Through American Bandstand and postwar Philadelphia, this book has brought together topics that, while closely related, are typically dealt with separately in urban history, civil rights history, media studies, and youth history. My analysis of the tensions around American Bandstand’s West Philadelphia studio builds on the work of historians like Robert Self, David Freund, and Eric Avila who have examined the political, economic, and sociospatial transformations of postwar metropolitan areas.5 Like the work of historians Thomas Sugrue, Jeanne Theoharis, Komozi Woodard, and Martha Biondi, my book also makes it clear that de facto segregation and civil rights activism flourished in the urban North.6 At the same time, as a history of urban popular culture, this project builds on the work of media scholars like Lynn Spigel, Anna McCarthy, Steven Classen, Mark Williams, and Victoria Johnson who have explored the spatial relationships engendered by television in postwar cities, suburbs, and rural areas.7 My analysis of the history of American Bandstand and struggles over school segregation in postwar Philadelphia is also coupled with a concern for the popular presentations of this history. Building on the work of George Lipsitz, Mimi White, Jennifer Fuller, and Herman Gray, my book examines the parameters and implications of television’s engagements with race, history, and popular memory.8 I build on the work of these historians and media scholars to offer a new perspective on the history of youth culture that contributes to work by Kelly Schrum, Susan Douglas, Aniko Bodroghkozy, and Matt Garcia.9
The importance of this interdisciplinary approach is that it brings together themes of postwar history that are usually examined discretely, including the emergence of youth culture, the development of television as a local and national medium, the growth of rock and roll as a dominant musical genre, white resistance to school and residential desegregation in the North, the grassroots activism that made each of the former battlegrounds over civil rights and racial equality, and the ongoing struggle over how these important themes in postwar history are remembered. These key strands of postwar history were lived simultaneously and need to be studied simultaneously. This book has synthesized these themes through American Bandstand because the teenagers who danced on, watched, or protested American Bandstand did so not just as media consumers, but also as students and citizens who experienced struggles over racial segregation in schools and neighborhoods.
By examining American Bandstand in the context of postwar Philadelphia, this book also contributes to the excellent histories of the city by Matthew Countryman, Lisa Levenstein, James Wolfinger, and Guian McKee.10 When I started this project, Philadelphia had received relatively less attention than other major cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, but thankfully scholars have started to fill in this gap. Matthew Countryman has shown Philadelphia’s importance to the postwar history of civil rights and to the development of black power politics. Countryman’s work makes it clear that de facto segregation was entrenched in northern cities like Philadelphia, and I build on this work by exploring how white mobilization for segregated housing and the development of television programming that accommodated these sentiments shaped how people saw the city in racialized ways. Lisa Levenstein demonstrates how working-class black women played leading roles in grassroots activism. While different from the public institutions that Levenstein highlights, Bandstand was an important part of the everyday youth culture of which young black women were a part. Among the black teenagers who protested their exclusion from Bandstand, young working-class women from William Penn High School were the first to ask the city’s Commission on Human Relations to address the show’s discrimination, and after the show debuted nationally as American Bandstand, young black women continued to push for equal access to the program. My analysis of white homeowners’ groups builds on James Wolfinger’s detailed study of everyday fights over work and housing and contributes a new perspective on how these efforts to defend white privilege resonated via television across neighborhood, city, and regional levels. Finally, Guian McKee shows that Philadelphia city leaders recognized the problem of deindustrialization earlier than most and developed regional responses to counteract these declines. The “WFIL–adelphia” marketing campaign, developed by Walter Annenberg’s Triangle Publications to appeal to advertisers, shows that media corporations also had a stake in, and profited from, this regional growth.
Everybody knows about American Bandstand, but this awareness means little if it is not connected to the local and national contexts that made the show important, influential, and controversial. American Bandstand brought teenagers together every day in the 1950s and early 1960s at an unprecedented national level. Several black musicians profited from exposure on television and surely broadened the outlooks of many viewers regarding race relations. To call American Bandstand a force for social good, however, obscures the ways the show reinforced, rather than challenged, segregationist attitudes locally and nationally. American Bandstand’s producers made choices with regard to the show’s segregation and racial representations that, while not unique in their historical context, fell far short of the social good for which the city’s civil rights advocates fought. Everybody knows about American Bandstand. My hope is that this book will connect this awareness to the historical, and still unfinished, struggles for racial equality in which American Bandstand was a highly visible site.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. Fred Bronson, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand 50th Anniversary (New York: Time Life, 2007), 9.
