Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia

Introduction

Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia provides access to over 1,500 digitized primary source materials that engage users with the complex and contentious history of the modern civil rights movement in Philadelphia.  These primary materials are supplemented with thematic essays, timelines, and maps that supply historical context and underscore Philadelphia’s role in the national struggle for civil rights.  The materials presented here are only a sampling of the primary resources documenting Philadelphia’s civil rights history held within Temple University Libraries’ special collections.  The primary aim of Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia is to bring together materials from disparate archival collections and in doing so provide users with a more cohesive and comprehensive record of key people and events.  New interpretations of these events may also result from the study of the materials.

Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia currently features materials documenting two events: the desegregation of Girard College and the Columbia Avenue riots.  The Desegregation of Girard College (1954-1968) collection includes over 200 photographs from the George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and John W. Mosley photograph collections, primarily chronicling the NAACP-led picket outside Girard College between May and December 1965.  In addition to capturing the daily interactions between demonstrators and police, the photographs also feature such civil rights luminaries as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., national NAACP President Roy Wilkins, attorney and Philadelphia NAACP President Cecil B. Moore, Shelton Hale Waters, and Reverend Joshua E. Licorish.  The collection also contains approximately 450 newspaper articles from the George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin newspaper clipping collection, which offer daily coverage of both the NAACP protest campaign and various court cases challenging Girard College’s racial ban.  Other notable highlights from this collection include KYW film footage of the Girard pickets, including the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., addressing demonstrators in August 1965, and correspondence and court records from the manuscript collections of the Philadelphia Fellowship Commission.  

The Columbia Avenue Riots (1964) collection includes nearly 100 photographs from the George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin photojournalism collection that capture the activities of both rioters and police during the North Philadelphia riots in August 1964.  KYW news footage of the riot scene adds to the visual record, while over 250 newspaper articles from the George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin newspaper clipping collection offer eyewitness accounts, as well as a comprehensive record of the arrests and trials that followed.  Other notable highlights from this collection include a digitized copy of Lenora Berson’s seminal Case Study of a Riot: The Philadelphia Story and manuscript materials from the Philadelphia Jewish Archive, including the Jewish Community Relations Council’s survey of Jewish merchants and business-owners following the riots.

These topics were selected as prototypes for the initial development phase of this project based on public interest, research value, and the accessibility of materials.  This site should be considered a work in progress with the goal to add additional materials that similarly document the people, places, and events important to Philadelphia’s civil rights history.  We welcome public comments and input regarding Civil Rights in a Northern City’s current and future collections.

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