Nicest Kids in Town

by Delmont, Matthew F.

  41. Helen Bradley, letter to Maurice Fagan, November 6, 1952, FC collection, box 43, folder 59, TUUA.

  42. Max Franzen, letter to Helen Bradley, November 14, 1952, FC collection, box 43, folder 59, TUUA.

  43. Max Franzen, letter to Herbert Jaffa, April 20, 1953, FC collection, box 43, folder 59, TUUA.

  44. Maurice Fagan, letter to Lois Labovitz, February 10, 1953, FC collection, box 43, folder 59, TUUA.

  45. Maurice Fagan, letter to Margaret M. Kearney, September 2, 1953, FC collection, box 43, folder 59, TUUA.

  46. The Official 1955 Bandstand Yearbook [no publication information listed], 30.

  47. On the ways in which television producers and commentators classify viewer identities in terms related to gender, work, and daypart, see Haralovich, “Sit-Coms and Suburbs: Positioning the 1950s Homemaker”; Kristen Hatch, “Daytime Politics: Kefauver, McCarthy and the American Housewife,” in Reality Squared, ed. Friedman, 75–91.

  48. The Official 1957 Bandstand Yearbook [no publication information listed].

  49. Franzen, letter to Herbert Jaffa, April 20, 1953.

  50. Clarence Pickett, letter to Donald W. Thornburgh, June 29, 1953, box 43, folder 59, TUUA. On the Fellowship Commission’s hope that the program would resume in the fall of 1953, see “Report to the Community,” May 1953, FC collection, box 53, folder 10, TUUA.

  51. Fagan, letter to Margaret Kearney, September 2, 1953.

  52. Callahan, Television in School, College, and Community, 263.

  53. Ibid., 46, 262; Philadelphia Board of Education, “Report of Television-Radio Activities,” 1953, Division of Radio and TV, box 76, PSDA.

  54. Lizbeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage Books, 2004); Charles McGovern, Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

  55. Lizabeth Cohen, “The New Deal State and Citizen Consumers,” in Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Society in the Twentieth Century, ed. Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt (Washington, DC: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 114.

  56. Cohen, Consumers’ Republic, 403–404.

  57. Following Jürgen Habermas’s study of the social sites where meanings are articulated and contested, sociologists and media studies scholars have applied the concept of a public sphere to television talk shows, where the everyday experiential knowledge of “ordinary people” competes with, and is often privileged over, expert knowledge. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991). Among scholars who have examined the concept of public spheres in relation to television, see Andrew Tolson, ed., Television Talk Shows: Discourse, Performance, Spectacle (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001), 7–30; Jane Shattuc, The Talking Cure: TV Talk Shows and Women (New York: Routledge, 1997); James Friedman, “Attraction to Distraction: Live Television and the Public Sphere,” Reality Squared: Televisual Discourse on the Real, ed. Friedman, 138–54.

  CHAPTER 3

  1. On de facto school segregation in the North in the 1950s and early 1960s, see Adina Beck, “Exposing the ‘Whole Segregation Myth’: The Harlem Nine and New York City’s School Desegregation Battles,” and Jeanne Theoharis, “‘I’d Rather Go to School in the South’: How Boston’s School Desegregation Complicates the Civil Rights Paradigm,” in Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles outside the South, 1940–1980, ed. Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 65–92, 125–52; Davison Douglas, Jim Crow Moves North: The Battle over Northern School Segregation, 1865–1954 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 219–73; Jack Dougherty, More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Jeffrey Mirel, The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907–81 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 217–92; John Rury, “Race, Space, and the Politics of Chicago’s Public Schools: Benjamin Willis and the Tragedy of Urban Education,” History of Education Quarterly 39 (Summer 1999): 117–42; John Rury and Jeffrey Mirel, “The Political Economy of Urban Education,” Review of Research in Education 22 (1997): 49–110; Alan Anderson and George Pickering, Confronting the Color Line: The Broken Promise of the Civil Rights Movement (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), 44–102.