2. This quotation is included in the two American Bandstand popular histories coauthored by Dick Clark and Fred Bronson; see Dick Clark and Fred Bronson, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand (New York: Collins Publishers, 1997), 19; Bronson, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand 50th Anniversary, 9.
3. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91 (March 2005): 1235.
4. Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 267.
CHAPTER 1
1. The Official 1955 Bandstand Yearbook [no publication information listed], 13.
2. Margaret Weir, “Urban Poverty and Defensive Localism,” Dissent, Summer 1994, 337–42; Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 210. On the fights over open housing in other cities, see Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 159–70; Becky Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920–1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); David Freund, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Arnold Hirsch, “Massive Resistance in the Urban North: Trumbull Park, Chicago, 1953–1966,” Journal of American History, 82 (September, 1995), 522–50.
3. Freund, Colored Property, 13.
4. Charles Abrams, Forbidden Neighbors: A Study of Prejudice in Housing (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1955), ix.
5. Anna McCarthy, Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 16.
6. “WFIL, WFIL–TV Now Operating From Integrated New Quarters,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 13, 1952.
7. Commission on Human Relations (CHR), “Philadelphia’s Negro Population: Facts on Housing,” October 1953, CHR collection, box A-620, folder 148.4, Philadelphia City Archives (PCA).
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. CHR, “Philadelphia’s Non-White Population 1960, Report no.1, Demographic Data,” box A-621, folder 148.4, PCA.
11. Davis McAllister, “Between the Suburbs and the Ghetto: Racial and Economic Change in Philadelphia, 1933–1985” (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 2006), 151. Original quotation in Clarence Cave, “Equal Housing Opportunity: Real Estate Dilemma,” Realtor 41 (May 1960): 4.
12.
Abrams, Forbidden Neighbors, 171.
13. CHR, “Philadelphia’s Negro Population: Facts on Housing.”
14. CHR, “A Report on the Housing of Negro Philadelphians,” 1953, CHR collection, box A-620, folder 148.4, PCA; ibid.
15. Beryl Satter, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate and the Exploitation of Black Urban America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009), 6.
16. CHR, “Annual Report, 1953,” 1953, CHR collection, box A-620, folder 148.4, PCA; Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 58.
17. On the CHR’s response to employment discrimination cases, see Countryman, Up South, 58–68.
18. Ibid., 92–95.
19. On white homeowners’ groups, see Hirsch, “Massive Resistance in the Urban North,” 522–50; Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 210–29; Abrams, Forbidden Neighbors, 181–90; Herman Long and Charles Johnson, People vs. Property? Race Restrictive Covenants in Housing (Nashville: Fisk University Press, 1947), 39–55; 73–85.
20. Luigi Laurenti, Property Values and Race: Studies in Seven Cities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), 184.
21. Angora Civic Association (ACA), “To Residents of This Section of West Phila.,” March 1955, Fellowship Commission (FC) collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 34, Temple University Urban Archives (TUUA).
22. ACA, “Do you like your home?” November 18, 1954, FC collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 34, TUUA.
23. ACA, “Help!! Help!!” May 19, 1955, FC collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 34, TUUA.
24. West Philadelphia Fellowship Commission, “Angora Civic Association Meeting,” May 19, 1955, FC collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 34, TUUA.
25. Mary Constantine, “Memo re: Angora Civic Association,” [n.d., ca. 1954], FC collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 34, TUUA.
26. Ibid.
27. Angora Civic Association, “Help!! Help!!”
28. James Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided: Race and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 170–71.
29. Ibid., 188.
30. West Philadelphia Fellowship Commission, “Angora Civic Association,” November 18, 1954, Acc 626, box 61, folder 34, TUUA.
31. Freund, Colored Property, 337.
32. Daniel Martinez HoSang, Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 20–21.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. On the practices of blockbusting real estate agents, see Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 194–97.
36. “Go West Young Man,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 9, 1952; “Race Realty” and “West Phila. Specials,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 5, 1952.
37. Historians of blockbusting note that brokers who accelerated racial change were cast as scapegoats of the “legitimate” real estate industry, but they could not have functioned without the industry’s commitment to maintaining segregated housing markets. On blockbusting, see W. Edward Orser, Blockbusting in Baltimore: The Edmondson Village Story (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1994); Kevin Fox Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900–2000 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 91–119; Satter, Family Properties, 111–16.
38. “Let’s All Pull Together,” November 8, 1954, FC collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 37, TUUA. On the Fellowship Commission and CHR’s attempts to reach out to the homeowners’ groups, see Dennis Clark, memo to Maurice Fagan, December 16, 1954, FC collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 37, TUUA; Anna McGarry, letter to Mary Constantine, November 30, 1954, FC collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 37, TUUA; Rev. Donald Ottinger, letter to Arthur Cooper, November 1, 1954, FC collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 37, TUUA.
