Black Bottom Reparations

THE NARRATIVE OF THE BLACK BOTTOM MARKER

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      The area surrounding 36th and Market Streets was once home to a thriving community known as the Black Bottom. This mostly Black neighborhood hosted an array of businesses including grocery stores, restaurants, and small industrial facilities. It also had a thriving nightlife, with clubs that hosted such well-known performers as John Coltrane, Horace Silver, Pearl Bailey, Louis Jordan, George Kirby, Red Foxx, Nat King Cole, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Duke Ellington and José Curbelo. 1

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      One former resident remarked on the sense of community that existed there: “The Black Bottom made you feel like you were important…You had love in the Black Bottom. You mattered! Self-worth was never at issue.” According to those who lived there, it was a place where neighbors looked out for each other: “If you didn’t have enough for a meal you could get two of three eggs from next door.” 2

 

      Unfortunately, the area was targeted for demolition under urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. The City Planning Commission, led by Edmund Bacon, regarded it as a slum. 3 With the City’s blessing, Penn joined with Drexel University and area hospitals to form the West Philadelphia Corporation (WPC) in 1959, intending to redevelop the area.

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      At the WPC’s behest, and using federal urban renewal funds, Philadelphia’s Redevelopment Authority (RDA) demolished the Black Bottom, with the goal of replacing it with a research hub, the University City Science Center, and a science-themed magnet high school. In one of the first efforts to create a postindustrial enclave, the WPC rebranded the area as “University City,” intending to substitute research labs, medical facilities, market-rate housing, and boutique public schools for the existing modest homes, small businesses, and light industrial uses. 4

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      Residents vigorously opposed the plan. A group called the University City Citizen’s Development Corporation (UCCDC) forced then-Mayor Tate to consider an alternative. When the UCCDC proposal was rejected in 1966, demolitions proceeded. 5

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      As the demolition crews moved in, activist WD Palmer led a coalition of neighborhood, civil rights, and student groups who attempted to resist the plan. A lifelong Black Bottom resident, WD Palmer had been raised at 36th and Market with five siblings. He and his fellow protesters lay down in front of bulldozers and rolled barbed wire across key streets to block builders to sway public opinion against the universities, which had won the support of City Hall and the three largest newspapers in town. 6

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      With WD Palmer’s support, students staged a sit-in in Penn’s College Hall in 1969. Students and community members demanded that the University end the displacement of Black Bottom residents and curtail Vietnam War-related military research that was being conducted in the University City Science Center. Bowing to student and community pressure, Penn created the Quadripartite Commission (QPC) to resolve the conflict and pledged $10M toward affordable housing. 7

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      One affordable housing complex, the University City Townhomes, was created, only to be demolished in the 2020s. The area surrounding 36th and Market Streets in Philadelphia has, over the past 60 years, largely been transformed according to the WPC plan. It has become a booming high-tech center, with high-performing public schools, and luxury housing. The mostly Black residents who once lived there have been displaced. 8

 

      The model Penn, Drexel, and the City created has been copied in formerly industrial areas throughout the Commonwealth, and the nation. In Pittsburgh, for example, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh, and the city government converted an abandoned steel mill into the Pittsburgh Technology Center. Urban historian Davarian Baldwin has shown how universities in New York, Chicago, and Phoenix have also emulated the University City model, replacing underfinanced and under-resourced neighborhoods with upscale housing, trendy shopping, and lab and office space. In each case, however, lower-income Black and Brown residents were left out of the prosperity the new development created. 9

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      Though their neighborhood has been demolished, the Black Bottom community continues to exist. Every year since 1974, residents have gathered for a reunion, one of the longest-running such events in our nation. Throughout the year, community members supported one another the way they did when the neighborhood was standing. 10 The perseverance of this group, first in challenging an unjust redevelopment plan, then in holding together after being removed, is an example of community values that transcend bricks-and-mortar development. Though prosperity is important, we cannot create a “Better Philadelphia” 11 without neighbors who stand together, and without considering the well-being of all citizens, regardless of race or socioeconomic status.

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REFERENCES

1. Walter Palmer, in discussion with John Balzarini, 26 January 2018.

2. Isaac “Ikey” Davis and Gerald “Jerry” Davis, in discussion with Edward M. Epstein, John Balzarini and Walter

Palmer, 21 January 2019. In Edward M. Epstein, “Race, Real Estate and Education: The University of Pennsylvania’s

Interventions in West Philadelphia, 1960-1980.” (Ed.D. diss, University of Pennsylvania, 2020); 154-58, 171, 218-

219.

3. Edmund N. Bacon to Raymond F. Leonard, memorandum, November 29, 1947, PCA 145.2, Philadelphia City

Planning Commission Files, box 14 A2914, folder “Redevelopment— University 1946– 50;”.

4. John L. Puckett and Mark F. Lloyd, Becoming Penn: The Pragmatic American University, 1950-2000

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 88-91, 105-106. See also Margaret Pugh O’Mara, Cities of

Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

2005), 60, 170-71.

5. Puckett and Lloyd, 108-109.

6. Walter D. Palmer, email message to the author, October 24, 2021.

7. Epstein, 283; Puckett and Lloyd, 127-134.

8. Samantha Melamed, “The Penn Alexander effect: Is there any room left for low-income residents in

University City?” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 1, 2018.

9. Davarian L. Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering Our Cities (New

York: Bold Type, 2021), 44-47; 92-103; 129-141; 163; 167-178.

10. Pearl B. Simpson, The Black Bottom Picnic, (self-published, 2005), 45-46.

11 . “Better Philadelphia” is the name of an exhibition created in 1947 by Edmund Bacon and Oscar Stonorov

to showcase a new vision of the city. See Gregory Heller, Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern

Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 48-53.