Life in an Industrial Boom Town: Monessen, 1898-1923

Posted by Matthew Magda on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Life in an Industrial Boom Town: Monessen, 1898-1923 In reading about our nation’s past, we often forget how different life was for our ancestors. We read about historical figures and movements, but rarely – except in excellent historical novels – do we gain a glimpse into the living environment. We also tend to for­get that there are many past environ­ments, each producing its own style and pace of living. During the late...
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The Merry-Go-Round Kings

Posted by Linda Kowall-Woal on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Merry-Go-Round Kings Murmuring voices and laughter, mingling with the strains of band organ music and the rustling of long white skirts and crisply starched shirts, filled the sum­mer air of 1904 at Philadel­phia’s Woodside Park. A new carousel, one of the finest in America, had just introduced a kaleidoscope of festive color and design to the familiar old amusement grounds. It was, especially, the onset of...
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Some Questions for Examining Pennsylvania’s Black History

Posted by Julian Bond on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Some Questions for Examining Pennsylvania’s Black History Civil rights activist Julian Bond was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in January 1940. When he was five years old, his father, Dr. Horace Mann Bond, was named the first Black president of Lincoln University, Chester County, the country’s oldest private African American college. Bond’s family lived on the campus of Lincoln University until 1957, when Dr. Bond was appointed dean of the...
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Now Presenting American’s Oldest Playhouse: The Walnut Street Theatre

Posted by Geraldine Duclow on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Now Presenting American’s Oldest Playhouse: The Walnut Street Theatre It all started with the circus. Early in the nineteenth century, the New Circus, as it was called, was located at the corner of Walnut and Ninth Streets in Philadelphia, several blocks west of the State House (now Independence Hall). On February 2, 1809, an advertisement in the newspaper Aurora announced that “Messrs. Pepin and Breschard, Professors of the art of Horsemanship and agility,...
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Sparking a Rock ‘n’ Roll Revolution: An Interview with Dick Clark

Posted by William Kashatus on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Sparking a Rock ‘n’ Roll Revolution: An Interview with Dick Clark For many baby boomers – members of that much-touted generation who came of age in the fifties and sixties – rock ‘n’ roll provided a defining point in their adolescent lives. Few will ever forget the first time they jitterbugged to Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets, or took to the dance floor with The Twist by Chubby Checker. Many cherish the memory of...
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Unity House, A Workers’ Shangri-La

Posted by Kenneth Wolensky on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Unity House, A Workers’ Shangri-La I can imagine the hundreds of people who were here on any summer evening,” recalls Nelson Whittaker, veteran custodian of twenty-five years. “They’d be walking around, talking, going to a theater performance, dancing in the ballroom, listening to a lecture, enjoying a fantastic meal. Now, it’s all gone.” For most of the twentieth century, garment workers –...
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Banned In Pennsylvania!

Posted by Richard Saylor on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Banned In Pennsylvania! During the nearly half century of its powerful reign, no one exemplified the Keystone State’s film censorship board more dramatically than Philadelphian Edna Rothwell Carroll (1894-1981), its chairman from 1939 to 1955. Determined, self-possessed, and intensely devoted to her mission – to protect the public from movies deemed immoral – she had been active in Republican Party...
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Joe Palooka, Wilkes-Barre Boxing Legend with a National Punch

Posted by William Kashatus on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Joe Palooka, Wilkes-Barre Boxing Legend with a National Punch In 1921, Hammond Fisher (1900-1955), a young staff artist for the Wilkes-Barre Record, was conversing with a local boxer, Joe Hardy, on Wilkes-Barre’s Public Square. The two were comparing their childhoods in the rough neighborhoods of the anthracite region community where they had learned to fight at an early age. Some, like Hardy, took their street skills to the local gymnasiums and...
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