  2. See Matthew Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservativism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Joseph Crespino, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Joseph Crespino, “The Best Defense Is a Good Offense: The Stennis Amendment and the Fracturing of Liberal School Desegregation Policy, 1964–72,” Journal of Policy History 18 (no. 3, 2006); Robert Pratt, The Color of Their Skin: Education and Race in Richmond Virginia, 1954–89 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992); Matthew Lassiter and Joseph Crespino, eds., The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

  3. Lassiter, Silent Majority, 137.

  4. George Lipsitz, “Getting around Brown: The Social Warrant of the New Racism,” in Remembering Brown at Fifty: The University of Illinois Commemorates Brown v. Board of Education, ed. Orville Vernon Burton and David O’Brien (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 48.

  5. On anti-prejudice work by Jewish organizations, see Stuart Svonkin, Jews against Prejudice: American Jews and the Fight for Civil Liberties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).

  6. On the lack of attention given to educational issues in the city’s newspapers and political debates, see Peter Binzen, interviewed by Walter Philips, 1979, The Walter Phillips Oral History Project file, TUUA.

  7. For studies that examine the power of elites in the history of urban schools, see Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books, 1976); David Tyack, The One Best System: A History of Urban Education in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974).

  8. Albert Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A.: Cities in the North and West, 1962 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 121–22;

  9. Marilyn Gittell and T. Edward Hollander, Six Urban School Districts: A Comparative Study of Institutional Response (New York: Frederick Praeger Publishers, 1968), 25.

  10. Ibid., 28; Binzen interview, 11–12.

  11. On the Commission on Human Relations’ lack of authority with regard to the public schools, see “Commission on Human Relations (CHR) Minutes,” June 9, 1955, CHR collection, box A-2860, folder 148.2 “Minutes 1953–1957,” PCA; “CHR Minutes,” September 19, 1955, CHR collection, box A-2860, folder 148.2 “Minutes 1953–1957,” PCA; CHR, “1957 Annual Report,” CHR collection, box A-620, folder 148.1, PCA; “1959 Achievements in Terms of the Program Goals for the Year,” 1960, CHR collection, box A-2823, folder 148.2, “Agenda & Minutes 1959,” PCA; “Minutes of Meeting of the Commission on Human Relations,” December 8, 1959, CHR collection, box A-2823, folder 148.2, “Agenda & Minutes 1959,” PCA; Christopher Edley, letter to George Schermer, January 18, 1961, FL collection, Acc 469, box 2, folder 19, TUUA; Edley, letter to Logan, January 31, 1961, FL collection, Acc 469, box 2, folder 19, TUUA.

  12. Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A., 123.

  13. Greater Philadelphia Movement, A Citizens Study of Public Education in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Greater Philadelphia Movement, 1962). Quoted in Michael Clapper, “The Constructed World of Postwar Philadelphia Area Schools: Site Selection, Architecture, and the Landscape of Inequality” (Ph.D. diss, University of Pennsylvania, 2008), 33–34.

  14. “What Is the Fellowship Commission?” [n.d.] [ca. 1946], FC collection, Acc 626, box 1, folder 3, TUUA.

  15. Helen Trager and Marian Yarro
w, They Learn What They Live: Prejudice in Young Children (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), 3.

  16. The Bureau on Intercultural Education’s work during this period at the national level, such as “Americans All—Immigrants All,” a nationally broadcast intercultural radio program, incorporated aspects of both cultural pluralist and assimilationist perspectives. On “Americans All—Immigrants All” and the use of radio for intercultural education, see Barbara Dianne Savage, Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938–1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). On the Bureau of Intercultural Education within the intellectual history of intercultural education, see Cherry McGee Banks, “Intercultural and Intergroup Education, 1929–1959: Linking Schools and Communities,” in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, 2nd edition, ed. James Banks (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), 753–69.

  17. Barbara Barnes, “Prejudices Can Be Un-learned, Experiments Conducted Here Show,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, October 11, 1951.

  18. Catherine Mackenzie, “Prejudice Can Be Unlearned,” New York Times, July 25, 1948. For more information on the early childhood project, see “Report of the Committee on Evaluations,” July 8, 1949, FH collection, Acc 723, box 30, folder “Early Childhood,” TUUA; “Minutes: Committee on Program Priorities,” November 12, 1951, JCRC collection, box 003, folder 015, PJAC; “Annual Meeting,” February 20, 1950, FC collection, Acc 626, box 1, folder 5, TUUA.

