Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Nicest Kids in Town: “American Bandstand,” Rock ‘n Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (review)

2014; Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Volume: 138; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/pmh.2014.a923353

2169-8546

Jordan M. McClain, Amanda S. McClain,

Music History and Culture

BOOK REVIEWS 2014 351 produce what he describes as a "historical ethnography," a blending of historical narrative and ethnography that "helps to elucidate notions of causality emergent from the communities, people, and organizations often made invisible in the general thrust of the historical record" (222). For better or worse, what Hunter's study is not is a conventional urban history, and reading his methodological appendix goes a long way in managing expectations of what the book does well. Particularly in the chapter about the Crosstown Expressway, which features the heroic efforts of Hawthorne neighborhood leader Alice Lipscomb, Hunter's "on the ground" perspective works well to show what political agency looks like. Unlike The Philadelphia Negro, in which Du Bois speaks with a fairly detached voice and reports endless descriptive statistics, Hunter selectively offers detailed and often moving accounts of the human cost of the structural challenges Black Seventh Ward residents faced. But in doing so, Hunter gives relatively little attention to those persistent, discriminatory structures that often undermined black agency and efforts to improve social and economic conditions for blacks. Hunter chooses to focus his final chapter on the 2010 "flash mob" on South Street, an event that ultimately lacks the kind of long-term historical significance of the other "crucial moments" he features. Recent efforts to improve the public school system, including the creation of charter schools by local black leaders such as music mogul Kenny Gamble, civil rights leader Walter Palmer, and state senator Hardy Williams, might have provided a clearer example of the ongoing struggle of "Black Citymakers" to contend with structural challenges. Hunter concludes that the Black Seventh Ward inspired a new generation of black citymakers but ultimately lives on only in the collective memory of black Philadelphians. The reader is left with a more complicated picture of how the Philadelphia Du Bois visited in 1896 transformed into the twenty-first-century city characterized by growth and great optimism for some and persistent poverty, violence, and failed institutions for many others. "In this way," Hunter explains, "we see a more dynamic city; one in which black Americans are both disproportionately disadvantaged by structural changes in the city, while also actively constructing approaches to challenge, navigate and/or reconcile such changes" (216). University of Pennsylvania AMY HILLIER The Nicest Kids in Town: "American Bandstand," Rock 'n' Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia. By MATTHEW F. DELMONT. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. 312 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. Cloth, $65; paper, $27.95.) American Bandstand host Dick Clark made it seem as though there was no better place and time to be a young music fan than Philadelphia in the 1950s— BOOK REVIEWS 352 July assuming the fan had access to a television. Matthew F. Delmont's new book, The Nicest Kids in Town, argues, however, that "the real story of American Bandstand and Philadelphia in the postwar era is much more complicated than Clark suggests "(2).In contrast to Clark's insistence that the Philly-shot American Bandstand was racially integrated, and thus a pioneer of the civil rights movement when it became nationally televised in 1957, Delmont shows that Bandstand mirrored Philadelphia's segregation until the show's 1964 move to Hollywood. Using an impressive range of evidence, including news reports, oral histories, and archival materials, the author deconstructs the legend of American Bandstand's integration, replacing it with a powerful account of history reconfigured to mythologize the program and its famed host. Through elaboration on several thematic areas, The Nicest Kids in Town recounts the real racial conflicts epitomized and omitted by American Bandstand. One of these themes is how physical place, including the television studio's neighborhood and the initial broadcasting region, played a role in keeping the show's dancers and in-house studio audience white. For instance, in order to appeal to local advertisers and audiences, despite rapidly changing racial demographics of the area, broadcaster WFIL-TV kept its on-camera teens white and supposedly nonthreatening to the masses. Likewise, another portion of the book explores how American Bandstand teen culture paralleled the segregated reality of the Philadelphia school district. The book also explores how other local...