How Did We Get Here? Part One

The first problem that came to mind I had the idea to write this blog was a big one, where do I start?

With a problem as huge as poverty how I could write a blog? A blog is a news feed of commentary on current events relating to an issue. I could do this for poverty, but how could I write about what is happening now without going back to the beginning to explain why things are this way in poverty stricken North Philadelphia.

I decided early on for this reason that I would need to write a series of articles that break down why North Philadelphia is the way it is before I could move on to writing about what's going on now. This is part one of the new series I'm going to write, How Did We Get Here?

Anyone can see from the ruined factories that North Philadelphia was once a booming industrial town. Before the factories North Philadelphia had been a wealthy network suburban townships for Philadelphia's business elite. Then the Consolidation Act of 1854 made North Philadelphia a part of the city proper, and the industrial age followed. During the 1920's Gilded Age a generation of successful German Jews turned North Philadelphia in a boom town. Scores of row homes were raised just to house the factory workers.

Then the Great Depression came, driving away the businessmen with their factories and jobs. As Philadelphian's suffered through the Great Depression racist loan companies, used a technique called redlining to create black ghettos.

Redlining is the practice of denying necessary services to certain areas. It began with the National Housing Act of 1934, an effort to drive investors back to cities that resulted in the creation of "residential security neighborhoods," determining which neighborhoods were worthy of investment. The services denied included: loans, insurance, access to jobs, supermarkets, and access to health care. The neighborhoods that were denied these services and investments? The black neighborhoods mostly, but they also targeted Latinos, Asians, and Jews.

It makes you want to ask, what exactly did they think would happen?

Despite these racist loan policies that still wasn't the beginning of the North Philadelphia we know and love today. Through the 40's and 50's white flight took place, but at a slow pace. North Philadelphia became a center for black culture and jazz. This is the Philadelphia jazz legend John Coltrane came out of.

The Nail In the Coffin: The North Philadelphia that exists today began on August 28th, 1964. Philadelphia was ripe for a race riot like the ones that had taken place in Jersey City, Brooklyn, and Harlem. Knowing this, the police department had set up each police car that patrolled black neighborhoods with one white cop and one black cop. That night in 1964, an old black woman named Odessa Bradford's car stalled at Broad and Columbia, now known as Cecil B. Moore. In other words, this happened right in front of Temple University.

When Mrs. Bradford refused to get out of her stalled car, the cops who had been called to the scene had to physically remove her in front of a gathering crowd. She began to kick and punch them. One man, James Nettles tried to come to her aid by jumping the officers from behind, and the cops called "Assist Officer" into their radios.

Assist Officer means cops are in trouble, come now. No doubt every cop in the city turned on their lights and headed for North Philadelphia. At the same time, rumor spread throughout the black community of North Philadelphia that two white cops had beaten a pregnant black woman to death. In middle of an era of race riots that was all it took. 

For the next two days black mobs looted and burned white owned business throughout North Philadelphia, but mostly on Columbia Avenue. The police stood back and watched under orders from the police commissioner, something the future Mayor Frank Rizzo called gutless. The riot was encouraged by black political militants like Raymond Hall, the man who created the rumor that Mrs. Bradford had been pregnant and beaten to death by two white cops. Meanwhile, the President of NAACP and the street's future namesake, Cecil Moore, was standing on a soap box shouting that looting would hurt their cause.

When it was over the slow trickle of white flight that had occurred thus far turned into a white exodus. The main commercial district of North Philadelphia was destroyed, and it wouldn't return until the recent redevelopments by Temple University. The jazz culture began to deteriorate as well. The riot even led to the closing of Connie Mack stadium, and the Phillies leaving North Philadelphia.

Essentially: Rich, white businessmen created a poor black neighborhood, and angry, black militants created a senseless riot. Everyone suffered. 

It is worth noting however, that several great men were there as well working to keep things from getting worse, such as Cecil Moore and Frank Rizzo.

But isn't that always the case?

This was the beginning, sort of, and there's more to come. Trying to understand something like poverty in North Philadelphia is a massive undertaking, so I'm going to take it step by step. 

I hope you keep reading, because figuring out what happened to the first capital of this country might be a key step in figuring out what happened to this country.