heard’s producers sought to mitigate the power differential inherent in civic-oriented programming by respecting their audience’s ability to be active participants in a televised discussion rather than passive viewers of a televised lecture.

  Contrasting They Shall Be Heard and Bandstand illuminates the advantages enjoyed by the commercial model for teenage television. Unlike They Shall Be Heard, which relied on a voluntary goodwill agreement between a network affiliate and the school system, Bandstand could count on advertisers eager to reach potential consumers in “WFIL–adelphia.” This inequity was owing to television’s development along the advertising-supported model of radio. As noted in chapter 1, in the postwar years the FCC allocated television licenses along the narrow VHF band, with most of the licenses going to established media companies that already owned newspapers and/or radio stations. The two major networks, NBC and CBS, dominated these VHF stations, with ABC gaining affiliates over the course of the 1950s. This left little space for educational television or other noncommercial stations, and when they did develop, most were assigned to the UHF band, which viewers could not receive without special equipment. Commercial stations made only token attempts to serve the public interest, and the FCC did little to hold these stations accountable. Government decisions, therefore, facilitated the dominance of commercial television and made the survival of civic-minded discussion programs like They Shall Be Heard tenuous.

  Bandstand and They Shall Be Heard both debuted in October 1952, but their different understandings of local television led them to address their audiences in different ways and sent the shows on divergent trajectories. Bandstand addressed its audience as consumers and asked them to buy products, while They Shall Be Heard addressed its audience as citizens and asked them to reject prejudice. Bandstand succeeded and expanded because it was profitable; WFIL produced it inexpensively, and advertisers supported the show because it allowed them to reach the valuable teenage consumer demographic. They Shall Be Heard became a brief television experiment because it relied on the cooperation of television stations for airtime and because the Fellowship Commission was unable to establish a link between They Shall Be Heard’s “hearts and minds” approach to prejudice and the concurrent efforts undertaken by the Commission and other civil rights advocates to uproot structures of racial discrimination. The Fellowship Commission’s antidiscrimination message was simply a harder sell than Bandstand’s pop music and bubblegum. Although They Shall Be Heard ran for only twenty-seven episodes and reached only a fraction of the number of viewers that Bandstand did, it offers an alternative model in which television’s power to educate and challenge citizens took priority over television’s power to persuade consumers.

  GETTING THEY SHALL BE HEARD ON TELEVISION

  In their desire to explore the opportunities offered by television, Maurice Fagan and the Fellowship Commission built on earlier successes with radio broadcasts and film discussions. As did Americans All, Immigrants All, a national radio program about immigrant contributions produced by the Bureau for Intercultural Education in the 1940s, the Fellowship Commission’s Within Our Gates brought Philadelphians radio profiles of famous men and women of different racial, religious, and national backgrounds every Sunday morning from 1943 to 1952 on WFIL–radio.6 The school board recommended Within Our Gates for out-of-school study, and copies of recordings and scripts were made available to the city’s schools.7 In addition, the Fellowship Commission maintained a library of short filmstrips and feature-length films on topics related to intercultural relations. The Commission made these films available to teachers in the school system, and from 1948 to 1952 it offered bus service that transported school groups to the Fellowship building, where a Commission member led a discussion of the films.8 During 1951 alone, the Commission counted fifty-eight school classes and more than fifteen hundred students that used the free bus service to visit the library. Approximately twenty thousand people saw one of the Commission’s films or filmstrips in schools or community meetings.9

  In both title and content, They Shall Be Heard drew inspiration from They Learn What They Live (1952), a study of prejudice in children co-sponsored by the Fellowship Commission.10 Conducted from 1945 to 1948 in Philadelphia’s public schools, the study received national attention for its findings about the early age at which young people develop racial awareness and prejudice.11 The study was part of a larger movement that encouraged schools to incorporate intercultural educational materials and perspectives into the classroom.12 Fagan and the Fellowship Commission were familiar with much of this work, but they were less concerned with the academic debates over intercultural education than they were with developing strategies for
accessing and reducing prejudice in Philadelphia’s schools. The Fellowship Commission’s longheld interest in new approaches to intercultural education led it to They Shall Be Heard.

  Drawing on these experiences, in October 1952 the Fellowship Commission brought its intercultural education ideas to a larger audience with a televised discussion with junior and senior high school students. In contrast to Bandstand’s solid financial backing by WFIL and Walter Annenberg’s Triangle Publications, They Shall Be Heard aired on Philadelphia’s NBC affiliate (WCAU-TV) through a system of voluntary cooperation between the station and the city’s public, private, and parochial school systems. Under this goodwill agreement, commercial stations would donate time for community and educational programming. This cooperation worked better in Philadelphia than in any other city, with all of the city’s television stations providing time to the schools in the early 1950s. In her 1953 study of educational and community television across the county, for example, Jennie Callahan noted that Philadelphia was home to the “the largest community activity in educational television in the country.”13 The viability of They Shall Be Heard and other community and educational programs, however, depended on the willingness of commercial stations to continue providing airtime. Indeed, the cooperation that brought They Shall Be Heard to television was short-lived, and the show did not return in the fall of 1953. Although the program ran for only twenty-seven episodes, They Shall Be Heard represented the Fellowship Commission’s most ambitious and innovative intercultural educational endeavor.