Tag: Urban Problems

Camden’s Public Schools and the Making of an Urban “Lost Cause”

Camden’s Public Schools and the Making of an Urban “Lost Cause”

Noelle Cascarelli

In modern-day America, there is perhaps no city quite as infamous as Camden, New Jersey. A relatively-small urban community situated along the banks of the Delaware River, directly across from the sprawling, densely-populated urban metropolis of Philadelphia, in any other world, Camden would likely be a niche community, familiar only to those in the immediate surrounding area. However, the story of Camden is perhaps one of the greatest instances of institutional collapse and urban failure in modern America, akin to the catastrophes that befell communities such as Detroit, Michigan and Newark, New Jersey throughout the mid-twentieth century.

Once an industrial juggernaut, housing powerful manufacturing corporations such as RCA Victory and the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden was perhaps one of the urban communities most integral to the American war effort and eventual victory in the Pacific Theatre in World War II. However, in the immediate aftermath of the war, Camden experienced significant decline, its once-prosperous urban hub giving way to a landscape of disinvestment, depopulation, and despair. By the late twentieth century  – specifically the 1980s and 1990s – Camden had devolved into a community wracked by poverty, crime, and drug abuse, bearing the notorious label “Murder City, U.S.A.” – a moniker which characterized decades of systemic inequity and institutional discrimination as a fatalistic narrative, presenting Camden as a city beyond saving, destined for failure. However, Camden’s decline was neither natural nor inevitable but rather, was carefully engineered through public policy. Through a calculated and carefully-measured process of institutional segregation and racial exclusion, state and city lawmakers took advantage of Camden’s failing economy and evaporating job market to confine communities of color to deteriorating neighborhoods, effectively denying them access to the educational and economic opportunities that had been afforded to white suburbanites in the surrounding area.

This paper focuses chiefly on Camden’s educational decline and inequities, situating the former within a broader historical examination of postwar urban America. Utilizing the historiographical frameworks of Arnold Hirsch, Richard Rothstein, Thomas Sugrue, and Howard Gillette, this research seeks to interrogate and illustrate how segregation and suburbanization functioned as reinforcements of racial inequity, and how such disenfranchisement created the perfect storm of educational failure in Camden’s public school network. The work of these scholars demonstrates that Camden’s neighborhoods, communities, and schools were intentionally structured to contain, isolate, and devalue communities and children of color, and that these trends were not unintended byproducts of natural spatial migration nor economic development. Within this context, it is clear that public education in the city of Camden did not simply mirror urban segregation, but rather institutionalized it as schools became both a reflection and reproduction of the city’s racial geography, working to entrench the divisions drawn by policymakers and real estate developers into a pervasive force present in all facets of life and human existence in Camden.

In examining the influence of Camden’s segregation on public education, this study argues that the decline of the city’s school system was not merely a byproduct, but an engine of institutional urban collapse. The racialized inequitable geography of public schooling in Camden began first as a willful and intentional byproduct of institutional disenfranchisement and administrative neglect, but quickly transformed into a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure, as crumbling school buildings and curricular inequalities became manifestations of policy-driven failure, and narratives of students of color as “inferior” were internalized by children throughout the city. Media portrayals of the city’s school system and its youth, meanwhile, transformed these failures into moral statements and narratives, depicting Camden’s children and their learning communities as symbols of inevitable dysfunction rather than victims of institutional exclusion. Thus, Camden’s transformation into the so-called “Murder Capital of America” was inseparable from the exclusionary condition of the city’s public schools, as they not only bore witness to segregation, but also became its most visible proof and worked to inform fatalistic narratives of the city and moral character of its residents.

Historiography

            Historians of postwar America have long since established an understanding of racial and socioeconomic as essential to the development of the modern American urban and suburban landscape, manufactured and carefully reinforced throughout the twentieth century by the nation’s political and socioeconomic elite. Foundational studies include Arnold Hirsch’s “Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago” (1983) and Richard Rothstein’s 1977 text, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America serve to reinforce such traditional understandings of postwar urban redevelopment and suburban growth, situating the latter as the direct result of institutional policy, rather than mere byproducts and results of happenstance migration patterns.[1] In The Color of Law, Rothstein explores the role of federal and state political institutions in the codification of segregation through intergenerational policies of redlining, mortgage restrictions, and exclusionary patterns in the extension of mortgage insurance to homeowners along racial lines. In particular, Rothstein focuses on the Federal Housing Administration’s creation of redlining maps, which designated majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods as high-risk “red zones,” effectively denying residents from these communities home loans, thus intentionally erecting barriers to intergenerational wealth accumulation through homeownership in suburban communities such as Levittown, Pennsylvania.[2]

            Hirsch’s “The Making of the Second Ghetto” echoes this narrative of urban segregation as manufactured, primarily through the framework of his “second ghetto” thesis. Conducting a careful case study of Chicago through this framework, Hirsch argues that local municipalities, urban developers/planners, and the business elite of Chicago worked in tandem to enact policies of “domestic containment,” wherein public housing projects were weaponized against Black and Hispanic communities to reinforce racial segregation throughout the city. Utilizing public housing as an anchor rather than tool of mobility, Chicago’s socioeconomic and political elite effectively conspired at the institutional level with one another to confine Black Chicagoans to closely-regulated low-income communities, devaluing land and property values in these areas whilst zoning more desirable land for redevelopment and suburban growth, thereby manually raising housing and movement costs to a level that Black Americans were simply unable to afford due to the aforementioned devaluation of their own communities as well as generational barriers to wealth accumulation.[3] Chris Rasmussen’s “Creating Segregation in an Era of Integration” applies such narratives to a close investigation of New Brunswick, New Jersey, particularly in regards to educational segregation, investigating how city authorities utilized similar institutional frameworks of racial separation to confine students to segregated schools and resist integration (school zoning, prioritization of white communities and schools for development, and segregationist housing placements), working off of the existing community segregation detailed by the work of Rothstein and Hirsch. [4]

            Working in tandem with historical perspectives of segregation as integral to the development of suburban America and subsequent urban decline, historians have also identified disinvestment as a critical economic process integral to the exacerbation of urban inequality, and eventual decay. Beginning in the postwar era, specifically in the aftermath of World War II and suburban development, industrial urban communities faced significant shortages in employment in the manufacturing sectors, as corporations began to outsource their labor to overseas and suburban communities, often following the migration of white suburbanites. Robert Beauregard’s Voices of Decline: The Post-War Fate of U.S. Cities diverges from the perspectives of Hirsch and Rothstein, citing declining employment opportunities and urban disinvestment as the most important factor in the decline of urban America on a national scale. Beauregard argues that by framing the disinvestment of urban wartime industrial juggernauts such as Newark, Camden, and Detroit as an “inevitability” in the face of rapid deurbanization and the growth of suburban America, policymakers at the national and local levels portrayed urban decline as a natural process, as opposed to a deliberate conspiracy to strip employment opportunities and the accumulation of capital from urban communities of color, even before suburbanization began to occur on a large scale.[5] Thomas Sugrue’s Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit also adheres to this perspective, situating economic devastation in the context of the development of racially-exclusive suburban communities, thereby working to tie existing scholarship and the multiple perspectives expressed here together, crafting a comprehensive narrative of urban decline in mid-twentieth century America as recurrent in nature, a cycle of unemployment, abject poverty, and a lack of opportunity that was reinforced by public policy and social programs that in theory, were supposed to alleviate such burdens.[6]

            Ultimately, while these sources focus on differing aspects of urban decline, they all work in tandem with one another to allow for a greater, comprehensive portrait of the causes of urban decay in postwar America, throughout the twentieth century. From deindustrialization to segregation and its influence on disparities in education, these sources provide absolutely essential context for an in-depth examination of the specific case study of Camden, New Jersey both in regards to the city itself, but also its public education system. While these sources may not all cite the specific example of Camden, the themes and trends identified each ring true and featured prominently in the story of Camden throughout this period.

            However, this paper will function as a significant divergence from such pre-existing literature, positioning the failure of public education in Camden as a key factor in the city’s decline, rather than a mere byproduct. A common trend present in much of the scholarship discussed above is that educational failure is examined not as a contributing root to Camden’s decline (and certainly not an important one, when education is briefly discussed in this context), but rather as a visible, tangible marker of urban decay in the area. While this paper does not deny the fact that failures in education are certainly rooted in fundamental inequity in urban spaces and broader social failings, it instead seeks to position Camden’s failing education state as not only a result of  urban decline, but as a contributor – specifically by engaging in a discussion of how educational failure transformed narratives around Camden as a failed urban community, beyond help and destined for ruin. In doing so, this paper advances a distinct argument: that Camden’s educational collapse must be understood not merely as evidence of urban decline, but as a foundational force that actively shaped—and in many ways intensified—the narrative of Camden as a city fated for failure.

Suburban Exodus and the Collapse of Urban Schooling

Prior to launching into an exploration of Camden’s public schooling collapse and the influence of such failures of institutional education on the city’s reputation and image, it is important to first establish a clear understanding of the context of such shortcomings.  Due to this paper’s focus specifically on the institutional failure of Camden’s public schooling system, and how such failures shaped perceptions around the city as an urban lost cause, this section will focus primarily on rising rates of racial segregation in the mid-twentieth century, both within city limits and beyond, specifically in regards to Camden County’s sprawling network of suburban communities. While the factors of deindustrialization, economic failure, and governmental neglect absolutely do factor into the creation of an urban environment situated against educational success, racial segregation was chiefly responsible for the extreme disparities found in educational outcomes through the greater Camden region, and is most relevant to this paper’s discussion of racialized narratives of inevitable urban failure that proved to be so pervasive on a national scale regarding Camden, both within the mid-to-late twentieth century and into the present day.

Such trends date back to massive demographic transitions of the pre–World War II era was the Great Migration – the mass movement of Black Americans to northern industrial cities. Drawn by the promise of stable employment and the prospect of greater freedom and equality than was available in the Jim Crow South, millions of migrants relocated to urban centers along the Northeastern seaboard. Camden, New Jersey, was among these destinations, attracting a growing Black population throughout the early twentieth century due to its concentration of manufacturing giants such as RCA Victor, the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, and Campbell’s Soup.[7] With the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939—and especially following the United States’ entry into World War II after Pearl Harbor—industrial production in Camden surged. The city soon emerged as a vital hub of wartime manufacturing and domestic production, cementing its status as a key center of American industrial might.

As a direct result of its industrial growth and expanding wartime economy, Camden continued to attract both Black Americans and new immigrant populations, many of whom were of Latino descent. Among these groups were large numbers of Stateside Puerto Ricans, continuing a trend of immigration dating back to the 1917 extension of U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans.[8] Motivated by many of the same factors as Black migrants—chiefly the pursuit of steady employment and improved living conditions—these communities helped shape Camden into a diverse and vibrant urban center. The city’s population of color expanded rapidly during this period, its growth driven by wartime prosperity and the allure of industrial opportunity.

Following American victory in the Pacific and the end of World War II, Camden continued to experience rapid economic growth, although tensions arose between the city’s residents during this period along racial-ethnic lines. With the common American enemy of Japan and the Nazis firmly removed from the picture, hostilities began to turn inwards, and racial tensions skyrocketed, especially in the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement. As historian Chriss Rasmussen writes in “Creating Segregation in the Era of Integration: School Consolidation and Local Control in New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1965-1976”, “While Brown and the ensuing civil rights movement pointed toward racial integration, suburbanization forestalled racial equality by creating and reinforcing de facto segregation. As many whites moved to the suburbs, blacks and Latinos remained concentrated in New Jersey’s cities.”[9] Thus, as Black Americans increasingly emerged victorious in the fight against racial injustice and began to accumulate more and more rights and legal protections, city-dwelling white Americans grew increasingly fearful and resentful, spurring a mass exodus from urban population centers – including Camden. Drawn by federally backed mortgages, the expansion of highways, and racially exclusive housing policies,[10] white residents moved to neighboring suburbs such as Cherry Hill, Haddonfield, and Pennsauken, while structural barriers effectively excluded Black and Latino residents from the same opportunities. Leaving for the suburbs in droves, white residents fled from Camden, taking significant wealth and capital, as well as major business with them, thus weakening the city’s financial base and leaving workers—particularly people of color—vulnerable to unemployment.[11]

Public and private institutions increasingly withdrew resources from neighborhoods perceived as declining or racially changing and banks engaged in redlining, denying mortgages and loans to residents in nonwhite neighborhoods, while city budgets prioritized the needs of more affluent suburban constituencies over struggling urban areas.[12] Businesses and developers often chose to invest in suburban communities where white families were relocating, rather than in Camden itself, creating a feedback loop of declining property values, eroding tax revenue, and worsening public services. As historian Robert Beauregard writes in Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities, “…while white middle-class and young working-class households had resettled in suburban areas, elderly and minority and other low-income households remained in the central cities. This increased the demand for basic public services (e.g. education) while leaving city governments with taxpayers having lower earnings and less property to tax.”[13] Thus, Camden residents left behind within the confines of the city became increasingly dependent on social welfare programs, which local and state governments began to fund less and less. This combination of economic retrenchment, racialized perceptions of neighborhood “desirability,” and policy-driven neglect fueled a cycle of disinvestment that disproportionately affected communities of color, leaving the city structurally disadvantaged.[14]

Concerns about racial integration in neighborhoods and schools also motivated many families to leave, as they sought communities aligned with their social and economic preferences. Such demographic change was rapid, and by 1950 approximately 23.8 percent of Camden City’s population was nonwhite.[15] While that figure may not seem extreme to the modern American, an individual likely familiar with diverse communities and perspectives, it is particularly shocking when placed in the context of Camden’s surrounding suburbs: by 1950, the nonwhite population of Pennsauken was a mere 4.5 percent,  2.1 percent in Haddonfield, and an even lower 1.9 percent in Cherry Hill.[16] These figures in particular serve as an exemplary demonstration as to the cyclical nature of segregation in the educational sector within the state of New Jersey, contextualizing twentieth century segregation not as a unique occurrence, but rather a continuation of historical patterns. In the nineteenth century, the majority of the state’s schools were segregated along racial lines, and in 1863, New Jersey’s state government directly sanctioned the segregation of public school districts statewide. While such decisions would ultimately be reversed in 1881, active opposition to integration remained into the twentieth century, particularly within elementary and middle school education. For example, a 1954 study found that New Jersey schools, both historically and actively, “…had more in common with states below than above…” the Mason-Dixon line. Most notably however, by 1940, the state had more segregated schools than at any period prior to the passing of explicit anti-segregation legislation in 1881.[17] Thus, it is evident that the state of Camden’s schools in the mid-twentieth century is not an isolated incident, but rather indicative of the cyclical nature of racial separation and disenfranchisement throughout the state of New Jersey in an educational context.

