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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Editor’s Letter

The State Museum of Pennsylvania has recently installed in its first-floor gallery a long-term exhibition, A Place for All, focusing on three episodes of the Civil Rights Movement in the commonwealth — struggles for integration at Highland Park swimming pool in Pittsburgh, Girard College preparatory school in Philadelphia, and the suburban community of Levittown in Bucks County. The stories were...
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From the Executive Director

Civil rights, voting rights and race relations. These are all topics of conversation today, as they have been for more than a century and a half across the United States, including here in Pennsylvania. But without a shared knowledge about the history of these topics, it becomes harder to have meaningful and productive conversations. This summer we are opening a new exhibit at The State Museum...
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LeRoy Patrick (1915-2006)

The record of civil rights in Pennsylvania is checkered at best. Proponents realize that it requires much more than legislation to guarantee equality for all Pennsylvani­ans. More often than not, it takes courageous private cit­izens to stand up in the face of bigotry, discrimination, and oppression. One such individual was the Reverend Dr. LeRoy Patrick (1915-2006), of Pittsburgh. Patrick died...
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