Fellow Travelers: The Fight to Desegregate Philadelphia’s Streecars After the Civil War

Posted by Terry Crowley on Oct 21, 2024 in | Comments Off on Fellow Travelers: The Fight to Desegregate Philadelphia’s Streecars After the Civil War “When a nation suffers as ours does, from the misfortune of having two races . . . one long civilized, the other emerging from the shades of barbarism . . . there is much in the relations between them that must be left to the lessons of experience and the tribunal of public opinion.” And so, Judge John Hare of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas ruled that a Black man was not entitled to...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by Kyle Weaver on Oct 21, 2024 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter The three features in this edition of Pennsylvania Heritage focus on endeavors by visionary individuals to change or improve some aspect of life in the Keystone State. One of the earliest struggles for Black civil rights in Pennsylvania — the effort to desegregate streetcars — took place in Philadelphia during the Civil War era. The operators of the 19 streetcar companies in the city at that...
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A Place for All: Three Stories of Integration in Pennsylvania

Posted by Curtis Miner on Sep 12, 2022 in | Comments Off on A Place for All: Three Stories of Integration in Pennsylvania The American Civil Rights Movement focused public attention on segregation in the South and the laws and practices that kept Southern Blacks disenfranchised. By the late 1950s places such as Montgomery, Alabama; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Greensboro, North Carolina, had become household names in the battle to dismantle the racial caste system of “Jim Crow.” But discrimination based on race, much...
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“Without Fear and Without Reproach”: Octavius V. Catto and the Early Civil Rights Movement in Pennsylvania

Posted by Todd Mealy on Feb 5, 2021 in | Comments Off on “Without Fear and Without Reproach”: Octavius V. Catto and the Early Civil Rights Movement in Pennsylvania On Tuesday, September 26, 2017, the City of Philadelphia unveiled a monument to Octavius V. Catto in a ceremony at the southwestern apron of City Hall. Catto was a cornerstone figure in Philadelphia’s early civil rights struggle — a recruiter of an African American militia during the Civil War, an instrumental figure in the victory to desegregate Philadelphia’s horse-drawn streetcars, a...
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Breaking the Color Line: The Trial That Led to the End of Legal Segregation in Pennsylvania’s Schools

Posted by Todd Mealy on Jun 6, 2016 in | Comments Off on Breaking the Color Line: The Trial That Led to the End of Legal Segregation in Pennsylvania’s Schools The half-century following the Civil War was an unpleasant yet profound period of race relations in American history. To date, much of the scholarship about equal rights during that era concentrates on Southern reconstruction while ignoring some very important accomplishments in other parts of the country. Activists in Pennsylvania, for instance, took up a complicated struggle over state and...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by Kyle Weaver on Jun 6, 2016 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter The roots of rock ‘n’ roll music have been traced to several places in America, Philadelphia among them. It was there in 1949 that the Gotham label released what is considered to be one of the first rock ‘n’ roll records, “Rock the Joint,” by Jimmy Preston & the Prestonians of Chester, Delaware County. “Rock the Joint” had an impact on another rock...
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