  19. George Trowbridge, “Fellowship Commission Annual Meeting, Report of Chairman,” February 18, 1947, FC collection, Acc 626, box 1, folder 5, TUUA.

  20. Maurice Fagan, letter to Clarence Pickett, October 11, 1951, PFC collection, MSS 115, sec 1, box 002, folder 005, PJAC; “Report on the Meeting at Fellowship Farm,” September 26, 1952, PFC collection, MSS 115, sec 1, box 002, folder 005, PJAC. On They Shall Be Heard, see chapter 2.

  21. “Proposal to the Ford Foundation,” September 1953, FC collection, Acc 626, box 57, folder 13, TUUA. On the Fellowship Commission’s proposal to the Ford Foundation, see PFC collection, MSS 115, Sec 1, folders 002–005, PJAC; FC collection, Acc 626, box 57, folder 13, TUUA; FC collection, Acc 626, box 43, folder 31, TUUA.

  22. Walter Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938–1987 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 26–28; John Stanfield, Philanthropy and Jim Crow in American Social Science (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), 140–42.

  23. Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience, 17, 20, 34.

  24. Frederick Keppel to Gunnar Myrdal, August 12, 1937, quoted in Stanfield, Philanthropy and Jim Crow in American Social Science, 149

  25. Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 49.

  26. Rayford Logan, ed., What the Negro Wants (1944; New York: Agathon Press, 1969), xxxiii.

  27. Ibid., 14.

  28. On the influence of An American Dilemma, see David Southern, Gunnar Myrdal and Black-White Relations: The Use and Abuse of An American Dilemma, 1944–1969 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987); Steinberg, Turning Back, 65–67; Steinberg, “An American Dilemma: The Collapse of the Racial Orthodoxy of Gunnar Myrdal,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 10 (Winter 1995–96) 64–70; Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 59–62.

  29. Maurice Fagan, letter to Clarence Pickett, July 21, 1952, PFC collection, MSS 115, sec 1, box 002, folder 005, PJAC. For a critique of Fagan’s faith in social science methods to address prejudice, see Isaiah Minkoff, letter to Fagan, January 5, 1953, PFC collection, MSS 115, sec 1, box 002, folder 005, PJAC.

  30. Fellowship Commission, “Comments on the October 6th Discussion Memorandum on the Proposal to the Ford Foundation,” November 1952, FC collection, Acc 626, box 43, folder 31, TUUA; Gordon Allport, letter to Clarence Pickett, October 12, 1952, FC collection, Acc 626, box 43, folder 31, TUUA. For more on Fagan’s correspondence with these social scientists, see FC collection, Acc 626, box 57, folder 13, TUUA.

  31. Fellowship Commission, “Report on the Meeting at Fellowship Farm,” September 26, 1952, JCRC collection, box 002, folder 005, PJAC.

  32. “Educational Equality League (EEL) History Highlights: 1932–1960” [n.d.], [ca. 1960], FL collection, Acc 469, box 1, folder 1, TUUA. On school segregation in Philadelphia before 1950, see Vincent Franklin, The Education of Black Philadelphia: The Social and Educational History of a Minority Community, 1900–1950 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979).

  33. One of the teachers for whom Floyd Logan advocated was Ruth Wright Hayre, the first black high school teacher in Philadelphia. On Hayre’s work, see Matthew Delmont, “The Plight of the ‘Able’ Student: Ruth Wright Hayre and the Struggle for Equality in Philadelphia’s Black High Schools, 1955–1965,” History of Education Quarterly 50 (May, 2010), 204–230.

  34. “EEL History Highlights: 1932–1960”; Doris Wiley, “Letter-Writer Logan Often Scores Where Pickets Don’t in Rights Fight,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, June 6, 1965; Acel Moore, “A Civil Rights Fighter Deserved More, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, August 7, 1980; “Floyd Logan Dies; Crusader for Equality,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, February 12, 1979.

  35. Floyd Logan, letter to Louis Hoyer, December 2, 1948, FL collection, Acc 469, box 2, folder 9, TUUA; Floyd Logan, letter to Walter Biddle Saul, March 3, 1949, FL collection, Acc 469, box 2, folder 9, TUUA; Anne Phillips, “The Struggle for School Desegregation in Philadelphia, 1945–1967” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2000), 65–67.