These demographic and economic shifts had profound implications for Camden’s schools, which now served largely Black and Latino student populations. In particular, Blaustein’s work proves particularly valuable in demonstrating the catastrophic impacts of white flight on Camden’s schools, as well as the irreversible harm inflicted on students of color as a result of institutional failures in education. Writing in a 1963 report to then-President John F. Kennedy’s – a cautious supporter of the Civil Rights Movement – Civil Rights Commission, notable civil rights lawyer Albert P. Blaustein establishes a clear portrait of the declining state of Camden’s public schooling system, as well as the everyday issues facing students and educators alike in the classroom. In delivering a scathing report on neighborhood segregation within the city in Camden, as demonstrated by demographic data regarding the race/ethnicity of students enrolled in public education across the Camden metropolitan area, Blaustein writes:

Northeast of Cooper River is the area known as East Camden, an area with a very small Negro population. For the river has served as a barrier against intracity population…Two of the four junior high schools are located here: Davis, which is 4.0 percent Negro and Veterans Memorial which is 0.2 percent Negro. Also located in East Camden are six elementary schools, four of which are all-white and the other two of which have Negro percentages of 1.3 percent and 19.7 percent…Central Camden, on the other hand, is largely Negro. Thus, the high percentage of Negroes in Powell (100.0 percent), Sumner (99.8 percent), Fetters (91.6 percent), Liberty (91.2 percent), and Whittier (99.1 percent), etc.[18]

Based on the data provided here by Blaustein, it is simply impossible to argue that racial segregation did not occur in Camden. Additionally, it becomes quite clear that while much discussion regarding Camden public schools and wide demographic changes in the city as a whole focuses on the movement of white residents to suburban areas, racial segregation and stratification absolutely did occur within the city, thus worsening educational opportunities and learning outcomes for Camden’s students of color even more.

            However, Blaustein does not end his discussion with segregation amongst student bodies, but rather extends his research even further to a close examination of racial/ethnic compositions of school leadership, including teachers, administrators, and school board members, yielding similar results. For example, according to his work, the Fetters School, possessing a student body of 91.6 percent Black students employed nine white teachers and nine Black teachers in 1960, but two white teachers and sixteen Black teachers in 1963. Even more shockingly, Central School, composed of 72.9 percent Black students, employed only white teachers in 1955. By 1963, just nine years later, this number had completely reversed and the school employed all Black educators.[19] Thus, Blaustein’s investigation of variances in Camden public schools’ racial composition reveal that this issue was not simply limited to education nor exclusionary zoning practices, but was rather an insidious demographic trend which had infested all areas of life in Camden, both within education and outside of classrooms. In ensuring that Black students were only taught by Black teachers and white students by white teachers, education in Camden was incredibly nondiverse, eliminating opportunities for cross-racial understanding nor exposure to alternative perspectives, thereby working to keep Black and white communities completely separate not just in the facets of residence and education, but also in interaction and socialization.

Manifestations of Failure in Camden Public Schools

            With the existence of racial segregation both within Camden as well as the city’s surrounding area clearly established, we can now move to an exploration of inequalities in public education within the city. Perhaps one of the most visible and apparent markers of inequalities in public education in Camden can be found in school facilities and buildings. The physical conditions in which children of color were schooled were grossly and completely outdated, especially in comparison to the facilities provided to white children, both inside and outside of the city of Camden. For example, as of 1963, there were six specific public schools that had been cited as in dire need of replacement and/or renovation by Camden’s local legislative board, the vast majority of which were located in segregated communities: Liberty School (1856, 91.2% Black student population), Cooper School (1874, 30.7% Black student population), Fetters School (1875, 91.6% Black student population), Central School (1877, 72.9% Black student population), Read School (1887, 32.0% Black student population), and finally, Bergen School (1891, 45.6% Black student population).[20] Of the schools cited above, approximately half of the buildings that had been deemed by the city of Camden as unfit for usage and nonconducive to education were occupied by majority-Black student populations (Liberty, Fetters, and Central), whereas Bergen School was split just short of evenly between Black and white low-income students.

Additionally, it is important to acknowledge that these figures only account for the absolute worst of Camden’s schools, such trends in inadequate school buildings and facilities occurred throughout the city, in accordance with the general quality of infrastructure and housing present in each neighborhood they were located. In other words, while the data above only references a very small sample size of Camden’s schools, the trends reflected here (specifically, in the intentional zoning of Black students to old, run-down schooling facilities) serve as a microcosm of Camden’s public schools, wherein students of color were intentionally confined to older schools and run-down facilities.

  Education researcher Jonathan Kozol expands on the condition of school facilities in Camden’s disenfranchised communities in his widely-influential book, Savage Inequalities. Written in 1991, Kozol’s work serves as a continuation of Blaustein’s discussion on the failing infrastructure of public education in Camden, providing an updated portrait into the classrooms serving the city’s poorest communities. Kozol pulls no punches in a truly visceral recollection of his visit to Pyne Point Middle School, writing:

…inside, in battered, broken-down, crowded rooms, teem the youth of Camden, with dysfunctional fire alarms, outmoded books and equipment, no sports supplies, demoralized teachers, and the everpresent worry that a child is going to enter the school building armed.[21]

Ultimately, it is inarguable that the physical quality of public schools and educational facilities in Camden was incredibly unequal, reflecting broader residential trends. Where poor, minority-majority neighborhoods experienced a degradation of property values and lived in dilapidated areas of the cities as a direct result of redlining and other racist housing policies, so too were children of color in Camden zoned into old, crumbling school buildings that by this time, barely remained standing, effectively stripping them of the same educational resources and physical comforts provided to white students both in the city and its neighboring suburbs.

            Such inequalities were also present in records of student achievement and morale. Educated in barely-standing school buildings overseen by cash-strapped school districts, students of color in Camden’s poor communities were not afforded nearly the same learning opportunities nor educational resources as white students in the area. In Camden and Environs, Blaustein cites Camden superintendent Dr. Anthony R. Catrambone’s perspective on inequalities in education, writing, “…pupils from Sumner Elementary School (99.8 percent Negro) who transfer to Bonsall Elementary School (50.3 percent Negro) ‘feel unwanted, and that they are having educational problems not experienced by the Negroes who have all their elementary training at Bonsall’ [Catrambone’s words].”[22]

            Thus, it is evident that inequalities in schooling facilities and instruction not only resulted in a considerable achievement gap between students in segregated and integrated communities, but also that such inequalities were clear and demonstrable, even to students themselves at the elementary level. Catrambone’s observation that students from Sumner felt “unwanted” and viewed themselves as struggling, suggests that students in Camden’s segregated neighborhoods internalized the city’s structural inequality, viewing themselves as lesser than their white/integrated peers both in intellectual capacity and personal character. Such perspectives, reinforced by the constant presence of systemic discrimination along racial lines as well as crumbling school facilities and housing units, became deeply entrenched in minds and hearts of Camden’s youth, thereby creating trends of educational failure that were cyclical in nature, reinforced both externally by social structures and institutions as well as internally within segregated communities of color.

            Similarly, dysfunction soon became synonymous with segregated schools and low-income communities of color at the institutional level. School administrators and Boards of Education began to expect failure of students of color, stripping away any opportunity for such schools to prove otherwise. For example, Camden’s school leadership often designated rigorous curriculums and college-preparatory courses to majority-white schools, neglecting to extend the same opportunities to minority-majority districts. For example, in reporting on administrative conversations on the potential integration of Camden High School in 1963, Blaustein observes:

The maintenance of comprehensive academic tracks was recognized by administration as dependent on white students, implying students of color alone were not expected to sustain them: ‘if these pupils [white college preparatory students from the Cramer area] were transferred to Woodrow Wilson [a majority-Black high school located in the Stockton neighborhood], Camden High would be almost entirely a school for business instruction and training in industrial arts.[23]

It is vital to first provide context as to Blaustein’s usage of the terms “business instruction” and “industrial arts.” In utilizing these terms, Blaustein refers primarily to what is referred to as “vocational education” in modern-day America. With this crucial context firmly established, it becomes evident that public educators in early-1960s Camden viewed college education as a racially-exclusive opportunity, to be extended only to white students.

Such attitudes were reflected in the curricular rigor present in Camden’s minority-majority schools which were, to say the least, held to an extremely low standard. The lessons designed for children of color were incredibly simple and non-complex, as schools were treated less as institutions of learning and self-improvement, but rather as detention centers for the city’s disenfranchised youth. As Camden native and historian David Bain writes in the piece Camden Bound, “History surrounds the children of Camden, but they do learn a lot of it in school…Whitman is not read by students in the basic skills curriculum. Few students that I met in Camden High, indeed, had never heard of him.”[24] As such, Black and Hispanic students were effectively set up for failure as compared to white students, viewed as predestined to either not graduate from their primary schooling or to enter lower-paying careers and vocational fields rather than pursue higher education, and opportunities that college afforded students, particularly during this period where college degrees were significantly rarer and highly-valued than in the modern day.

            Thus, it is evident that throughout the mid-twentieth century Camden’s public school system routinely failed Black and Hispanic students. From inequalities in school facilities and curriculum, Camden’s public school system repeatedly communicated to students in segregated areas that they simply were not worth the time and resources afforded to white students, nor possessed the same intellectual capacity as suburban children. Denied quality schools and viewed as predestined high school drop-outs, Camden’s public schools never truly invested in their children, creating an atmosphere of perpetual administrative negligence in improving schools and learning outcomes for the city’s disadvantaged youth. As Blaustein so aptly writes, “‘…the school authorities are against changing the status quo. They want to avoid headaches. They act only when pressures are applied’”.[25]

The Narrative of Inevitability: Camden as a “Lost Cause”

It is clear that such drastic disparities in learning outcomes arose not only out of administrative negligence, but also as a direct result of segregation within the city. While no law affirming segregation was ever passed in New Jersey, it is clear that schools in Camden were completely and unequivocally segregated, and that a hierarchical structure clearly existed in regards to determining which schools and student populations were most supported and prepared for success. Time and time again, educators favored white students and white schools, kicking students of color and their schooling communities to the curb. It is against this backdrop of negligence and resignation that wider narratives around the city of Camden and its youth as “lost causes” beyond any and all help began to emerge.

By the late twentieth century (specifically the 1980s and 1990s), narratives around Camden as a drug and crime-infested urban wasteland began to propagate, rising to a national scale in the wake of increasing gang activity and rapidly-rising crime rates in the area. While public focus centered on the city’s criminal justice department and woefully-inept political system, reporting on the state of Camden’s public schools served to reinforce perceptions of the city as destined for failure and beyond saving, chiefly through local press’ demonization of Camden’s youth. For example, the Courier Post article “Battle being waged to keep youths from crime”, reads, “‘Girls are being raped in schools, drugs are proliferating, alcohol is proliferating, and instead of dealing with it, some parents and administrators are in denial…they insist it’s not happening in their backyard’”.[26] The manner in this author speaks of public schooling in Camden reads as though the city’s schools and places of education were not learning communities, but rather prisons – the students inhabiting these spaces not children, but prisoners, destined to be nothing more than a “thug”.

  Ignoring the city’s long history with racial segregation and redlining, which as established earlier in this paper, clearly resulted not only in disparities in learning outcomes but also caused a deep internalization of institutional failure within many students of color and their learning communities, articles such as this neglect the willingness to truly explore the roots of crime and poverty in Camden, focusing instead on the result of decades of institutional neglect of communities of color, rather than the root cause of these issues. In doing so, media coverage of such failures in Camden removed the burden of responsibility from the city lawmakers and school administrators responsible for abject poverty and educational disparities, instead putting the onus on the communities which were intentionally and perpetually disenfranchised at the institutional level across all aspects of Camden’s sociopolitical network.

Additionally, this article’s veiled assertion of Camden parents as disinterested and uninvested in their children’s success is especially gross and inaccurate. The fact of the matter is that parents and local communities within even the most impoverished and crime-ridden neighborhoods of Camden had long-lobbied for improvements to public schooling and their communities, concerned chiefly with their children’s futures and opportunities. For example, by the late 1990s, Camden City’s charter network had experienced significant growth, much of its early success owed directly to parents and grassroots organizations devoted to improving the post-schooling opportunities of disadvantaged children. In 1997, over seventeen new charters were approved by the city of Camden, the first opening in September of that year. The LEAP Academy University Charter School was the result of years of political lobbying and relentless advocacy, of which the loudest voices came from parents and community activist groups. Spearheaded by Rutgers University-Camden professor and city native, Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, the LEAP Academy included specific parent action committees, community outreach boards, and sponsored numerous community service events.[27] Thus, this inclusion of virtually one of the only groups truly invested in children of color’s success in Camden alongside the group which repeatedly conspired to confine them to crumbling schools and prepare them only for low-paying occupations is wildly inaccurate and offensive in a historical context, thereby demonstrating how media narratives around Camden and its school system repeatedly disregarded factually-correct reporting, in favor of sensationalized reports on Camden’s struggles, framing schools and city youth as ground zero and progenitors of the wider issues facing the city as a whole.

