by Jeff Meade<\/p>\n
In Philadelphia from 1964 to 1968, dramatic societal changes were underway, radical changes that centered on the contentious issues of racial justice and equality. In this, the transformations in question mirrored the ongoing tumult in cities throughout the North. One might even call it a revolution.<\/p>\n
In fact, Episode 8 of \u201cIn Pursuit: Philadelphia and the Making of America\u201d is called just that: \u201cRevolution.\u201d The episode will be screened Wednesday, Nov. 4, at the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin\u2019s Lane, in Chestnut Hill. Doors open at 6 p.m. The screening is free and begins at 6:30 p.m., followed by a question-and-answer session.<\/p>\n
One of the featured panelists will be photographer Tieshka K. Smith, of Germantown, whose work explores race, memory and identity through the \u201cRacism is a Sickness\u201d community-engaged art project.<\/p>\n
If there is a key difference between Philadelphia and other cities, it lies in the conflict between the central protagonists: lawyer, social activist and president of the Philadelphia NAACP Cecil B. Moore versus police commissioner and future mayor Frank Rizzo. Philadelphia was ripe for confrontation.<\/p>\n
In Moore, Smith says, Rizzo met his match.<\/p>\n
Black people in the city were already angry against the backdrop of Black migration from the South, white flight and the gross inequities and racial prejudice separating the city\u2019s Black citizens from the better lives they deserved. But at a higher level, she says, \u201cYou had Cecil B. Moore duking it out with Frank Rizzo, which becomes part of the narrative of what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the most telling illustrations of that contentious relationship was the violence visited by Rizzo and Philadelphia police upon Black protesters who picketed the then all-white Girard College, a boarding school for orphaned boys, advocating for integration. And yet, with the assistance of a high-profile stopover by civil rights icon the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Moore ultimately won the day.<\/p>\n
To put things in perspective, Smith looks back to the bigger picture.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the \u201960s, the climate of the country was shifting,\u201d she says, \u201cand I think it was all due to the inequities that Black people were beginning to see despite their service, despite their patriotism, despite them attempting to search for a better life at the tail end of the migration. There still wasn\u2019t an acceptance extended to them. There wasn\u2019t a sense of place for them. So, I think there was a sense of \u2018we\u2019ve got to figure out a way to change things.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the aspects of Episode 8 that drew Smith\u2019s attention was a segment featuring President John F. Kennedy.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis sense of social justice caused people to question what was possible, question beliefs that were held, question the types of opportunities that were once kept from certain groups in Philadelphia. This coincided with this expansion continuing on from World War II,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The road out of this gnawing sense of injustice was an uphill slog \u2013 and to a significant extent, remains so.<\/p>\n
As white residents of Philadelphia fled for the suburbs, there was disinvestment in the communities they left behind. There was redlining, the practice by which financial resources are withheld from racial and minority neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
And underlying it all was racism, both institutional and otherwise. For example, when a new high school was built in the predominantly Black North Philadelphia neighborhood of Strawberry Mansion, all of the laborers were white because the building trades excluded Black workers. Police and firefighters were predominantly white as well.<\/p>\n
Racism was at the heart of white flight, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour decision to leave is motivated by someone moving into your neighborhood who has a skin color different from yours, and that skin color equals the devaluation of where you live, without any proof,\u201d Smith concludes.<\/p>\n
Of the whites who left the old neighborhoods, she suggests there was a belief that incoming black residents would bring the property values down. She suspects they believed, \u201cEven if they don\u2019t, I\u2019m getting the heck out of Dodge.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mindset that underlies institutional and personal racism persists today, and Smith contemplates that viewpoint in her contemporary work on the subject.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you tie it all back to my project, \u2018Racism is a Sickness,\u2019 what I\u2019m exploring are the inner workings of the minds of folks who feel this way,\u201d Smith says. \u201cWhat is it that you\u2019re struggling with that then manifests in your decision-making, your interactions, your beliefs, and then how do you reproduce that, not just in your family, but in your social circles, your communities, your schools? It spreads like a virus.\u201d<\/p>\n
The long-term consequences of the construction of the Strawberry Mansion high school resonate today as well.<\/p>\n
Now, we are discussing the state of schools like the one in Strawberry Mansion, schools that are deteriorating, Smith says, \u201cthat have outlived their youth, that suffer from low enrollment over time, that suffer from neglect. That, for me, is jarring.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a certain cruel irony in the idea that the school built by white laborers in the 20th century is now deteriorating in the 21st, she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re seeing this kind of stuff kind of crumble,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know if you want to make a metaphor out of that, but it certainly invites you to think that if you start out with a mindset that is exclusionary, then how do you think that something like this is going to survive? And that\u2019s something I think that warrants further discussion because it touches on a whole different level of thinking about segregation, about discrimination, about outright racism, and what gets left behind after that. If you build something and you hate certain people, do you really expect it to withstand the test of time?\u201d<\/p>\n