  36. Digest of Education Statistics, 2004, National Center for Education Statistics, http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_056.asp and http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/tables/dt04_102.asp (accessed November 16, 2006). On the development of high schools in the first half of the twentieth century, see Edward Krug, The Shaping of the American High School (New York, Harper & Row, 1964).

  37. Jack Balkin, ed., What “Brown v. Board of Education” Should Have Said (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 65–66.

  38. Harrison Fry, “Teachers Advised on Ex-G.I. Pupil,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, March 6, 1946; Joseph Nolan, “Franklin Course Aids 5000 Vets,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, December 29, 1947; Joseph Nolan, “Vet Courses at Franklin Win Acclaim,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, December 30, 1947; Joseph Nolan, “Vets Praise Curricula at Franklin,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, December 31, 1947; “City High School Has Three Names,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, September 5, 1948; Harrison Fry, “Veterans Complete Courses in Two Years; Point Way to High School of Future,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, January 23, 1949; “Franklin High Tailors Courses,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, April 29, 1949.

  39. Middle States Association of Schools and Colleges, “Report of the Visiting Committee on the Evaluation of the Benjamin Franklin High School,” May 25, 1951, FL collection, Acc 469, box 20, folder 26, TUUA.

  40. The Redevelopment Authority and the Citizen’s Council on City Planning (CCCP) were watchdog agencies that oversaw the activities of the Philadelphia Housing Association (later the Housing Association of Delaware Valley), the leading urban planning authority in postwar Philadelphia. John Bauman writes that in reality the CCCP “became both a sounding board and an advertising agent for the planners’ vision of the postwar city.” John Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920–1974 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 99.

  41. Barbara Barnes, “Pupils Learn Lessons in Alley Classroom,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, November 2, 1950. For similar comments by a teacher at the school, see Martin Rosenberg, “A School Helps to Improve Its Neighborhood,” School News and Views, January 1, 1951.

  42. On the founding and goals of the life adjustment education movement, see Harl Douglass, ed., Education for Life Adjustment: Its Meanings and Implementation (New York: Ronald Press Company, 1950); Diane Ravitch, Tro
ubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 64–68. For a contemporary analysis of the relationship between high school curriculum tracks and students’ class status, see August Hollingshead, Elmstown Youth: The Impact of Social Classes on Adolescents (New York: Wiley, 1949).

  43. Herbert Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum: 1893–1958, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2004), 250–70.

  44. Floyd Logan, letter to J. Harry LaBrum, May 20, 1963, FL collection, Acc 469, box 2, folder 21, TUUA; Walter Reeder, letter to Floyd Logan, May 13, 1963, FL collection, Acc 469, box 7, folder 12, TUUA; School District of Philadelphia, “Department of Business Statement,” September 19, 1961, FL collection, Acc 469, box 30, folder 5, TUUA; “Jim Crow’s Sweetheart Contract,” Greater Philadelphia Magazine, 58 (February 1963).

  45. “Survey Recommends That Building Be Totally Demolished,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 6, 1951; Joseph V. Baker, “‘Segregation’ Hit At Benjamin Franklin High,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 7, 1951.

  46. “Report on the Proceeding of the Conference on ‘Democratization of the Philadelphia Public Schools,’” October 15, 1951, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Philadelphia Branch (NAACP) collection, URB 6, box 6, folder 138, TUUA.

  47. “Angry Parents Resent Remarks by Principal,” Philadelphia Tribune, October 23, 1951; “Negro Baiting Assembly Talk Angers Parents,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 27, 1951. For the case that precipitated the principal’s comments, see “3 Boys Confess in Taxi Slaying,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 17, 1951.

  48. W. E. Morton, letter to NAACP office, October 21, 1951, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 6, folder 135, TUUA.

  49. EEL, “Notes on the Meeting with the Board of Education.”

  50. “Slurs Create Incident,” Teacher Union News, Vol. 6, No. 2, January 1952, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 6, folder 137, TUUA.

  51. EEL, “A Six-Point Program for the West Philadelphia High School,” January 10, 1952, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 6, folder 137, TUUA.