PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 A historic West Philadelphia community and one of its advocates received long overdue acknowledgement from the city.<\/p>\n
Civic leaders assembled to honor local civil rights activist Dr. Walter Palmer and his historic neighborhood of Black Bottom on Wednesday in University City. There, Councilmember Jaime Gauthier announced the 3600 block of Market Street would be renamed \u201cWalt Palmer-Black Bottom Way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an absolute honor to be in the fight with giants like Dr. Palmer and other Black Bottom community members and advocates,\u201d Gauthier said.<\/p>\n
In 1941, Palmer\u2019s family moved to a two-room apartment at 3635 Market Street, in the historic Black Bottom neighborhood. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a wonderful community,\u201d said Palmer, who also celebrated his 92nd birthday at the event. \u201cIt had its ups and downs like any. We had to fight racism which was always a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the next 75 years, he led the fight against the impact of the city\u2019s urban renewal effort and the displacement of hundreds of Black and brown families from the Black Bottom community. Palmer said he had no regrets.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe opportunity God gave me to interact with people across the city and across the world in terms of activism and resistance and resilience,\u201d he remarked, \u201cit\u2019s been a tough life but not necessarily anything I would change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gauthier called the renaming a collective thank you from the city to Palmer, and expressed hope that it would be a step in the right direction for Philly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese recognitions are not the end but the beginning. It is time for a tough conversation about what it means for government and institutions to account for the harm they\u2019ve inflicted on Black communities,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The location will also receive a state marker in recognition of the contributions of Palmer and the Black Bottom community.<\/p>\n
Palmer said he would continue to share his message. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe fight is not over. Freedom isn\u2019t free,\u201d he said, \u201cand as long as you want freedom, you have to fight to get it and fight to maintain it. It\u2019s a life\u2019s journey.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 A historic West Philadelphia community and one of its advocates received long overdue acknowledgement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[87755,27059,94,124307,69,71,70,877],"class_list":["post-302074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-black-bottom","tag-civil-rights","tag-history","tag-jaime-gauthier","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-west-philadelphia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}