While community activism was absolutely present across Camden, it is also important to highlight the damaging impact of such negative narratives surrounding the city on its residents. In his book Camden Bound, a literary exploration of the history of Camden and its community, Camden-born historian David Bain highlights the internalization of damaging, sensationalized descriptions of Camden. He writes:

For most of my life, my birthplace, the city of Camden, has been a point of irony, worth a wince and often hasty explanation that though I was born in Camden, we didn’t actually ever live in Camden, but in a succession of pleasant South Jersey suburban towns…As I moved through life…I would write out the name Camden (I’m ashamed to name my shame now) with a shudder.[28]

While Bain’s Camden Bound does relate specifically to his own individual experience and struggle with the acknowledgement of his birthplace in the wake of national infamy, he spends perhaps even more time exploring the current state of the city, as well as the perspectives of current Camden residents. In recounts his most recent visit to Camden, Bain describes nothing short of absolute devastation and complete social blight and urban decay, writing:

Too many newspaper headlines crowd my brain – “Camden Hopes for Release From Its Pain”; “In Struggles of the City, Children Are Casualties”; “Camden Forces Its Suburbs To Ask, What If a City Dies?”; “A Once Vital, Cohesive Community is Slowly, but Not Inevitably, Dying.” And that devastating question from Time: “Who Could Live Here?”…It has been called the poorest city in New Jersey, and some have wondered if it is the poorest in the nation. Adult men and women stand or sit in front of their shabby two- story brick houses, stunned by purposelessness. In abandoned buildings, drug dealers and their customers congregate. On littered sidewalks, children negotiate through broken glass, condoms, and spent hypodermics.[29]

Judging from Bain’s simple description of the sights that he witnessed while driving through Camden, it is evident that Camden’s residents have been burned out by the widely-circulating narratives of the city and its national infamy. The vast majority of residents poverty-stricken and lacking the financial or social capital to create meaningful change for their communities themselves, such headlines and narratives of the city were nothing short of absolutely devastating. Such soul-crushing portrayals signal yet another air of perpetual negligence and resignation by powerful voices, within the media, local politics, and even national government, thus demonstrating a national perception of Camden as “failed”, and were thus internalized by Camden’s residents.

For example, in interviewing Rene Huggins, a community activist and director of the Camden Cultural Center, Bain chiefly relays her frustration with recent state legislation upon the assumption of office by Republican governor Christine Todd Whitman and recent rollbacks of welfare programs, occupational training, and educational funding that had been promised to the city. Speaking on the increasing hopelessness of many city residents, Huggins states, “And on top of all that…we get that headline in Time magazine – ’Who Could Live Here?’ Why not just give us a lot of shovels and bury the place?’”.[30] Such statements, alongside Bain’s experiences of Camden, thus demonstrate that as a direct result of national resignation to the state of Camden and a lack of willingness nor initiative to improve the city (and even more damaging, a removal of resources and social initiatives designed specifically to improve the state of the city), many Camden residents adopted a similar mentality of resignation and shame toward their community, choosing to simply exist with the city’s misery as opposed to creating any real, meaningful change, having been spurned and failed by various powerful sociopolitical institutions and organizations across generations, thereby reinforcing the harmful narratives that had played such a crucial role in the development of such behaviors.

The very article mentioned in ire by Ren Huggins, Kevin Fedarko’s “Who Could Live Here?”, also offers insight into public perceptions of Camden and more specifically, its youth, during the late twentieth-century. Written in 1992, Fedarko postures the city of Camden as a barren wasteland and its inhabitants – predominantly young people and children – as akin to nothing more than prisoners and criminals. For example, Fedarko writes:

The story of Camden is the story of boys who blind stray dogs after school, who come to Sunday Mass looking for cookies because they are hungry, who arm themselves with guns, knives and — this winter’s fad at $400 each — hand grenades. It is the story of girls who dream of becoming hairdressers but wind up as whores, who get pregnant at 14 only to bury their infants.[31]

Fedarko’s description of Camden’s children is extraordinarily problematic, in that it not only treats the city’s youth as a monolithic group, but then proceeds to demonize them en masse. In describing the city’s young people as baselessly sadistic and violent, while neglecting to position rising youth crime rates in the context of historical disenfranchisement nor take a moment and pause to acknowledge that this is not the case for all of the city’s young people, Fedarko’s work only furthers narratives of Camden and its young people as lawless and destined for jail cells rather than degrees. In particular, Fedarko’s description of Camden’s young women as “whores” is especially gross, considering the fact that the people of whom Fedarko speaks are children, thereby applying unnecessary derogatory labels to young women (largely women of color), while failing to acknowledge the true tragedy of Camden and the conditions to which young people are subjected to. In describing the situation of a teenager involved in gang activity, Fedarko also employs similarly disrespectful and dehumanizing language, writing:

…drug posses …use children to keep an eye out for vice- squad police and to ferry drugs across town. Says “Minute Mouse,” a 15- year-old dealer: “I love my boys more than my own family.” Little wonder. With a father in jail and a mother who abandoned him, the Mouse survived for a time by eating trash and dog food before turning to the drug business.[32]

Ultimately, it is evident that during the late twentieth century, specifically the eighties and nineties, narratives surrounding Camden portrayed the city as nothing more than an urban wasteland and lost cause, a sad excuse for urban existence that eschewed its history as a sprawling manufacturing juggernaut. More damaging however, were narratives surrounding the people of Camden (especially youth), who became synonymous with violence and criminal activity, rather than opportunity or potential. In short, media coverage of Camden was concerned chiefly with the concept of an urban space and people in chaos and thus, prioritized the spectacle of Camden’s failures over the historical tragedy of the city, neglecting to situation the former in the context of self-imposed de facto segregation and racialized disenfranchisement.

Conclusion

Ultimately, it cannot be denied that perceptions of Camden’s public education system as failing and its youth as morally debased were absolutely essential to the formulation of “lost cause” narratives regarding the city. In the popular imagination, Camden became synonymous with decay and dysfunction—a city transformed from a thriving industrial hub into what national headlines would later call “Murder City, U.S.A.” However, these narratives of inevitability in truth emerged from the city’s long history with racial segregation, economic turmoil, and administrative educational neglect. Camden’s schools were central to this development, acting as both products and producers of inequity, serving as clear symbols of the failures in public policy, which were later recast as moral shortcomings of disenfranchised communities themselves.

As demonstrated throughout this study, the structural roots of Camden’s failures in public education were grounded in segregation, manufactured by the same redlining maps and exclusionary residency policies that confined families of color to the city’s most desolate neighborhoods, which would also determine the boundaries of their children’s schools. White flight and suburban migration drained Camden of its capital and tax base, instead concentrating such resources in suburban communities whose already-existing affluence was only reinforced by federal mortgage programs and social support. Historical inquiry into urban decline and the state of urban communities in the postwar period have long since emphasized the importance of understanding urban segregation not as a natural social phenomenon, but rather an architectural inequity, extending into every aspect of civic life and education. Camden’s experience confirms this: segregation functioned not only as a physical division of space but as a moral and ideological one, creating the conditions for policymakers and the media to portray the city’s public schools as evidence of cultural pathology rather than systemic betrayal.

By the late twentieth century, these narratives had become fatalistic. Newspaper headlines depicted Camden’s classrooms as sites of chaos and its youth as violent, transforming real inequities into spectacle. The children who bore the weight of these conditions—students of color educated in crumbling buildings and underfunded programs—were cast as perpetrators of their city’s demise rather than its victims. The label “Murder Capital” distilled these complexities into a single, dehumanizing phrase, erasing the structural roots of decline in favor of a narrative that made Camden’s suffering appear inevitable. In doing so, public discourse not only misrepresented the city’s reality but also justified further disinvestment, as policymakers treated Camden’s collapse as a moral failure rather than a product of policy.

However, despite such immense challenges and incredibly damaging narratives that had become so deeply entrenched in the American national psyche regarding the city, Camden and its inhabitants persisted. Refusing to give up on their communities, Camden’s residents, many of whom lacking the influence and capital to create change alone, chose to band together and weather the storm of national infamy. From community activism to political lobbying, Camden’s communities of color demonstrated consistent self-advocacy. Viewing outside aid as perpetually-promised yet never provided, Camden’s communities pooled their resources and invested in their own communities and children, establishing vast charter networks as well as advocating for criminal justice reform and community policing efforts.

While change was slow and seemingly unattainable, Camden has experienced a significant resurgence in the past decade or so. From investment by major corporations and sports organizations (for example, the Philadelphia 76ers’ relocation of their practice facilities and front offices to the Camden Waterfront in 2016) as well as a revitalization of educational access and recruitment of teaching professionals by the Camden Education Fund, the city has slowly begun to reverse trends of decay and decline, pushing back against narratives that had deemed its failure as inevitable and inescapable. Celebrating its first homicide-free summer this year, Camden’s story is tragic, yet far from over. Rather than adhere to the story of persistent institutional failure and disenfranchisement, Camden’s residents have chosen to take charge of the narrative of their home and communities for themselves, changing it to one of perseverance, determination, and strength. In defiance of decades of segregation, disinvestment, and stigma, Camden stands not as America’s “Murder City,” but as its mirror—a testament to how injustice is built, and how, through resilience, effort, and advocacy, it can be torn down.

References

 “The case for charter schools,” Courier Post, March 02, 1997

Bain, David Haward. “Camden Bound.” Prairie Schooner 72, no. 3 (1998): 104–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40637098 

Beauregard, Robert A. Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2003 http://www.123library.org/book_details/?id=112493

Blaustein, Albert P., and United States Commission on Civil Rights. Civil Rights U.S.A.: Public Schools: Cities in the North and West, 1963: Camden and Environs. Washington, DC: United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1964.

Douglas, Davison M. “The Limits of Law in Accomplishing Racial Change: School Segregation in the Pre-Brown North.” UCLA Law Review 44, no. 3 (1997): 677–744.

Fedarko, Kevin. “The Other America.” Time, January 20, 1992. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,974708-3,00.html. 

Gillette, Howard. Camden after the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

Goheen, Peter G., and Arnold R. Hirsch. “Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960.” Labour / Le Travail 15 (1985): 234. https://doi.org/10.2307/25140590. 

Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. New York: Broadway Books, 1991.

Rasmussen, Chris. “Creating Segregation in the Era of Integration: School Consolidation and Local Control in New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1965–1976.” History of Education Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2017): 480–514. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26846389

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law : A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. First edition. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2017.

Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Tantillo, Sara. “Battle being waged to keep youths from crime,” Courier Post, June 8, 1998

Yaffe, Deborah. Other People’s Children: The Battle for Justice and Equality in New Jersey’s Schools. New Brunswick, NJ: Rivergate Books, 2007. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=225406

[1] Peter G. Goheen and Arnold R. Hirsch. “Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960.” Labour / Le Travail 15 (1985): 234.

[2] Richard Rothstein. The Color of Law : A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. First edition. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2017.

[3] Peter G. Goheen and Arnold R. Hirsch. “Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960.” Labour / Le Travail 15 (1985): 234.

[4] Chris Rasmussen. “Creating Segregation in the Era of Integration: School Consolidation and Local Control in New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1965–1976.” History of Education Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2017): 480–514.

[5] Robert A. Beauregard. Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2003.

[6] Thomas J. Sugrue. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.

[7] Howard Gillette, Camden after the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 12–15.

[8] David Howard Bain, “Camden Bound,” Prairie Schooner 72, no. 3 (1998): 104–44.

[9] Chris Rasmussen,. “Creating Segregation in the Era of Integration: School Consolidation and Local Control in New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1965–1976.” History of Education Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2017): p.487

[10] Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright, 2017), 70–75; Gillette, Camden after the Fall, 52–54.

[11] Gillette, Camden after the Fall, 45–50; Bain, “Camden Bound,” 110–12.

[12] Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 35–40.

[13] Beauregard, Robert A. Voices of Decline : The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities. Second edition. New York: Routledge, 2003, 91

[14] Gillette, Camden after the Fall, 50–55; Bain, “Camden Bound,” 120.

[15]Albert P. Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A.: Camden and Environs, report to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, 1963, 22.

[16] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A., 23–24.

[17]Davison M. Douglas, “The Limits of Law in Accomplishing Racial Change: School Segregation in the Pre-Brown North.” UCLA Law Review 44, no. 3 (1997)

[18] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A., 18.

[19] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A., 18.

[20] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A.,

[21] Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities : Children in America’s Schools. New York: Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., 1991.

[22] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A., 22.

[23] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A.,

[24] Bain, David Haward. “Camden Bound.” Prairie Schooner 72, no. 3 (1998): 120-121.

[25] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A.,

[26] “Battle being waged to keep youths from crime,” Courier Post, June 8, 1998

[27] Sarah Tantillo, “The case for charter schools,” Courier Post, March 02, 1997

[28] Bain, Camden Bound, 108-109.

[29] Bain, Camden Bound, 111.

[30] Bain, Camden Bound, 119.

[31] Kevin Fedarko, “The Other America,” Time, January 20, 1992

[32] Ibid.

The Systemic Failures of the Flint Water Crisis

The Systemic Failures of the Flint Water Crisis

Ava Byzewski

In Anna Clark’s The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and American Urban Tragedy, the Flint, Michigan water crisis began as a result of the combination of historical, political, and social circumstances. Clark’s perspective focuses on the injustices and failures that made the conditions for the crisis to occur and continue. Clark’s analysis identifies important causes of the crisis such as, systematic negligence, environmental racism, government incompetence, and the economic decline of the city of Flint. Clark examines the interconnectedness of these factors that paints a picture of how this crisis unfolded. 

Prior to Flint’s water crisis the city’s economic slump and increasing disinvestment cultivated an environment for the crisis to occur. Flint became the center for auto manufacturing for General Motors, which was responsible for the city’s growth in population. Unfortunately, Flint’s economy was destroyed by deindustrialization in the late 20th century which led to General Motors shutting down many of its plants in Flint. This led to mass unemployment and an abrupt decline in the city’s population due to the massive white flight out of Flint. According to Clark, Flint’s tax base shrunk exponentially during this economic downturn making it almost impossible for the city to maintain its infrastructure. In fact, “Flint’s infrastructure was in a death spiral. The water rates were expensive because the pipes were bad because vacancy rates were high because the city had been shrinking for so long” (Clark 36). People who could not afford to leave the city were being crushed by the added expense that came from others leaving. Flint’s pipes (which had been put in at the beginning of the 20th century) were some of the oldest in the nation. This put the city at risk and state authorities’ enforcement of emergency management put financial restraint before the welfare of the city’s population, worsening Flint’s already dire situation. This continued disinvestment was revealed during the crisis according to Clark, “the disparities in the water traced a pattern of inequality and disinvestment that was decades in the making. The whole city was exposed to toxic water– and so were commuters and other visitors– but the people who had it worst lived in the poorer, more decayed neighborhoods. And they tended to be black.” (Clark 43). The residents of Flint that were black  were treated differently by the government compared to the wealthier, predominantly white residents. This economic decline coupled with the systematic negligence creates a deeper understanding of the decisions that played into the water crisis. 

