OLLI101436 - HOT OFF THE PRESS - If There Is No Struggle There Is No Progress

Course Description

If There Is No Struggle There Is No Progress
Black Politics in Twentieth-Century Philadelphia

Date/Time: November 4, 1-2 PM
Location: Online via Zoom  

Edited by James Wolfinger, With a Foreword by Heather Ann Thompson

Speaker: James Wolfinger -  Dean of the School of Education, and holds a joint appointment as Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and the Department of History at St. John’s University. He is the author of Philadelphia Divided: Race and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love and Running the Rails: Capital and Labor in the Philadelphia Transit Industry.

If There Is No Struggle There Is No Progress emphasizes the strength of political strategies such as the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” movement and the Double V campaign. It demonstrates how Black activism helped shift Philadelphia from the Republican machine to Democratic leaders in the 1950s and highlights the election of politicians like Robert N. C. Nix, Sr., the first African American representative from Philadelphia. In addition, it focuses on grassroots movements and the intersection of race, gender, class, and politics in the 1960s, and shows how African Americans from the 1970s to the present challenged Mayor Frank Rizzo and helped elect Mayors Wilson Goode, John Street, and Michael Nutter.