YPP book club! This Thursday, Matthew Countryman will be at the Penn Bookstore with his book, "Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia".
During the 1940s and 1950s, liberal civil rights groups in the city successfully campaigned for Philadelphia's new City Charter to be the first in the nation to include a ban on racial discrimination in municipal employment, services, and contracts. Within a decade, however, black activists in the city were leading consumer boycotts and street protests against the city's liberal establishment for failing to overcome entrenched structures of racial inequality in labor markets, residential neighborhoods, and public schools. ....
Challenging the view that it was the inflammatory rhetoric of Black Power and the rising demands of black activists that derailed the civil rights movement, Up South documents the efforts of Black Power activists in Philadelphia to construct a vital and effective social movement that combined black nationalism's analysis of racism's constitutive role in American society with a program of grassroots community organizing and empowerment. On issues ranging from public education and urban renewal to police brutality and welfare, Philadelphia's Black Power movement remade the city's political landscape. And, in contrast to the top-down middle-class leadership of traditional civil rights groups, Black Power in Philadelphia fundamentally altered the composition of black leadership in the city to include a new cohort of neighborhood-based working-class and female black community activists.
I picked up this book, and am about to start reading it. If anyone else does, tell me and we can totally do an ad hoc book club. I know bits and pieces of the story: the intense murals at the Church of the Advocate, the Black Panther men up against the wall, people lining Girard Avenue under the College gates. I want to know more, and if anyone reading has personal stories of their involvement in or memory of these struggles I would love if you shared them.
So, go to the talk: Thursday February 7 at 5:30 at the Penn Bookstore, 36th and Walnut Streets. And then walk down to the Penn Book Center at 34th and Sansom and buy or order the book, because the Penn Bookstore is owned by Barnes and Noble and you shouldn't support them. Oh and there is totally a paperback that just came out, so even though it printed by an academic press, it's not even too expensive!"
BTW
there is probably a copy in stock at Wooden Shoe on 5th Street by South because I ordered it and then it took forever and I got impatient and bought it in Doylestown one day. But then it came. And if you go there you can stock up on your herbal DIY gynecology zines and books about Spanish anarchist women by Dan's relatives.
Oh and PS going with the book club conceit, you can totally be my online friend in yet another virtual space: goodreads.com.
books?
will they be blogging the book?
Wait, how do you read a book again? I forgot. You start at the back, right?
Just kidding. Thanks for trying to keep us literary on here, JK. You must be a speed reader.
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This Too Will Pass, treating grave matters lightly and light matters gravely, since 2001.
I've been trying
I have been "reading" this for a few months now. It's a my bit academic-dry which is a shame cause it is interesting material (and yet another reminder that "reform" movements have always been a part of Philadelphia politics).
I prefer my municipal history to be in a slightly more tell-all style, like Prayer for the City, or this, my fav:
PS- I am on Goodreads too..Jennifer is not as great a friend there as she makes out, cause everything she reads is BORING.
What a brat!
<3. You want dry, try my next book club pick, "Philadelphia: A 300-year History"!
that's what Up South sits on top of!
those 2 books are my boring best friends! I read a page from each every week or so. I'll tell you how it all turns out next year. (actually, 300 yr history is a bit more my style--trashy. There's a lot of good stuff in like 1860).