A number of cost-cutting measures that put financial savings over public health were the core of Flint’s water crisis. The decision to change Flint’s water source from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) to the Flint River was primarily financial. Flint’s water rates were among the highest in the country, which posed a significant burden given that “42 percent of residents lived below the federal poverty level” (Clark 15). Due to Flint’s decreasing population and unstable financial situation, fewer ratepayers could afford the water infrastructure, creating further pressure on the economy. Clark describes how corrosion inhibitors are a common treatment that stops lead from leaking into drinking water and these inhibitors were not mandated by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ). Clark mentioned, “the city said again that the water met all safety requirements and that it was continually monitoring for potential power problems… But in fact, there was a problem. A serious one. New water treatment programs did not include corrosion control” (Clark 33). As a result of the corrosive water from the Flint river, the lead pipes in the city of Flint began to deteriorate leading to the introduction of hazardous quantities of lead into the water. After the switch to the Flint river the locals noticed a difference in the water quality right away. One example of the noticeable difference in particular Clark mentions is LeAnne Walters as she described the water as “coming out of the faucet looking like urine” and she shared the frustration of rashes and hair loss in her children” (Clark 65). Despite the complaints, state officials reassured local residents that the water was safe to drink. Clark argues that these decisions and reactions were representative of government neglect and incompetence. 

One of Clark’s most important arguments of her analysis was the examination of environmental racism and how it influenced and exacerbated the crisis and the response. Clark uses Flint as an example of the effects of a marginalized community of Black and low-income residents that suffered from systematic neglect. Clark argues that this led to government officials’ dismissive attitude and lack of response to residents’ complaints. The practice of redlining by General Motors in Flint when providing housing for their employees. General Motors constructed homes and sold them to their employees; however, these homes were for white employees. In fact, “Racially restrictive covenants-an agreement, written into deeds, to keep people out based on race-were strictly enforced both in GM neighborhoods and throughout Flint” (Clark 45-46). This left the Black residents of Flint in the less desirable areas of Flint “And, in this self-fulfilling spiral, their houses generated less money in property taxes, which meant fewer resources to invest in school and infrastructure” (Clark 61). Many of the White residents left Flint after the shut down of most of the General Motors plants; this left many houses abandoned and without proper care the pipes were left to corrode. With disinvestment of these neighborhoods this left the Black residents of Flint more vulnerable. Additionally, the lack of urgency to support these deteriorating neighborhoods created a lack of accountability and transparency towards Flint residents. State officials originally dismissed reports by Flint residents of the inadequate water conditions that Clark refers to as “systematic disregard” for Black communities. Clark mentions how “between 1999 and 2004, black children across the country were 1.6 times more likely to test positive for lead than white children, and nearly three times more likely to have very high blood lead levels” showing the disregard for black communities (Clark 98). The human catastrophe of the crisis led to several health issues especially among children who were exposed to toxic levels of lead. This highlights how the lack of information and transparency left the residents of Flint exposed to toxic levels of lead. The structural racism that hampered Black citizens of Flint access to information and resources that could have reduced these health effects and or avoided the disaster. Flint’s environmental racism intensified Flint’s water crisis through the disregard for its community and discriminatory practices. 

In Clark’s analysis of the Flint water crisis, she combines historical, political, and social circumstances that intensified the emergency. Through the combination of Flint’s economic downturn, cost cutting measures, and environmental racism through discriminatory practices that led to this catastrophe. Clark draws attention to the human cost of the crisis and its widespread ramifications. Serving as a warning about the repercussions of putting cheap policy in place over the health and welfare of the general public. 

The Flint Water Crisis is historically significant because it exemplifies the consequences of systematic negligence, environmental racism, and the prioritization of cost cutting over public health. It demonstrates how historical patterns of segregation, deindustrialization, and government disinvestment can set the stage for a public health catastrophe. As residents and scientists worked together to expose the truth when authorities failed them, the crisis underscores the importance of civic accountability and grassroots activism. Flint’s narrative serves as a prism through which we may analyze broader patterns of injustice in American history and society.

   The patterns in the Flint water crisis relate to historical practices like redlining and industrial decline to contemporary concerns like environmental justice, infrastructure decay, and systematic inequality, which would be appropriate to teach in secondary schools. It encourages critical thought on civic duty, race, class, and the function of government. Students would be able to comprehend what transpired in Flint and are better equipped to challenge the choices made by people in authority and recognize the importance of their voices in a democratic society. 

References

Clark, Anna. The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy. Henry Holt and Company, 2018.

The Social Cost of Deindustrialization: Postwar Trenton, New Jersey

The Social Cost of Deindustrialization: Postwar Trenton, New Jersey

Patrick Luckie

Studying local history is something that is often overlooked and underestimated in social studies classrooms around the country. Think about it—do you have any memory of learning about your own local community in a coordinated school or social studies effort? Big ideas like imperialism, global culture, and other themes of the past and present usually take precedence over learning about one’s own local history in the high school. As part of my undergraduate senior research project at Rider University, I grappled with this fact and produced a short study of my own local history which I used to inform my instruction in the classroom. This article will present the research I have done and will end with a short analysis of how my research project on local history has affected my instruction in Ewing High School and how it can change the way we think about teaching local history in all American high school social studies classrooms.

 “Trenton’s uniqueness cannot be found anywhere in the world, for the lessons learned cannot be duplicated at any price”[1]

These powerful words were written by Dr. Jack Washington, a teacher of Social Studies in Trenton public schools for over 40 years and author of, The Quest for Equality: Trenton’s Black Community 1890-1965 which traces racial struggle and movements for equality over the city’s history. Trenton’s uniqueness as Washington describes, is a product of its deep history, rooted in the American Revolution, World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Trenton was once a manufacturing powerhouse, home to multiple industries which forged the urban landscape of the state’s capital and produced thousands of union jobs for its inhabitants. These included the mighty John A. Roebling’s Sons Company, which aided in the creation of the Brooklyn Bridge and whose factory in West Chambersburg served as a symbol of innovation and opportunity for decades. Trenton’s pottery industry was also one of the largest and most successful in the whole nation alongside its iron, steel, rubber, and textile companies. Together, these industries provided enough stable employment and pay to support a rapidly growing population of mostly first and second generation European immigrants from Italy, Ireland, Germany, Poland, and Hungary, to name a few. Trenton’s manufacturing prowess was best showcased in 1917 with the first lighting of the famous “Trenton Makes, The World Takes” sign on the Lower Trenton Bridge, a symbol which still stands today in 2023.

 The “golden age” of the city, as historian John T. Cumbler describes it, lasted from around 1850 to 1920 when Trenton established itself as one of the manufacturing capitals of the nation.[2] Almost perfectly situated between two of America’s largest cities in New York and Philadelphia, Trenton industrialists used its strategic geographic location along the Delaware River to tap into large markets and supply the massive manufacturing needs of the east coast. Trenton at this time was truly a symbol of the American dream, and people flocked to the city in search of opportunities. By 1920, the population of the city surpassed 119,000 people and it was amongst the most densely populated places in the state of New Jersey.[3]

The first signs of the city’s decline came with the weakening of its labor movement. By the 1920s, the age of mechanization had begun and the economic shift from factory work to mechanized manufacturing began weakening labor unions overtime. Worker’s unions and cooperation between owners and workers alike had been central to the functioning of the local economy and the glue by which the city binded itself together. Overtime, businesses could no longer maintain the standards of work they had previously upheld and conditions within the city started to slowly deteriorate. From 1910-1920 Trenton underwent its largest leap in population within a decade and shortly thereafter it began experiencing some of its greatest economic struggles. Plants began relocating outside of the city and unionized jobs were becoming more and more difficult to attain. Economic historians have grappled with this shift in the post-war era, claiming “US corporations aggressively sought to break free of expensive union contracts and to seek out ways to pay lower wages and allied social costs in order to increase profits.”[4] This is a persistent trend in this study. With great increases in population and the changing state of the local and national economy, Trenton suffered meaningful losses in employment and manufacturing output.

With the Great Depression beginning in 1929 and the waging of the Second World War in 1939, Trenton retreated back to manufacturing and away from addressing the issues surrounding labor which had marked its initial decline. The waging of the war meant a massive nation-wide mobilization of industry towards fueling the war effort. The war-time economy of Trenton temporarily revitalized the city. Roebling’s Sons employed droves of new workers, opportunities for overtime became more available, unions strengthened, worker’s pay went up, and the largest wave of black migrants in the city’s history began making their way to Trenton beginning in the 1940s.[5] These migrants came to Trenton and other cities in what is known as The Great Migration. That is the movement of millions of African Americans predominantly from the rural southern states to the urban north and midwest between 1910-1970.

This temporary boom did not yield long-term progress for Trenton in the post-war period. During the 1950s, many of the city’s largest industries began relocating outside the city limits and the economy did not adequately support its largest ever population of over 129,000 people.[6] In 1952, Trenton’s most popular employer Roebling’s Sons was sold to Colorado Fuel and Iron Company which over the next decade cut its employment numbers in Trenton and relocated its major manufacturing and business centers outside the city limits. This was the fate for many of the most popular industries within the city which sold their shares to larger corporations after WWII, leaving the fate of the city’s economy in the hands of interests which had little to no connection to it. The rubber, steel, iron, and pottery industries which had defined the city of Trenton and produced its “golden age” became shadows of their former selves and the physical conditions of the city reflected this change. Overtime, thousands of industrial jobs were lost and the population of Trenton dropped 13,382 people from 1950 to 1960 and an additional 9,381 people the following decade.[7] Population decline continued to the year 2000 and stabilized between 80,000 to 90,000 in the 21st century. 

This study seeks to answer two fundamental questions: 1) What were the major effects of deindustrialization on Trenton, NJ in the decades immediately following WWIII? 2) How were these effects felt by the people living within the city at this time? In answering these questions, this study will provide a lens through which race and class come to the forefront of the discussion. Trenton’s decline overlaps with the migration of thousands of African Americans to the city in search of economic opportunities. This demographic shift was the largest in the city’s history and was not met with opportunity but rather inequality and increased racial tension. The major effects of deindustrialization on Trenton, NJ in the post-war period were economic destabilization, movement to the suburbs, and increased racial tensions between white and black Trentonians. Each subsection of this work will dive into these effects individually as well as their overall impact on life in Trenton. It is important to recognize that this movement away from manufacturing and its effects were not phenomena restricted to certain areas or regions. Rather it was a national trend which all rust belt cities like Trenton grappled with in the 21st century. In addition to deindustrialization broadly,  the age of mechanized labor, the shifting of the U.S. economy towards greater support for large corporations, and the social movements of the 1960s all played extremely important roles in shaping American cities in the post-war era.

Historiography

Secondary source literature on the decline of U.S. cities in the post-WWII period falls into the fields of American urban, economic, and social history. One of the most popular works on these subjects is historian Thomas J. Sugrue’s The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, which examines the many ways in which American cities began to decline following WWII with specific focus on racial inequality and division. In his work, Sugrue states that Trenton, like Detroit and other rust belt cities of the time, experienced hundreds of thousands of layoffs in manufacturing jobs nationwide due to the changing state of the U.S. economy and the lack of government spending allocated towards Northern cities.[8] These conditions radically transformed urban environments into almost unrecognizable versions of their industrial heights. Sugrue explores the connections between suburbanization, demographic change, and the racial attitudes of northern whites to produce an all-encompassing case study of the decline of Detroit. At the heart of his argument is that racial segregation and inadequate political responses to signs of crisis determined the fate of the city. The importance of this historical research cannot be overstated. Before this book was originally published in 1996, the stories of Detroit and other American cities who suffered from the consequences of deindustrialization and racial division in the post-war period were largely untold. The Origins of Urban Crisis continues to be one of the most influential modern studies of American urban history and is without doubt one of the most cited pieces of literature in the field.

Jefferson Cowie and Joseph Heathcott, who together produced Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization,built on the historical research of Sugrue by studying the impact of post-war deindustrialization across the nation. This book seeks to progress the conversation of historic decline to modern solutions for urban decay and economic instability. In doing so, it compiles a collection of essays from historians and other professionals to further explore deindustrialization and its impact on American cities.[9] From this perspective, the authors identify a complexity of causes and effects of urban decline which vary from city to city but share many similarities nationally. The value of this work is in its wide-scope. By compiling essays from multiple professionals in a variety of related disciplines, the image of declining cities in the U.S. following WWII becomes more clear than ever.

The most recognized work on post-war deindustrialization in specifically Trenton, New Jersey lies within historian John T. Cumbler’s A Social History of Economic Decline: Business, Politics, and Work in Trenton. This book outlines a long trajectory of economic conditions in Trenton beginning in the 1920s with focus on the Great Depression and researches the changing nature of the city up until the book’s publishing in 1989. One of Cumbler’s main arguments includes the notion that America experienced a gradual economic shift from civic to national capitalism following the Great Depression which empowered large corporations while simultaneously destroying the small businesses which held many industrial cities together.[10] He also explores the rich history of the city’s most impactful industries, politicians, union leaders, and manufacturing workers to provide a comprehensive view of Trenton’s economic and social decline. This work provides the foundation of historical knowledge on Trenton required to produce further research on this topic. However, Cumbler’s history of Trenton does not extend as far into the social consequences and effects of deindustrialization as one might expect. Nevertheless, virtually any modern historical literature on the city of Trenton cites this work. This points to the undying credibility of Cumbler as a historian and shows the importance and relevance of his arguments to the continued study of the city’s history.

