Building the Beloved Community

Philadelphia's Interracial Civil Rights Organizations and Race Relations, 1930–1970

Stanley Keith Arnold

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781626741683
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Discriminación y relaciones raciales

Inspired by Quakerism, Progressivism, the Social Gospel movement, and the theories of scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles S. Johnson, Franz Boas, and Ruth Benedict, a determined group of Philadelphia activists sought to transform race relations. This book concentrates on these organizations: Fellowship House, the Philadelphia Housing Association, and the Fellowship Commission. While they initially focused on community-level relations, these activists became increasingly involved in building coalitions for the passage of civil rights legislation on the local, state, and national level. This historical account examines their efforts in three distinct, yet closely related areas, education, housing, and labor.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this movement was its utilization of education as a weapon in the struggle against racism. Martin Luther King credited Fellowship House with introducing him to the passive resistance principle of satygraha through a Sunday afternoon forum. Philadelphia's activists influenced the southern civil rights movement through ideas and tactics. Borrowing from Philadelphia, similar organizations would rise in cities from Kansas City to Knoxville. Their impact would have long lasting implications; the methods they pioneered would help shape contemporary multicultural education programs.

Building the Beloved Community places this innovative northern civil rights struggle into a broader historical context. Through interviews, photographs, and rarely utilized primary sources, the author critically evaluates the contributions and shortcomings of this innovative approach to race relations.

CHAPTER 1

By the Waters of Babylon

The Origins of the Interracial Movement

THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE HAS NOT ALWAYS LIVED UP TO ITS NAME. Its past has witnessed brutal racial, religious, and class conflicts. Yet its history also includes those who challenged accepted prejudices and sought to bridge these chasms of ignorance and hatred. This chapter examines the origins and early development of this activist spirit in Philadelphia. The interracial civil rights movement that emerged in the 1930s was influenced by Quakerism, the Social Gospel movement, Progressivism, and new academic trends in the study of race. How did these activists weave disparate strands of thought and action into a movement?

In 1688 dissident German Quakers staged the first organized protest against slavery in British North America in Germantown (now a section of Philadelphia). Despite Quaker founder George Fox’s antislavery views, many members of the Society of Friends held and traded slaves. Although Quakers debated the issue frequently, it was not until the mid-eighteenth century that an abolitionist organization emerged in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.¹

In 1833, William Lloyd Garrison of Boston and Arthur and Lewis Tappan of New York organized the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) in Philadelphia. There were only three African American men among the sixty-two original members. Like the earlier Abolition Society, the AASS would accept blacks only as junior partners.² As Garrison and the Tappan brothers established their organization, Lucretia Mott, a Quaker abolitionist from neighboring Montgomery County, organized the Pennsylvania Female Anti-Slavery Society. Mott’s organization welcomed women from the city’s small black middle class. Shortly after the founding of Mott’s organization, the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society was established.³ Blacks were instrumental in the establishment of the PASS, and by 1845 Robert Purvis, a black activist, would become its president. Purvis was involved in the creation of the Vigilance Committee, an interracial body formed to assist “colored persons in distress.”⁴

Interracial cooperation in the abolition movement did not necessarily lead to agreement on the more complex issue of racial equality. As Frederick Douglass noted, the antislavery cause did not wholly embrace the black struggle for equality.⁵ Philadelphia’s blacks and whites served together on military recruitment committees, but after the end of the Civil War, abolitionist organizations evaporated. For black Philadelphians, the end of slavery represented the beginning of a long struggle for equal rights.

In addition to facing segregation in public accommodations such as streetcars and theatres, blacks had been excluded from voting since 1838. The leader of the effort to overcome this exclusion was Octavius Valentine Catto, principal of the Institute for Colored Youth. Catto argued that the recently passed Fifteenth Amendment mandated that Pennsylvania return the franchise to blacks. In October 1870 Pennsylvania ratified the Fifteenth Amendment, but tension grew between black Republicans and white Democrats in Philadelphia. On Election Day 1871, Philadelphia was rocked by rioting, as Democrats attempted to keep blacks from voting. At least three blacks, including Catto, were killed in the violence.

In the wake of the 1871 riots, there was a decline in interracial activity around political issues. However, blacks and whites continued to work together on the boards of black social institutions such as the Stephen Smith Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Persons.⁶ By the 1890s interracial cooperation among clergymen had increased. Concern over the increasing number of poor people of both races could have been an issue since many churches were involved in charity work. The slowly rising immigrant population, mostly Catholic and Jewish, might have also prompted these Protestant clergymen to see that they had some common concerns.