39. Fellowship Commission, Committee on Community Tensions meeting minutes, January 12, 1955, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Philadelphia branch (NAACP) collection, URB 6, box 4, folder 104, TUUA; Maurice Fagan, letter to Nicholas Petrella, February 2, 1955, FC collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 37, TUUA.
40. On this effort, see CHR, “What to Do Kits: A Program for Leaders in Changing Neighborhoods,” 1958, CHR collection, Box A-620, folder 148.4, PCA. On the CHR’s failed neighborhood stabilization plan, see Countryman, Up South, 71–75.
41. Fellowship Commission, Report to the Community, October 1952, FC collection, Acc 626, box 53, folder 9, TUUA; Fellowship Commission, Report to the Community, May 1953, FC collection, Acc 626, box 53, folder 10, TUUA.
42. “Tensions Committee Notes Rise in Biased Groups,” Fellowship Commission, Report to the Community, January 1955, FC collection, Acc 626, box 53, folder 12, TUUA.
43. Fellowship Commission, Report to the Community, February 1955, FC collection, Acc 626, box 53, folder 12, TUUA.
44. Countryman, Up South, 92–95.
45. Satter, Family Properties, 136–41.
46. Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 7.
47. Thomas Edsall and Mary Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), 139.
48. Self, American Babylon, 168.
49. Phil Ethington, “Segregated Diversity: Race-Ethnicity, Space, and Political Fragmentation in Los Angeles County, 1940–1994,” Final Report to the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation (September 13, 2000), 43.
50. Oliver Williams et al., Suburban Differences and Metropolitan Policies: A Philadelphia Story (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965), 217–19. Survey cited in Michael Danielson, The Politics of Exclusion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 28; and Sheryll Cashin, The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 265.
51. Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 99.
52. George Lipstiz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 27–33; Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 186–216.
53. Quadagno, The Color of Welfare, 98.
54. Educational Equality League, “Notes on the Meeting with the Board of Education,” October 26, 1951, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 6, folder 137, TUUA.
55. West Philadelphia High School Record, June 1951, West Philadelphia High School.
56. “Angry Parents Resent Remarks by Principal,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 23, 1951.
57. Walter Palmer, interviewed by author, June 29, 2007.
58. Weldon McDougal, interviewed by author, March 27, 2006.
59. West Philadelphia High School Record, 1954–60 editions, West Philadelphia High School.
60. “Investigation of Skating Rink: Interim Report,” 1952, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 20, folder 383, TUUA; Spence Coxe, letter to Joseph Barnes, December 12, 1952, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 20, folder 383, TUUA.
61. CHR, “Recommendation for Closing Case: Concord Skating Rink,” January 11, 1955, CHR collection, Box A-2860, folder 148.2 “Minutes 1953–1957,” PCA.
62. Commission of Human Relations, Meeting Minutes, September 21, 1953, CHR collection, Box A-2860, folder 148.2 “Minutes 1953–1957,” PCA.
63. “NAACP Radio Report on WCAM,” September 27, 1953, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 21, folder 421, TUUA; West Philadelphia Fellowship Council, Minutes, October 27, 1953, FC collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 36, TUUA; CHR, “Minutes of Meeting on Skating Rink Project,” March 30, 1954, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 21, folder 421, TUUA.
64. CHR, “Minutes of Meeting on Skating Rink Project,” March 30, 1954, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 20, folder 383, TUUA.
65. CHR, “Recommendation for Closing Case: Crystal Palace Roller Skating Rink,” January
19, 1955, CHR collection, Box A-2860, folder 148.2 “Minutes 1953–1957,” PCA; “Recommendation for Closing Case: Concord Skating Rink”; CHR, Annual Report, 1954, CHR collection, Box A-620, folder 148.1, PCA.
66. Mitzi Jacoby, letter to Mabel Queens, January 20, 1955, Fellowship House (FH) collection, Acc 723, box 14, folder “Mitzi Jacoby correspondence 1955 #2,” TUUA; Mitzi Jacoby, letter to Milo Manly, July 21, 1955, FH collection, Acc 723, box 14, folder “Mitzi Jacoby correspondence 1955 #2,” TUUA; Mitzi Jacoby, letter to Ira D. Reid, March 24, 1958, FH collection, Acc 723, box 14, folder “Mitzi Jacoby correspondence 1958–9,” TUUA.
67. “You Have a Stake in Delaware, Valley, U.S.A.,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 12, 1952. On nineteenth-century boosterism, see Williams Cronin, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991).
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