More recent historical literature on related topics has largely focused on national trends of suburbanization and racial conflict. One such journal article titled “The Rural Past-in-Present and Postwar Suburban Progress” by University of Waterloo professor Stacy Denton studies the shift towards suburbanization following WWII. The author highlights the transformation of previously rural spaces to suburban landscapes and the implications of such transformations on national attitudes and beliefs towards race, culture, and class.[11] In a similar light, economic historian Leah Platt Bouston’s 2007 work “Black Migration, White Flight: The Effect of Black Migration on Northern Cities and Labor Markets” studies the effects of The Great Migration on northern cities and their economies. She also dives into the racist attitudes of northern whites which manifested themselves in movements out of increasingly diversifying cities and into the surrounding suburbs as part of a process termed “white flight.”[12] Both these works of history are incredibly valuable to this study of post-war Trenton for the topics and findings of their research are amongst the greatest effects of deindustrialization on the city.

The research done in this paper will synthesize the secondary source material on the decline of U.S. cities and apply their findings to a specific case study of Trenton, New Jersey. In doing so, it will paint a clearer picture of the more immediate social and economic effects of deindustrialization on the city in the decades following WWII. This will add to the historiography of urban history and Trenton historical study by compiling primary and secondary source documents to more deeply understand the major effects of deindustrialization and economic transformation on the city.  These major effects include economic destabilization, massive suburbanization, and increased racial tension. These symptoms of deindustrialization were felt most harshly by the city’s poor ethnic-white and growing black population. More specifically, economic decline in Trenton coincided with the arrival of black migrants which compounded racist attitudes and practices within the city. This is most clear in workplace and housing segregation which new migrants had to face upon their arrival.

Economic instability

Industry leaving Trenton following WWII radically changed the city’s local economy. Unionized factory jobs became harder to attain, poor residents were left with fewer options, and Trenton’s growing black community was segregated in their employment. Long-time union workers like those who worked in the pottery and steel plants found themselves in an unfamiliar situation. As Cumbler explained, “Those workers thrown out of work by plant closings had the hardest time finding work and represented the largest number of Trenton’s unemployed.”[13]

The selling of corporations like Roebling’s Sons produced a much weaker focus on the city’s manufacturing growth and output and instead, large corporations sought for the relocation of facilities and workers to outside the city. This left the existing workforce in the city out to dry and decreased options for employment, especially among the lower-income white and minority black populations.

 One action taken by the state and local government to fill this gap created by fleeing industry was growth in the employment of state workers and other public jobs. New Jersey state workers were in the 1950s and 60s, as they still are in the present day, centralized in the capital city of Trenton. Cumbler described this shift from manufacturing to public work as, “Blue Collar to White Collar and White Smock.”[14] This provided some relief to the city’s unemployment problem which exceeded the national average through the 1950s and 60s but it did not come close to meeting the pay and benefit standards that manufacturing jobs had produced just a decade prior. Additionally, the large majority of state workers employed at this time were disproportionately white men. Despite these changes, public and state employment was not enough to lift the city out of its economic slump nor its inherent issues with workplace discrimination.

A large part of the story of economic destabilization in Trenton as a product of deindustrialization was the negative consequences on its black community. Former Trentonian and author Helen Lee Jackson published her autobiography in 1978 charting her experience with racial discrimination as a black woman seeking meaningful employment in the city. Her description of Trenton reads as follows:

In 1940, Trenton was an industrial city with many potteries. Steel mills, factories, and a large auto plant, but the production lines were almost solidly white. Black men swept the floors, moved heavy equipment and shipping crates, and performed other burdensome tasks. In the business sections, they were almost invisible except as window cleaners, janitors, or elevator operators. There were no black salespeople in the stores, banks, or business offices. They were hired as maids, package wrappers, or seamstress. Even the five-and-ten-cent stores refused to hire blacks, except to sweep, dust, or move stock.[15]

Jackson’s firsthand experience with racial segregation and inequality in the city in the 1940s is a reflection of the racial attitudes and prejudices in Trenton and other northern cities earlier in the 20th century. Racist attitudes towards black migrants who largely came from the south was a characteristic of many industrial cities in the U.S. at this time as is highlighted in Sugrue’s work on Detroit and other rust belt cities. With greater numbers of black migrants entering northern cities, the problem of racial discrimination and inequality intensified and the competition for jobs in short supply fuel racist attitudes. According to Sugrue, a combination of factors including employer bias, the structure of the industrial work place, and the overarching ideologies and beliefs of racism and black inferiority contributed to this workplace segregation.[16] For Trenton, these differences in employment were visible to the observer and significantly impacted the lives of those seeking stable income. With the collapse of industry happening simultaneously with a dramatic increase in the city’s black population, this problem compounded. Black residents were not only excluded from whatever factory jobs were left on the basis of their race but they were also labeled as the source of the city’s problems altogether.

In a 1953 study of community services in Trenton, researchers found that the average black resident experienced twice as much unemployment and earned on average 30% less total income than the average white person at this time despite only a one year difference in their average acquired education.[17] These statistics are proof of income inequality and workplace discrimination and provide insight into the lived experiences of black people in Trenton at this time. Furthermore, research from The Journal of Economic History, suggests “black workers were channeled into negro jobs and faced limited opportunities for promotion.”[18] Access to financial resources and meaningful employment were among the largest reasons for black migration to Trenton and other northern cities. Upon their arrival however, they were met with egregious workplace discrimination and were given very little opportunities to climb the economic ladder. Black women specifically made up, “The least utilized pool of potential industrial labor power having much less than proportionate representation with her white counterpart” according to a 1950s study titled, The Negro in the Trenton Labor Market.[19] Many black women, including Helen Lee Jackson, struggled even more so than black men to find employment within the city. These conditions forced economically disadvantaged men and women alike to scramble for jobs and income in order to support themselves and their families.

Changes to the manufacturing economy and workplace discrimination created great instability in Trenton during the 1950s and 60s. Old union workers were suddenly left jobless and the fruits of their loyal labor to the city’s largest industries were now gone. Attempts to revitalize the economy largely failed and economic decline impacted the poor and minority black population of the city more harshly than anyone else in the form of unequal pay and limited job opportunities. With this knowledge, it becomes clear that deindustrialization and the exodus of industry destroyed the economy of Trenton that was historically forged by large-scale manufacturing and robust labor unions and disproportionately affected the new and growing black community.

Suburbanization

Another major consequence of postwar deindustrialization on America’s rustbelt cities was the creation of and migration to the suburbs. Suburbs are the areas where urban centers like Trenton, NJ extend into previously rural environments where new housing developments, industries, and townships began to populate with greater and greater numbers of prior city-dwelling individuals. Historian Kenneth T. Jackson’s work on suburbanization titled,

Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States,  provides the best historical analysis of this phenomenon which swept the nation in the 20th century. Among many important factors, he claims that the roots of suburbanization can be traced to the boom of the automobile industry in the 1920s which enabled those who could afford it to move further and further away from the cities in which they worked. Jackson states, “Indeed the automobile had a greater spatial and social impact on cities than any technological innovation since the development of the wheel” He goes further to explain, “After 1920 suburbanization began to acquire a new character as residential developments multiplied, as cities expanded far beyond their old boundaries, and as the old distinctions between city and country began to erode.”[20]

For Trenton NJ, this shift towards the suburbs was gradual beginning in the 1920s and peaking during the 1950s. It is important to note that suburbanization in Trenton and in cities across the nation happened gradually into the late 20th century. This coincided with a decline in major industries and jobs. Historical research on suburbanization has also revealed that many of these white suburbanites moved to the suburbs to create a physical barrier between them and their racial counterparts.[21] As a result of these factors, thousands of residents with the financial freedom to do so began expanding into the towns on the periphery like Hamilton, Ewing, and Lawrence. Many of whom continued to work as state workers or in other capacities inside Trenton while living outside the city. These towns saw unprecedented growth in the post-WWII years in housing developments thanks to VA and FHA loans which were granted to veterans of the war as part of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal Reforms.[22] It is important to note that these New Deal programs were especially beneficial to white service members and much historical literature has been written about the exclusionary practices associated with housing loans in relation to African Americans. This is relevant because during and shortly after WWII, the largest wave of black migrants traveled from predominantly southern states to Trenton and other northern cities in search of employment opportunities associated with the mobilization of industry towards the war effort. This search for opportunity overlapped with the decay of Trenton’s largest industries, leaving many black migrants below the poverty line, working menial jobs as opposed to fruitful unionized jobs, and in some cases, out of work completely. Compounding these issues was the inaccessibility of reasonable home loans for members of the black community.

The effects of suburbanization on the local economy of Trenton and its inhabitants can be seen through analysis of the popular media. Pride Magazine was a Trenton-based publication which centered its content around black businesses and black business owners. This specific magazine concerned itself with the failure of local politicians to enact positive change in the form of urban renewal plans which were targeted at improving the infrastructure, housing, and employment opportunities within the city. In March of 1972, Pride Magazine issued a publication titled, “Black Businesses Need Your Help!” which featured a section written by the magazine’s publisher Vance Phillips, who received his college education in Trenton. He wrote, “What are we doing to fill the vacuum of the cities which was created by relocation of the established business” He then goes on to say, “After spending 5 years of planning and developing new programs for structural and economic changes, Trenton Model Cities program has failed to meet the potential growth of new and old businesses in our community.”[23] Phillips like many black Americans living in Trenton during the 1970s saw visible signs of the city’s decline through the failure of local businesses. He believed what was needed to fix this problem was a stronger government response along with increased civic action from specifically the black community.[24]

 In this same publication, Phillips expressed his belief that, “a person who lives within the city should have preference over persons living outside of the cities in terms of employment.”[25] Here the author is addressing those who live in the surrounding suburbs but continue to fill job positions within the city limits. This would have been a popular message to Trenton’s black business owning population due to the negative effects that rapid suburbanization had on small businesses within the city.  In this magazine article, Phillips touches on an number of topics which are extremely relevant to this study. For one, the instability of small businesses in the wake of mass-suburbanization which he observed was largely due to the relocation of both industry and people to outside the city. Mostly ethnically-white Trentonians were leaving the city for the suburbs and taking with them their spending power. With population decline being spearheaded by movements to the suburbs, there simply was not enough money being circulated throughout the city to adequately support the small businesses which propped up its local economy.

Another popular message within this passage highlights that with most of Trenton’s workforce shifting into the surrounding suburbs, so too did its voting power.[26] This left black communities who resided within the urban centers even more powerless as a minority to change their own political environment. Suburbanization brought with it a massive decrease to the city’s population and tax-base. The previously 100,000+ populated city now had just around 80,000 inhabitants by 1970.[27] This rapid population decrease meant that the tax revenue generated was not enough to effectively grapple with the issues facing the economy and the evolving workforce.

Furthermore, local culture within the city which had been forged by America’s largest waves of European immigration in the 19th and early 20th century suffered as a result of deindustrialization and suburbanization. Many of the small businesses and social institutions which had historically characterized the city of Trenton were established by first and second generation Italian, Irish, Polish, and Hungarian immigrants. Many of whom traveled from the larger cities of New York and Philadelphia to find industrial jobs in Trenton. Dennis J. Starr’s book, The Italians of New Jersey, outlines the effects of suburbanization on the “old immigrants” of New Jersey, stating:

The movement to the suburbs and smaller urban places paralleled a major transformation of the state’s urban political economy. Following the war, the state’s largest cities did not participate in the postwar prosperity and economic development. Instead, their industrial bases eroded, their mercantile bases moved to suburban shopping malls and their overall, especially affluent white, populations shrank.[28]

The effect of suburbanization on the local culture of Trenton’s longest serving residents is a source of some historical debate. Cumbler notes that, “Despite suburbanization of the more successful Italians and Slavs, many of Trenton’s ethnic neighborhoods seemed as entrenched as ever in the 1950s.”[29] However, the following decades of the 1950s would see even more of Trenton’s staple “old immigrant” communities relocating to the suburbs and with them their cultural values and traditions. That being said, the cultural diversity of Trenton, New Jersey created by its ethnic melting pot of a history can still be felt today in 2023. Walking the streets of some of its most popular neighborhoods like Chambersburg, one can still see and feel the Italian influence of churches, social clubs, and bar-restaurants in the area. The main point here is that culture did suffer as a result of suburbanization and population decline, but it did not die, it rather faded into a less obvious and less present version of its former self.

            Looking at suburbanization as a major effect of postwar de-industrialization on the city of Trenton provides valuable insight into the cities rise and decline as a manufacturing powerhouse. Like many other rust belt cities of this time period, the trend of suburbanization caused unprecedented changes to the city’s local economy and demographics. The loss of unionized industry jobs encouraged many Trentonians to relocate to the surrounding towns which had recently seen great increases in housing development. In the process, those who left the city unintendedly left Trenton out to dry. Money from the pockets of those who moved to the suburbs was desperately needed to support small businesses in the city and their tax dollars could have been used to make meaningful change to the city’s failing infrastructure. As previously discussed, the local culture of the city also suffered as a result of these consequences which only compounded with each decade of further suburbanization and relocation away from the city. With a decreasing population, aging workforce, and a new wave of migrants without sufficient employment opportunities, the city began to decline into an unrecognizable version of its “Golden Age” of the 1920s.

Racial tension

Trenton’s deindustrialization and its history of racism and inequality are inextricably linked. In 1986, Historian Dennis J. Starr published, History of Ethnic and Racial Groups in Trenton, New Jersey: 1900 – 1960, which acts as one of the foremost important pieces of historical literature on Trenton race-relations. This research clearly establishes a link between deindustrialization and increased racial tensions by claiming:

As industries closed down or reduced their work force it became harder for Afro-American migrants to get a toe hold on the traditional ladder of social mobility–a factory job. Meanwhile the city’s sizable Italian, Polish and Hungarian communities became fearful lest their jobs be eliminated, their neighborhoods integrated. A siege mentality developed in light of the population shifts and exodus of industries, commercial businesses, colleges and government offices.[30]

This “siege mentality” was amplified overtime with the overcrowding of black communities in Trenton and the extension of black-owned or rented residences into shrinking ethnically white neighborhoods.