The increase in dialogue laid the groundwork for limited activism. In the 1890s a small interracial group of clergymen expressed their outrage at the growing number of lynchings in the South. In 1894 anti-lynching crusader Ida Wells Barnett spoke to an integrated audience at the Smith Home. Barnett’s Philadelphia appearance prompted many clergymen to denounce lynching from their pulpits, but they did not initiate any major protests.⁷

The relative absence of protest in this period could be attributed to several factors. First, there was a significant leadership vacuum in black Philadelphia in the late nineteenth century. Most of the leaders of the antislavery movement and the Civil War protest had died. In this period of increasing segregation, no new cadre of leaders emerged. While the community was energized by the founding of the Philadelphia Tribune, and even though blacks held the franchise, the voting population was in the hands of an increasingly corrupt Republican regime.

For the city’s growing number of progressive reformers, local concerns took center stage. Many progressives castigated the black community for its electoral support of the city’s corrupt Republican regime. They turned to a young black scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, to undertake a study of the city’s predominantly black Seventh Ward. The study, entitled The Philadelphia Negro, was the first major statistics-driven sociological study of an urban community. Although Du Bois saw the study as a blow against racial inequality, white Progressives hoped the study would expose “the corrupt, semi-criminal vote” of this area and ultimately lead to widespread municipal reform. Most of the reformers, however, refrained from confronting the ideology of racism that had created the problems.⁸

By 1900 Philadelphia had the second largest black population in the North after New York, and it was steadily increasing. Although it would be dwarfed by the Great Migration, the city’s black population surged in the late nineteenth century. Most of these new arrivals came from the Chesapeake Bay region and nearby towns in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.⁹

The first decade of the twentieth century witnessed an increase in disfranchisement, segregation, and racial violence in the United States. More than one hundred blacks were lynched in the first year of the twentieth century. Savage race riots occurred with increasing regularity. In 1906 Atlanta was paralyzed by several days of rioting, which left twenty-five dead, dozens injured, and scores of black homes and institutions destroyed. Concerned about a recurrence of the Atlanta violence, a small number of white business leaders called for interracial dialogue. John White, a leading white clergyman, blamed the riot on lower-class whites and chastised “the better people” of the South for not formulating a successful race relations program. Anxious to assure the city’s black elite, the white business community invited Booker T. Washington to Atlanta. In the wake of Washington’s visit, the all-white Atlanta Civic Council and a black counterpart, the Colored Cooperative Civic League, were formed. The principal goal of these organizations was to prevent future race riots through cooperation between the “best men” of both races.¹⁰

Business leaders were not alone in their concern about the endemic pattern of racial violence. In 1905 a group of black activists organized by Du Bois met in Fort Erie, Ontario, and drafted a program of action that pledged opposition to disfranchisement, segregation, and other manifestations of racism. Over the next two years the Niagara Movement, a distinguished collection of black intellectuals, clergymen, and professionals, convened on a regular basis. In 1908 a race riot in Springfield, Illinois, served as a catalyst for stronger action. The Springfield riot was by far the most vicious racial conflict witnessed in the North since the Civil War. In the wake of the carnage, several white New York–based progressives initiated a conference on race that attracted Du Bois and other Niagara radicals. In 1910 the conference participants formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP was opposed to Washington’s ideology of conciliation in political affairs and championed racial equality in all aspects of American life.¹¹

Renewed interest about race among white reformers contributed to a growth in interracial organizations. In 1911 the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes was founded. Comprised of black and white reformers, the League assisted southern migrants with jobs, housing, and education. In addition to the NAACP and the Urban League, the first decade of the new century saw the emergence of the National League for the Protection of Colored Women, an interracial New York–based organization dedicated to assisting African American female migrants in northern cities.¹² In Philadelphia reformers established the Armstrong Association to address the growing migration. Headed by John Emlen, a Quaker philanthropist, this small interracial organization focused on the immediate concerns of the migrants such as jobs and housing. In 1914 the Armstrong Association became the local affiliate of the Urban League.¹³

Although there was an increasing interest in race relations among some elements of the city’s white reformers, issues such as child welfare, municipal corruption, and housing reform took precedence. In 1909 a group of housing activists founded the Philadelphia Housing Commission (later the Philadelphia Housing Association) to address housing issues. Although their primary concern was not racial inequality, the Great Migration of the World War I era impelled the organization to address racial discrimination in housing.¹⁴ The role of the Philadelphia Housing Association in the city’s interracial civil rights movement will be addressed in forthcoming chapters.

