Between the suburbs and the ghetto: Racial and economic change in working-class Philadelphia, 1933--1965

Between the 1930s and 1960s, Philadelphia experienced a remarkable change in its economic base. As other sections of the country flourished after World War II, Philadelphia was mired in a long-term process of decline. The number of industrial companies and their employees diminished through this period in albeit uneven ways, which augmented employment in some industries and eliminated entirely employment in others. At the same time, a rapid increase in the African-American population during and after the war altered the racial dynamics of the city. Black workers entered occupations and black residents entered neighborhoods that hitherto had been reserved for whites. Racism and discrimination, however, remained, severely limiting African American's economic advancement and housing choices. For the poorest black residents, the combination of discrimination and industrial decline resulted in squalid living conditions in one of Philadelphia's ghetto areas. White urbanites with enough funds fled the city for the more affluent (and white) confines of the suburbs. But what about those black and white residents who could not or did not leave and who were not confined to the poorest neighborhoods? How did the economic and racial changes effect them? How did they respond?;This dissertation examines the process of racial and economic change in a racially diverse section of Philadelphia. It is a social history of three aspects of the economy that residents had daily contact with: labor, housing and food markets. It describes not only how industrialists, landlords, and store owners shaped these markets, but how workers, residents and consumers confronted and altered them as well. Most importantly, we find that it was racism embedded within the market's functions that caused the substantive difference in how each race was effected by and reacted to these market changes. While white workers, homeowners and consumers often disliked the new proximity of African Americans in the postwar city and occasionally lashed out violently against them, it was the discrimination practiced by employers, realtors and food retailers that constructed segregated and unequal conditions for Philadelphia's black population.