Between 1950 and 1960, Trenton’s black population rose to 22.8 percent of the total population. As discussed earlier, Trenton was a historically segregated city but in the 1950s and 60s this racial division took on a whole new light given the increases in population and decreases in economic opportunities and industry.[31] Trenton historian Jack Washington described Trenton following WWII stating, “That the 1950s was a period of benign neglect for the Black community is an understatement, for Black people were forgotten while their economic and political troubles continued to mount.”[32] These economic troubles can be seen most clearly through examination of housing segregation in the city and its continued influence on the lives of Trentonians. Along with housing and workplace discrimination, ethnically white residents used black migrants as scapegoats for their city’s economic misfortunes and decline.

            Housing in Trenton, NJ after the postwar years can be characterized as both segregated and worse for wear. Following the largest influx of black immigrants to the city in the late 1940s and early 50s, this new population was largely forced to live in the Coalport and Five Points areas of the city on its interior.[33] Housing opportunities for black residents were few and far between and were in most cases aged and deteriorated. Starr shed light on this inequality revealing, “By 1957 over 80 per cent of the city’s housing was over 50 years old and 20 percent of all housing units were dilapidated or had deficient plumbing.”[34] This was a problem for all city-dwellers and stood as a marker of the city’s decline following deindustrialization. For the black community, this problem was especially real given that the neighborhoods with the worst physical damage and infrastructure were those areas in which they settled. A 1950s survey of the city titled, Negro Housing in Trenton found, “the percentage of substandard housing among the Negro population is four times higher than that for the general population.”[35] Not only were black Trentonians limited in their occupation but also in the location and quality of their housing. This same study of housing in Trenton concluded that 1,200 new residential spaces would have to be erected in order to meet the needs and standards of the city. These spaces were not created and public housing efforts did not meet the requirements of the new growing population.[36]

With little options for housing, a lack of policy action to create new housing, and increases to the population, black migrants had no choice but to expand into Trenton’s old ethnically-white neighborhoods. In the eyes of many in the white majority, black migrants were the corrupting force which acted to take down their beloved city. Declining social and economic conditions in the city paired with old racist tendencies to produce conflict between ethnic groups. Cumbler eloquently explains this clash stating:

The decline of their industrial base narrowed the boundaries of choice for both white and black Trentonians, and in doing so it intensified conflict between them. Increasingly, Trenton’s problems became defined by the city’s white residents in terms of growth of its black population. Actually, its problems had other sources: the loss of its tax base with the closing down of factories, dilapidation of the existing housing stock, and the declining income of its citizens of whatever color.[37]

This excerpt captures the situation in Trenton during the 1950s and 60s in terms of race relations and the overall decline of the city. Racist attitudes were not a new trend in Trenton but were compounded with the arrival of large populations of black migrants. From the white perspective, black migrants were aiding in the destruction of the city. From the black perspective, Trenton did not provide the necessary resources for which they traveled north in search of in the first place.

The 1960s and the Civil Rights era was the historical boiling point for racial tensions and division in Trenton. The influence of the NAACP and other organizations for the advancement of racial equality along with intense riots brought race and class to the forefront of Trenton’s post-industrial issues. Most impactful, Trenton race riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. exploded in early April of 1968. These riots lasted for multiple days and resulted in fires erupting around the city as well as over 7 million dollars in damage to over 200 different businesses in Trenton at the time. During the chaos, around 300 mostly young black men were arrested by Trenton Police. The devastating damage to the downtown section of the city caused many to flee and abandon it altogether in the years that followed.[38] It would be unfair to say that these riots were a direct result of deindustrialization in postwar Trenton. However, the city’s history of racial inequality and the compounding forces of racial tension as a result of deindustrialization point to the creation of fertile ground for public outrage. Of course, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. served as the catalyst for race riots in the city but the broader history of discrimination and inequality in Trenton suggests an intense decades-long build up to the events that unfolded in April of 1968.

Conclusion

Trenton’s rise and fall as an American industrial city is truly a fascinating case study of the post-war era in U.S. history. What was once a manufacturing powerhouse along the Delaware River strategically placed between the two large cities of New York and Philadelphia was reduced to a shadow of its former glory by the 1950s and 60s. The causes of this decline can be found in the removal of industry away from the city following the war effort and signs of economic decline can be traced as far back as the 1920s. The effects of this shift however, remain the most significant in the broader history of the city. Rapid deindustrialization meant that wages and opportunities were significantly limited for all Trentonians but especially for its segregated black community. Many of those who could afford it elected to move to the surrounding suburbs, bringing with them their tax dollars, their votes, and their culture. Lastly, deindustrialization and the consequences of a radically transformed Trenton increased racial tensions in the form of housing and workplace discrimination.

These effects offer new insights into the Trenton of today. Trenton now has a black majority and interestingly, those same areas which housed black migrants in the 1950s on the city’s interior are still today in 2023 the site of high unemployment and low opportunities. Walking the streets of Trenton, one is quickly reminded of its rich history with many of its houses and abandoned factories still standing today as a reminder of the city’s complicated history. A hopeful message could be that a greater understanding of Trenton’s post-war history could provide the necessary insight to create better living conditions and opportunities for all its residents. However, today Trenton remains a city in an intense state of recovery from its industrial past. Historical research has been done to show that urban renewal plans have largely failed to revitalize the city’s economy in the 20th and 21st centuries and issues such as crime, poverty, drug abuse, poor infrastructure, among others continue to loom over the once prosperous city.

            Today, the “Trenton Makes, The World Takes” sign on the Lower Trenton Bridge still stands bright but its meaning has drastically changed since the last century. What was once a beacon of promise and stability is now a constant reminder of how far the city has fallen from its industrial and manufacturing heights.

Findings and value to teaching

Upon completing this research paper on Trenton, I gave a lesson to high school world history students at Ewing High school as part of my undergraduate co-teaching field work. Ewing is one of the border towns to the city of Trenton and was one of the most popular destinations for suburbanites who left the city in the 20th century at least in part because of deindustrialization and the city’s overall decline. The proximity of the topic and the familiarity students  had with popular street names, businesses, and buildings in the city created a feeling of relevance that sparked engagement. Students were surprised to be learning about a topic so close to home and they responded with passionate discussion and the creation of meaningful connections which were sparked through a mix of group and whole class discussions.

For social studies teachers, this successful shift from world history topics to a more grass roots approach to teaching local history can be used as a template for future lessons. Topics frequently come up during different units throughout the school year which deeply relate to the local history of wherever kids go to school. For Ewing students, Trenton’s decline as an industrial city directly related to their lived experiences. Many of my students had lived in or around Trenton for most of their lives. This practice of teaching local history to students is not overwhelming nor is it undoable. The same amount of effort it takes to create a lesson in a world history or AP class can be channeled into research dealing with one’s own local environment and history.

This template for teaching local history can be used to generate engagement in the classroom which is unique to any other topic. Once students are given the opportunity to learn and ask questions about their own town, city, home, etc. they begin to view the world through a more historical lens which is the goal of many if not all high school social studies teachers. Overall, my experience with this approach was overwhelmingly positive and I encourage any and all educators to shift their focus for at least one day of the year towards exploring their own local history and connecting it to larger themes within our discipline.

References

Primary Sources

Black Businesses Need Your Help!. Pride Magazine. Trenton Public Library. March 1972. https://www.trentonlib.org/trentoniana/microfilm-newspapers/

Dwyer, William. This Is The Task. Findings of the Trenton, New Jersey Human Relations Self-Survey (Nashville: Fisk University, 1955).

Lee, Helen J. Nigger in the Window. Library of Congress, Internet Archive 1978.

Negro Housing in Trenton: The Housing Committee of the Self Survey. Trenton Public Library. Trentoniana Collection. Ca 1950.

“Negro in the Trenton Labor Market,” Folder: Community Services in Trenton, Box: Trenton Council on Human Relations, Trentoniana Collection, Trenton Public Library.

“Study of Community Services in Trenton,” Folder: Community Services in Trenton, Box: Trenton Council on Human Relations, Trentoniana Collection, Trenton Public Library.

Trenton Council of Social Agencies, Study of Northeast Trenton: Population, Housing, Economic, Social and Physical Aspects of the Area. Folder: Study of Northeast Trenton. Box 1: African American Experience. Trentoniana Collection. Trenton Public Library. 1958.

Secondary Sources

Boustan, Leah Platt. “Black Migration, White Flight: The Effect of Black Migration on Northern Cities and Labor Markets.” The Journal of Economic History 67, no. 2 (2007): 484–88. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4501161.

Cowie, J. & Heathcott, J. Beyond the Ruins: The Meaning of Deindustrialization. Cornell University Press, 2003.

Cumbler, John T. A Social History of Economic Decline: Business, Politics, and Work in Trenton (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989).

Denton, Stacy. “The Rural Past-in-Present and Postwar Sub/Urban Progress.” American Studies 53, no. 2 (2014): 119–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24589591.

Division of Labor Market and Demographic Research. New Jersey Population Trends 1790 to 2000 (Trenton, NJ: New Jersey State Data Center, August 2001).

Gibson, Campbell. U.S. Bureau of the Census: Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 – 1990, (Washington D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1998).

Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. Oxford University Press, 1985.

Leynes, Jennifer B. “Three Centuries of African-American History in Trenton.” Trentoniana Collection. Trenton Historical Society. 2011.

Starr, Dennis J. “History of Ethnic and Racial Groups in Trenton, New Jersey, 1900-1960,” Trentoniana Collection. 1986.

Starr, Dennis J. The Italians of New Jersey: A Historical Introduction and Bibliography. New Jersey Historical Society. Newark, NJ. 1985.

Strangleman, Tim, James Rhodes, and Sherry Linkon. “Introduction to Crumbling Cultures: Deindustrialization, Class, and Memory.” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 84 (2013): 7–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43302724.

Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. (Revised Ed.). Princeton University Press, 2005. Originally published 1996.

Washington, Jack. The Quest for Equality: Trenton’s Black Community 1890-1965. Africa World Press. 1993.

[1] Jack Washington, The Quest for Equality: Trenton’s Black Community 1890-1965, Africa World Press, 1993, 56.

[2] John T. Cumbler, A Social History of Economic Decline: Business, Politics, and Work in Trenton, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 9.

[3] Division of Labor Market and Demographic Research, New Jersey Population Trends 1790 to 2000 (Trenton, NJ: New Jersey State Data Center, August 2001), 23.

[4] Tim Strangleman, James Rhodes, and Sherry Linkon, “Introduction to Crumbling Cultures: Deindustrialization, Class, and Memory.” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 84 (2013), 19.

[5] Cumbler, A Social History, 132-133.

[6] Campbell Gibson, U.S. Bureau of the Census: Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 – 1990, (Washington D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1998)

[7] Division of Labor, New Jersey Population Trends, 26.

[8] Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, (Revised Ed.), Princeton University Press, 2005, Originally published 1996, 128.

[9] Jefferson, Cowie & Joseph Heathcott, Beyond the Ruins: The Meaning of Deindustrialization, Cornell University Press, 2003. 1-3.

[10] Cumbler, A Social History, 93-95.

[11]Stacy Denton, “The Rural Past-in-Present and Postwar Sub/Urban Progress,” American Studies 53, no. 2 (2014): 119.

[12]Leah P. Boustan, “Black Migration, White Flight: The Effect of Black Migration on Northern Cities and Labor Markets.” The Journal of Economic History 67, no. 2 (2007): 484-485.

[13] Cumbler, A Social History, 147-148.

[14] Cumbler, A Social History, 145.

[15] Helen J. Lee, N—-r in the Window, Library of Congress, Internet Archive 1978, 131.

[16] Sugrue, Urban Crisis, 93-94.

[17] “Study of Community Services in Trenton,” Folder: Community Services in Trenton, Box: Trenton Council on Human Relations, Trentoniana Collection, Trenton Public Library, 8.

[18] Leah P. Boustan, “Black Migration, White Flight” 485-486.

[19] “Negro in the Trenton Labor Market,” Folder: Community Services in Trenton, Box: Trenton Council on Human Relations, Trentoniana Collection, Trenton Public Library, 33-34.

[20] Kenneth T. Jackson. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, Oxford University Press, 1985, 188.

[21] Stacy Denton, “The Rural Past-in-Present,” 119.

[22] Cumbler, A Social History, 139.

[23] Black Businesses Need Your Help!. Pride Magazine. Trenton Public Library. March 1972, 5

[24] Black Businesses, Pride Magazine, 6

[25] Black Businesses, Pride Magazine, 6-7

[26] Black Businesses, Pride Magazine, 6-7.

[27] Gibson, U.S. Bureau of the Census, 43.

[28] Dennis J. Starr, The Italians of New Jersey: A Historical Introduction and Bibliography, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark, NJ 1985, 54.

[29] Cumbler, A Social History, 148-150.

[30] Dennis J. Starr, “History of Ethnic and Racial Groups in Trenton, New Jersey, 1900-1960,” Trentoniana Collection, 1986, 16-17.

[31] Cumbler, A Social History, 153.

[32] Washington, The Quest for Equality, 136.

[33] Trenton Council of Social Agencies, Study of Northeast Trenton: Population, Housing, Economic, Social and Physical Aspects of the Area, Folder: Study of Northeast Trenton, Box 1: African American Experience, Trentoniana Collection, Trenton Public Library, 1958, 53-54.

[34] Starr, Ethnic and Racial Groups in Trenton, 15.

[35] Negro Housing in Trenton: The Housing Committee of the Self Survey, Trenton Public Library, Trentoniana Collection, ca 1950s , 63.

[36] Negro Housing, Housing Committee, 67.

[37] Cumbler, A Social History, 156.

[38] Jennifer B. Leynes, “Three Centuries of African-American History in Trenton,” Trentoniana Collection, Trenton Historical Society. 2011, 3-4.