Race and Religion

ALARMED AT THE POVERTY AND INEQUITY OF LATE-NINETEENTH-CENTUry urban America, Protestant clergymen developed a theology they hoped would address these problems. The Social Gospel movement attempted to utilize Christian doctrine in the remediation of contemporary crises. By the first decade of the twentieth century, most major Protestant denominations had established “social” ministries.¹⁵

Although they were instrumental in establishing missionary efforts in black communities across the nation, Social Gospel adherents were not primarily interested in improving race relations. As lynching and race riots occurred with increasing regularity, some in the Social Gospel movement called for a dialogue on race relations. These “social Christians” differed greatly in attitudes toward race. Some advocated continued segregation, while others preached messages of racial equality and integration.¹⁶ In 1908 representatives of major Protestant denominations consolidated the Social Gospel movement by forming the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Philadelphia. The council passed resolutions supporting the rights of workers, worker’s compensation, and retirement pensions. Despite the presence of forty-five black ministers at this first meeting, there was little discussion about race. The Federal Council of Churches maintained that spiritual and moral uplift would improve the material conditions of the black community.¹⁷

As the Social Gospel movement debated problems between the races, changes were under way within the Quaker faith. By the early twentieth century, Quaker activism on racial issues had decreased. In Philadelphia, Quakers contributed to the administration of black schools and institutions but refrained from addressing lynching, disfranchisement, or Jim Crow legislation. In addition, Quakers also faced deep internal division. The schism that had created the Hicksite and Orthodox tendencies within Quakerism in the early 1800s became increasingly institutionalized in the post–Civil War period. However, the establishment of one of the first NAACP branches in Philadelphia helped stimulate interest in activism among Quakers. The presence of several prominent Quakers among the membership symbolized a return to race relations activism.¹⁸

It was not the nation’s racial crisis but World War I that energized Quaker activism. Horrified by the carnage on European battlefields, Quaker activists formed the core of a small yet growing pacifist movement. In 1917 Quakers founded the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an organization dedicated to ending military conflict. This increase in activism was aided by the establishment of a Quaker study center, Woolman House, at Swarthmore College and a growing connection between the Hicksite and Orthodox members.¹⁹ Although activism increased around pacifism, initiatives in the field of race relations were not forthcoming. It would take another decade and a major demographic transformation for Quakers to return to activism around race.

The Great Migration and the Dynamics of Race

BY THE BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR I, A MASSIVE DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFT IN the nation’s black population had begun. Natural disasters, increasing segregation, economic depression, and an unrelenting cycle of race riots and lynching prompted hundreds of thousands of southern African Americans to flee the South. The need for cheap labor in the burgeoning manufacturing centers of the Northeast and Midwest also contributed to this migration. Although the war limited the steady flow of European immigrant labor, it also stimulated industrial production as France and England became increasingly dependent on American-made military goods.²⁰

As large numbers of African Americans streamed to northern cities, private social service organizations and government agencies mobilized to handle the migration. Their principal concern was that racial friction in the workplace would affect industrial output. The Department of Labor created the Division of Negro Economics under the leadership of a young black sociologist, George Edmund Haynes, a recent Ph.D. from Columbia University. His dissertation on black labor in New York City inspired a group of reformers to form the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes in New York, which in 1911 united with two other organizations to form the National Urban League. During the war Haynes attempted to upgrade working conditions among blacks in defense-related industries. In addition to improving workplaces, he initiated the formation of locally based interracial committees. The primary task of these committees was to reduce the rising level of racial tension in the manufacturing sector.²¹ Somewhat limited in scope, Haynes focused his efforts on northern industries. In the South, Will Alexander, a young white Methodist minister, began to work on a similar joint YMCA–War Department project designed to lessen racial tension.²²

In 1919 the nation experienced an unprecedented wave of racial violence. In the “Red Summer,” twenty-five race riots left a scar of hatred across America. Socioeconomic conditions contributed to this outbreak of violence. In the wake of the war, an economic slowdown had emerged, thus fostering fierce competition over scarce jobs. In addition to the employment crisis, a severe housing shortage in northern cities added to the tension. These riots occurred in every region of the nation, affirming that the “race problem” was no longer an isolated regional crisis.²³

In the wake of the Red Summer, Alexander initiated the formation of a permanent institution designed to improve race relations, the Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC). Headquartered in Atlanta, the CIC was an amorphous network of seven thousand individuals scattered across the South.²⁴ The CIC neither challenged segregation nor advocated racial equality, but concentrated on ending the endemic racial violence of the South. Although it enlisted the support of black leaders such as Robert Russa Moton of Tuskegee and John Hope of Atlanta University, the CIC was an overwhelmingly upper-class white male organization. The Commission’s approach to race relations ...