The Transformation of Regional Politics in Philadelphia

The Transformation of Regional Politics in Philadelphia

Kevin McCabe

The dawn of urbanization in the U.S. arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from which came rapid innovations in transportation and construction technology. The colonial legislation put in power by the founding fathers was tested immensely by the growing population of urban life. The necessities of sustaining an exponentially large and dense city seem evident at first glance: political, economic, and social representation, a stable job income for single or multi-family homes, access to public services, and affordable housing stock. Unfortunately, as one may notice by the pattern of urban decline as early as the 1950s, accomplishing such a feat is nearly impossible with the lack of quality political representation for marginalized members of the urban community.  Philadelphia, faced with the issues of urban decline, embarked on a project of urban renewal to revamp the public and private housing sector, introduce new forms of transportation for suburban commuters, and fix the educational landscape of the city. Similarly to other cities facing urban decline, the ‘City of Brotherly Love’ has seen countless projects or urban revitalization that historians, over time, began to view differently. Public Housing, Race, and Renewal by John F. Bauman (1987) indicates that historians viewed the solution to Philadelphia’s housing segregation, job discrimination, deindustrialization, and part of its economic decline issues through government intervention in the public housing sector. Carolyn T. Adams, author of From the Outside In (2014), exemplifies the shift of focus to local and federal intervention in Third-Sector organizations, and the lack thereof, in the startup of big industrial and transportation renewal. Similarly to Bauman, Adams refers to many of the solutions and ideas being created from a local level and being affected by public preference and federal policy. Lastly, The Problem of Jobs by Guian A. McKee (2010) takes a more positive outlook on urban renewal in Philadelphia, claiming that despite providing mixed results, the actions of a new form of Liberalism, local and federal policies, and initiatives slowed the progress of deindustrialization and moderated its effects.[1] Over the last 30 years, the scholarship on Philadelphian policies toward reshaping the historical city has changed dramatically from a focus on blaming federal policy, suburbanization and deindustrialization, the failure to provide adequate public housing and proper restructuring of the city’s inner-city blocks as the cause of economic decline and racial conflict. A newer approach to these issues is to take a city-wide approach to how local politicians and project professionals maneuvered a complex level of federal aid, Third-Sector organizations, and an angry white working class to achieve successes in some areas and failures in other neighborhoods.

Public Housing, Race, and Renewal by John F. Bauman focuses on those who debated, promoted, and shaped Philadelphia’s public housing and urban development policies, and how the local and national shift of focus from public housing to rebuilding the city turned a desegregation project into a reinforcement of public housing poverty stereotypes as a federally-funded welfare program. Bauman, having written his book in 1987, comprises the oldest historical outlook of the three books being analyzed in this historiography study. Therefore, both Adams and McKee draw from elements of Bauman’s argument and other authors of his time to build a comprehensive outlook on the complexity of undertaking complete urban reform in one of the oldest and historically significant cities in the U.S. Bauman utilizes the terms professionals and communitarians to describe the progressive outlook of urban leaders during the middle of urban slum expansion in the 1920s. Adams’ and McKee’s central focus on the privatization of industry follows the pattern of slowing progressivism in mid-19th century Philadelphia. Bauman wrote of the tendencies of the federal government, and how the ideas around poverty-stricken areas led to the failure of public housing as a program for economic mobility: “…the federal government’s rigid funding formula for public housing construction, as well as its strict guidelines for tenant selection and tenant retention, begged the question of public housing’s mission. Was public housing to provide good housing for the working class, or was the program to build modern asylums where the poor could learn habits of thrift and cleanliness?”[2] A few ideas are present in Bauman’s argument that hold merit for future scholarship on Philadelphia’s inner city. Particularly, how government funding, despite having the intention of fixing blighted neighborhoods, ends up exacerbating the issue by being too strict with rules, regulations, and the location of the project. Bauman goes even further to state that the racial composition of a project was made to conform to the prevailing composition of the surrounding neighborhood.[3] Essentially, public housing was the same as black housing in inner-city Philadelphia. As public housing became more attached in name to the characteristics of the poor, the politically right-leaning citizens of Philadelphia lost hope that public housing would help people in poverty learn habits of thrift and cleanliness. One would also argue that the idea that public housing would help the poor learn good habits solely based on the architecture itself perpetuates the notion that all people in black-majority neighborhoods promote a culture of poverty. The hopes of architects and city planners were quickly dashed as public opinion on public housing became politicized- it was no longer a rehabilitation program, but a public welfare program for housing the city’s worst residents. Bauman also takes note of the war-spawned conservatism that swept the nation during WWII, a pattern of decentralized federal housing policy that would become a staple in how local Philadelphian officials would carry out construction projects in the future.[4] Federal funding would be provided for projects, but only constructed by private enterprises. This foreshadows the states’ use of nonprofits to accomplish construction projects more efficiently than traditional means of project approval depicted in From the Outside In. The bullish conservative real estate established for new housing projects, and the use of subdivision in existing housing to create an artificially lower demand for low-income and public housing meant that Washington and the city Housing Authority were: “… sacrificing the goals of good housing and defense to the particular interests of the homebuilding and real estate industries.”[5] The pattern imposed by the federal and state governments is private and public organizational appeasement, an act that helped speed up the development process of housing and urban renewal at the expense of ill-planned resident displacement and the diminishment of government authority over the real estate market and urban planning. Even when projects were underway, residency was determined by the current racial composition of the neighborhood. Bauman, noticing the injustice in urban housing planning, stated: “Crassly denying the new housing to low-income black slum residents reeked of injustice… Blacks were being forced to make more than their share of the sacrifice.”[6] Historians’ views on urban redevelopment in Philadelphia have not changed from Bauman’s to Adams’ interpretation- despite good intentions, the fears of black slum encroachment barred minorities from economic mobility by transforming a creative, community-building public housing movement into a cookie-cutter asylum for the poor. As the Housing Act of 1954 rolled around, the idea of city rebuilding became synonymous with economic revitalization.[7] Forced by the realities of the failures of massive elevator towers to fix the city’s housing issues, planners had to decide what locations would be best for a project’s success, zoning certain areas as unsalvageable (black zones), and blighted neighborhoods as buffer zones.[8] This is a form of redlining that reinforced segregated city patterns, instead of fixing the economic and social disparity between residents that are only blocks apart. Furthermore, it further ostracized inner-city black residents from society. Bauman claims that “Only a massive infusion of local, state, and federal money into housing and blight removal could make city neighborhoods ripe again for private investment.”[9] City politicians took their eyes off a lack of housing in certain areas to transform areas to be more appealing to white commuters and future residents, as only 21 percent of displaced families found satisfactory housing; in the eyes of a Philadelphian politician, urban renewal meant black removal.[10] Slum clearance continued, even though public housing became a welfare program: “… at the end of the decade, [the public housing program] remained demoralized and directionless.”[11] Federal housing policy established a framework for a decentralized program of low-income housing that favored white residents and suburban commuters to attract a larger visitor economy, at the expense of inner-city residents. Bauman shows how the government built and bureaucratically managed complexes that contrasted too starkly with American housing norms- how too much government involvement can create complexity in the rebuilding process when housing authorities have to adhere to a changing political climate.[12] Adam’s book works to recount that moving too far in the opposite direction- losing control over infrastructure oversight- was a step in the right direction to starting larger projects, that despite being rarely beneficial to inner-city residents, were economically beneficial to the Philadelphian region as a whole.

Adams’ From the Outside In contradicts Bauman’s belief that Philadelphian urban renewal was a total failure, despite the shortcomings of public housing. Bauman set up Adam’s argument, relating most of the failures in the public housing sector with a shift in ideology that indicated both left and right-leaning political participants supported government intervention and federal funding, and that the division of party lines lies along the direction of the money in the public and private sectors. To set up her perspective of a new form of regionalism, Adams first had to argue against the premise that suburbs have turned their back on central cities.[13] A common assumption made by Bauman that Adams looks to unravel is that suburbanites, as a result of suburbanization, deindustrialization, and the policies of the state and federal government ruined the city’s economy and have made no effort to revitalize it. In fact, over the last 15 years of redevelopment, which would put it squarely in between the publication dates of Bauman’s and Adams’ books, suburbanites have recognized the critical role the city plays in economic functions. De facto regionalism, through the use of Third-Sector organizations, blurs the lines between public and private sectors in American civic life. [14] City managers now turn to private investors to help finance Philadelphian’s transportation system. A new issue has arisen in urban politics- whether these nonprofits, volunteer organizations, research institutions, (etc.), should be used solely to save money and avoid the regulations set by the city and federal government. By using these organizations and providing them with federal aid, they have control over the equal distribution of services and have more authority than state legislation as to where, how, and why a project will be played out. In Bauman’s book, one sees the federal government’s intervention forcing the hand of city planners to change the location of public housing depending on local reception and federal funding. As Adams depicts, the opinion of the urban resident no longer matters, as these non-profits do not need to adhere to the public will or make press releases on the findings and undergoing of the project. While describing the thought process of local politicians at the time, Adams states: “Politicians generally prefer to distribute dollars and services more broadly. It is virtually impossible for the city council to agree to target development dollars in only a few locations because that shortchanges other areas.”[15] Essentially, the agreement behind using Third-Sector organizations is that some people will benefit, while others will suffer from economic, social, and physical displacement. Therefore, the government focuses its efforts on redeveloping one area, a way for suburbanites to slowly change the city without considering the lives of the inhabitants and their organizations’ effects. For example, the Vine Street Expressway, “…offers a classic example of infrastructure that serves the region’s interests at the expense of city dwellers who live nearby… the initial proposal for eight lanes… would have eliminated a Catholic church and school that served as crucial institutions to Chinatown.”[16] One may see a parallel between Bauman and Adams, as the issue of where public housing should be located meant that they were placed in predominantly black neighborhoods, further segregating the minorities that live in public housing and worsening the issue of cramped neighborhoods. Similarly, the issue of where to locate transportation services for commuters fell on black neighborhoods that were seen as ‘unsalvageable’, despite them being a product of a failed distribution of public services. Overall, Adams wanted to indicate how intergovernmental authorities carry out their responsibility for transportation systems that link the city to the suburbs across municipal boundaries, and the inequality present when relying on Third-Sector organizations to carry out the job of the federal and state governments.[17] Adams also alludes to the new centers of gravity within Philadelphia, and how the responsibility of building major districts and developing entirely new districts plays out in the private and public sectors. As the number of organizations grew, the power of the mayor diminished. Government and nonprofit organizations are almost equal in terms of political standing. Revitalizing Philadelphia meant two things- establishing a successful visitor and commuter economy, and reshaping the educational landscape. The City’s 1960 Comprehensive Plan addressed where certain public services should be placed, as well as transportation services and the estimated amount of jobs that should be accomplished by 1980.[18] As Third-Sectors got involved, however, the Plan fell apart and instead the ‘Building Our Strengths’ city plan was enacted, a ratification of existing racial and infrastructure trends in Philadelphia. It contains a compendium of various different projects, ideas, and locations, without offering a comprehensive goal. Third-Sector organizations were hard for even the mayor to control, as their professional positions put them at the forefront of decision-making. As one will see, there are many successes and failures produced by these Third-Sector organizations, most of the failures attributed to poor planning for future usage of the project. In terms of educational attainment, inner-city school districts serve children that are from impoverished or immigrant homes, which means property tax bases cannot produce enough revenue to support schools. A high academic need and weak local tax base meant that, in the 70s and 80s, there was a large downward spiral for urban school districts nationally, from which this pattern the Philadelphia School District reflected. As a result, the government had to intervene and take over: “The most striking change in U.S. education governance in the last forty years has been the growth of centralized state control.”[19] If a school was labeled as distressed, it could legally be taken over by the state. Suburbanites and city dwellers alike saw budgetary shortfalls that are a result of a funding formula incapable of accounting for the city’s high educational costs; restructuring the delivery of education to emphasize competition and mimic market patterns would increase consumer choice. The government was providing EMOs to the worst performing schools, which allowed private management of public schools, but after the failure of EMOs, Philadelphia backed the Charter school movement. Unlike public schools, profit-making businesses play a sizable role in the aspects of charter operations.[20] To make private schools and charter schools more popular, Philadelphia incorporated a portfolio model of pedagogy, where empowered teachers have direct oversight over their students, and parents were given more freedom of choice as to where their child attended school. Portfolio models, however, tended to, “… expand the geographic focus of local school leaders because locals find themselves soliciting support from many outsiders beyond their traditional and local political allies.”[21] Regionalism is seeping into Philadelphia’s educational system, and as Bauman and Adams both clearly indicate, the intersection of local and national politics became an issue when infrastructure was not being built with an image of the future, the ‘bigger picture’, or not being built at all. The charter operators shifted enrollments out of residential neighborhoods and into buildings in the center of the city. Although this is both better economically for the success of charter schools, as there were more students available in the area, the current pattern of location weakened the historical links between public schools and surrounding neighborhoods.[22] Adams and Bauman both highlight the importance of schools in fostering a community and in both cases, residential neighborhoods suffered because of the poor housing quality surrounding these schools. Public housing ended up being placed in areas with the worst housing, often disconnected from the school system after a more conservative voting base blocked public housing and low-income housing in the more affluent neighborhoods. Charter school locations ended up in two positions- either filled to its max capacity with non-caucasian students or filled to less than half-capacity with white students. Charter schools and public housing followed the same path of reinforcing residential segregation patterns, and as both Bauman and Adams write, the educational system is only getting worse as it is privatized; the state lost direct oversight over their students, and the government made no attempt to create a comprehensive plan to rebuild the city with its poverty-stricken residents in mind. Adams does not dislike the use of Third-Sector organizations to accomplish bigger projects faster and cheaper but takes note that city and state governments are channeling dollars into organizational fields where the recipients use those public resources to compete rather than cooperate with one another.[23] Lodging, such as displacement and the need for new residential buildings and the refurbishment of old buildings, made the process more difficult because the well-being for the future of locals’ residency depended on the layout of the city. Despite this, politicians were pushing reliance on the Third Sector anyway. A high level of public funding does not align the Third Sector with government objectives, even if Philadelphia had a comprehensive plan. Instead, public officials only put limited requirements for projects to get them approved faster. The policy around these projects favored competition between the organizations to produce greater efficiency, which then led to competition between the projects post-construction, such as with the charter school movement. Competition fosters organizational isolation- to fix this, Adams indicated a few ways the federal and state governments can navigate the current path of private and public enterprise. Adams states: “City officials should work to induce greater sectoral coherence and concern for serving Philadelphians, to see that the city gains the greatest possible benefit from its concentration of tax-exempt institutions.”[24] Bauman’s book shows how historians of the time witnessed federal funding and building requirements, as well as public opinion on the project, as an obstacle to public housing and urban renewal’s success. Similarly, Adams shows how a move in the opposite direction, a form of laissez-faire economic regionalism, also posed issues because of an emphasis on capitalistic competition that contradicted the government’s goal of urban renewal and a lower inner-city poverty rate. The influx of suburban money bolstered the economy of Philadelphia, which disproves Bauman’s scapegoating of suburbanization as the main cause of an economic decline in Philadelphia, but the oversight in fixing Philadelphia’s racially segregated housing meant that the new projects were being built over the worst areas. Philadelphian low-income neighborhoods were bulldozed and rarely were residents fairly compensated.

            McKee’s The Problem of Jobs contained elements from both Bauman’s and Adams’ work but stood out for its usage of larger, national issues put into context for the rise of Liberalism, a continuation of unemployment issues, and a lack of racial equality in Philadelphia. As opposed to the other books, McKee emphasizes the need for jobs, specifically how  left-leaning political participants’ support of government intervention in the economy persisted at the local level even as national ideologies swayed in the other direction.[25] McKee begins his book after World War II and ends in the 1970s, a timeframe that just overlaps with Bauman’s book and finishes where Adams starts. McKee presents the history of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), a quasi-public organization that added about 68,000 jobs between 1959 and 1970, and the projects it had undertaken to promote racial equality and prevent further segregation in the city. The placement of McKee’s book at the end of this historiography study, despite taking place in between Bauman and Adams, is not a mistake. McKee’s book indicates the transformation of federal and local policy to reflect the involvement of Third Sector organizations: “These local policy initiatives engaged with and, in some cases, relied on the resources and incentives provided by federal programs, but they remained projects of the local state- of liberal policymakers and activists who constructed public, private, and community-based institutions that sought to address the city’s loss of industrial jobs.”[26] Bauman’s book introduces the concept of using private goals to accomplish public services- McKee takes this and identifies the various projects undertaken to accomplish the Philadelphia Plan and Model Cities program, the first of which to include non-profits to shorten construction periods and bring in more jobs at a rapid rate. McKee is also innovative in his contribution to how Philadelphia’s job-focused programs paralleled racial tracks; the projects that failed generally ignored the social component of industrial decline and racial discrimination in the Philadelphian industry. Specifically, how PIDC’s tendency to work in isolation from those most dramatically affected by economic change led to more suffrage on the part of Philadelphia’s black population.[27] Black-run projects, which both Bauman and Adams failed to allude to, were vulnerable to the real estate market and fluctuations in federal support as a result of changing market conditions. Public action by a hostile white working-class privileged a focus on cultural factors in urban renewal over the need for a long-term plan for fixing structural economic concerns in the city.[28] PIDC and the Philadelphia Plan lost momentum as Liberalism lost its momentum- the national concern for the War on Poverty offered opinionated white city residents a way to lay out their concerns for undergoing an urban renewal project in already affluent neighborhoods. The focus, they believed, should be on the city’s worst slums. Unfortunately, this meant continuing the residential divide of the city’s black population, or in the worst cases, complete displacement and removal. McKee’s analysis of the direct effect of the War on Poverty in the slums of Philadelphia draws parallels to Bauman’s foundation of placing public and low-income housing in economically advantaged neighborhoods. Simply, government intervention focused on white appeasement without the realization of the importance of black economic and social participation in Philadelphia’s inner city. While Bauman is pessimistic about the future, however, McKee focuses on the PIDC’s victory in slowing the progress of deindustrialization and moderating its effects.[29] McKee brings to the table a level of optimism unseen in Bauman’s perspective, while Adams adheres to a methodology of unbiased analysis of the city’s and Third Sector organizations’ urban renewal agenda and necessary racial progressivism. McKee and Adams acknowledge the local and federal politicians’ complete disconnection between economic decline and racial inequality. McKee, however, claims that local public policy can still have a wide effect on the rate of economic change independent of racial matters.[30] Adams believes that economic decline is synonymous with racial inequality, dictating a change in the historical perspective that inequality should be at the forefront of urban redevelopment programs. McKee also addresses racial matters continuously throughout the book, which differs from Bauman’s and Adams’ use of dedicated chapters advocating the involvement of racial matters in shaping Philadelphia’s urban renewal process. For example, McKee noted the shortfalls of the liberal agenda in embracing civil rights, and how the lack of black political representation in city-building meant the expansion of industry was inaccessible to inner-city residents: “… the interaction of job discrimination and industrial decline in Philadelphia had placed African Americans at a severed disadvantage in the local labor market…nonwhite men held a disproportionate share of low-wage, low-scale jobs… only 8.7 percent of [African Americans held] professional and technical jobs…”[31] Black residents, according to McKee, act solely out of response to economic crisis in Philadelphia, making it apparent that black political participants focused on creating jobs, without realizing that the jobs being made were hard for the average inner-city black resident to attain. McKee ends his book with the Model Cities program, a shift from a focus on the renewal of Philadelphia’s manufacturing industry to the services industry: “… the PIDC had slowed but not reversed the decline of Philadelphia’s manufacturing sector during the 1960s and that the base of the national economy had begun to shift from manufacturing to services. This led both city and… PIDC to question whether the nonprofit corporation should continue to focus exclusively on industrial development or expand its operations into services.”[32] A large part of Adams’ book lies in the development of these service institutions; McKee takes note of the availability of land for future industrial uses, and Adams picks up with the various service projects conducted on that land. McKee’s analysis of the bifurcation of local and federal policy is hopeful, at the very least, that Liberalism will overtake the agendas of status-quo residential ‘segregationists’ for a more inclusive economical base in Philadelphia.

The last 30 years have witnessed scholarship on Philadelphian inner-city politics change to include the active participation of suburbanites, the rise of Progressivism and Liberalism, and the inclusion of the black struggle for economic and social participation. At the same time, Bauman, McKee, and Adams all take note of the large number of contradictions that come into play when federal and local policy intersect. Bauman’s Public Housing, Race, and Renewal follows the issue of national political ideologies in the context of war-spawned conservatism, and how the failure of public housing led to a reliance on private sectors to provide housing for those in need. Private interests, however, do not always align with the public; housing was built but did not always reach a level of adequacy that modern homes have. Adams’ From the Outside In shows how the move towards private sector construction and subsequent failure led to a new form of regionalism based on Third Sector organizations’ involvement. To blur the lines between private and public sectors and circumnavigate the general public’s opinion on whether the project should be built in the first place, Philadelphia’s mayors utilized a growing medium of regionalism. McKee’s The Problem of Jobs takes into consideration this shift and depicts the transformation in ideology to include Liberalism, similar but not exact to Bauman’s interpretation of the definition of Progressivism in Philadelphian local politics. While Bauman remains pessimistic about the future of public housing and urban renewal, McKee exemplifies a shift in public opinion to focus on the positives of urban renewal, with some constructive criticism concerning how race should be considered in the application of the process; Adams represents a politically unbiased retelling of events, with many points as to how city politicians should carry construction projects in the future. All three books, however, fully understand that economic decline was tied to racial inequality and that the power of the state and Third Sector organizations are necessary to have a significant effect on the character of economic and racial progress.

Teaching racial inequality in the educational and infrastructural fields is important for closing the social and economic gap that has developed since the removal of the institution of slavery. When teaching in West Windsor South, I noticed that students were hyper aware of their social classes. The very topic of racial disparity was often talked about in the 12th grade Social Justice class I helped out in, and each and every student noted how important it was to be actively thinking about solutions to solve the issues our predecessors have created. The books listed in this historiography study are a good start to help students understand the gravity of the situation and the attempts previously made to solve the issue, especially when the authors’ research delves into the closest city to them, Philadelphia.

References:

Adams, Carolyn Teich. From the Outside In: Suburban Elites, Third Sector Organizations, and the Reshaping of Philadelphia. Ithaca, New York: Cornell Univ. Press, 2014.

Bauman, John F. Public Housing, Race, and Renewal. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 1987.

McKee, Guian A. The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia. Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 2018.

[1] Guian A. McKee, The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 2018), 67.

[2] John F. Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 1987), 40.

[3] Bauman, Public Housing, 47.

[4] Bauman, Public Housing, 56.

[5] Bauman, Public Housing, 64.

[6] Bauman, Public Housing, 68.

[7] Bauman, Public Housing, 139.

[8] Bauman, Public Housing, 147.

[9] Bauman, Public Housing, 148.

[10] Bauman, Public Housing, 148-150.

[11] Bauman, Public Housing, 200.

[12] Bauman, Public Housing, 208.

[13] Carolyn Teich Adams, From the Outside In: Suburban Elites, Third Sector Organizations, and the Reshaping of Philadelphia (Ithaca, New York: Cornell Univ. Press, 2014), 2.

[14] Adams, From the Outside In, 9.

[15] Adams, From the Outside In, 21.

[16] Adams, From the Outside In, 29.

[17] Adams, From the Outside In, 49.

[18] Adams, From the Outside In, 81.

[19] Adams, From the Outside In, 84.

[20] Adams, From the Outside In, 87-88.

[21] Adams, From the Outside In, 93.

[22] Adams, From the Outside In, 104.

[23] Adams, From the Outside In, 173.

[24]  Adams, From the Outside In, 181

[25] Guian McKee, The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia (Chicago, Illinois: TheUniversity of Chicago Press, 2018), 4.

[26] McKee, The Problem of Jobs, 12.

[27] McKee, The Problem of Jobs, 81.

[28] McKee, The Problem of Jobs, 111.

[29] McKee, The Problem of Jobs, 67.

[30] McKee, The Problem of Jobs, 76.

[31] McKee, The Problem of Jobs, 119.

[32] McKee, The Problem of Jobs, 251.

Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City

Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City (The Experiment, 2022) by Lucy Sante with photographs by Tim Davis

From 1907 to 1967, a network of reservoirs and aqueducts was built across more than one million acres in upstate New York, including Greene, Delaware, Sullivan, and Ulster Counties. This feat of engineering served to meet New York City’s ever-increasing need for water, sustaining its inhabitants and cementing it as a center of industry. West of the Hudson, it meant that twenty-six villages, with their farms, forest lands, orchards, and quarries, were bought for a fraction of their value, demolished, and submerged, profoundly altering ecosystems in ways we will never fully appreciate. This paradox of victory and loss is at the heart of Nineteen Reservoirs, Lucy Sante’s meticulous account of how New York City secured its seemingly limitless fresh water supply, and why it cannot be taken for granted. In inimitable form, Sante plumbs the historical record to surface forgotten archives and images, bringing lost places back to life on the page. Her immaculately calibrated sensitivity honors both perspectives on New York City’s reservoir system and helps us understand the full import of its creation.

The City, by Deborah Stevenson

The City, by Deborah Stevenson

Review by Thomas Hansen

Deborah Stevenson presents here an in-depth philosophical and sociological portrait of global cities and their changing nature.  As many cities change—from Chicago to Mumbai—millions of people are impacted by the altered spaces, increased costs, morphing purposes, and altered neighborhoods that are part of the transformed blocks and buildings we call cities.

Stevenson presents mesmerizing images of how cities change, the difference between daylight and nighttime commerce, and the role of the city in providing a playground for alternative and anonymous persons.  One interesting note is that many people fill up the cities at night, coming to town to drink and carouse and then abandoning the cities once again in the wee hours.  The city has many roles and many functions indeed.

Currently, most people live in cities, and therefore they work, eat, shop, travel within a space apart from rural areas where most of the food is produced on this planet.  This disconnect is something very important to consider.  The author is informed and shares information from others who can help describe the city and explain it.

            The author gives us a great deal to think about and draws on experts in other fields who contribute to the study of urban spaces.  Part of the “Key Concepts” series from this publisher—there are about three dozen titles currently—this book draws upon a variety of schools, fields, and frameworks (p. 3).  Stevenson makes good use of all the fields and how they connect to sociology.  Stevenson also gives alternative views of urban sociology a chance (pp. 12-14) and incorporates other perspectives as she profiles the city.  

            Among other interesting concepts the author presents here is the notion of the “Trojan Horse of gentrification (p. 46).”  Certainly in many cities there are many cases of upheaval when neighborhoods change.  I think personally of Chicago and how families are in shock as their spaces are destroyed, rearranged, removed, refashioned, and otherwise conquered by others.

            I think of a friend who said recently, “Look what they did to my room!”  He was referring to a small basement space in a one-bedroom apartment which through gut rehabbing had been turned into a two-bedroom condominium.  His room had disappeared—had turned into part of a new living room.  It is radical change—and the huge impact of the city upon its people—that needs to be studied and recorded in books such as these.   

            The text has several uses for educators.  For example, social studies teachers can use it as background reading for recent historical information about immigration, movements toward cities, and the changing face of the metropolis.  In addition, there are implications for its use in a variety of advanced high school courses as a resource for students doing projects on spaces, the environment, financial investments, banking, and global issues, patterns, and problems.

            The book could also be used in various college courses as recommended or additional reading for giving students more information on “spaces” and also for talking about the “progress” of gentrification.  The disconnect between dwelling in the city and producing food in the country, the policies generated in the city far from the fields of food production, the loss of intimate spaces within cities, and the anonymous and entertaining aspects of the city at night are all interesting themes to explore in student reports and in further expert research. All of the above positive things being said, the book is theoretical in tone and sometimes dense reading.  The difficulty level should be considered if it is to be used in classes for students in high school or for lower undergraduate courses.