William Dorsey's Philadelphia and Ours: On the Past and Future of the Black City in AmericaOxford University Press, 1991 M08 15 - 512 pages Lane here illuminates the African-American experience through a close look at a single city, once the metropolitan headquarters of black America, now typical of many. He recognizes that urban history offers more clues, both to modern accomplishments and to modern problems, than the dead past of rural slavery. The book's historical section is based on hundreds of newly discovered scrapbooks kept by William Henry Dorsey, Philadelphia's first black historian. These provide an intimate and comprehensive view of the critical period between the Civil War and about 1900, when African-Americans, formally free and increasingly urban, made the biggest educational and occupational gains in history. Dorsey's tens of thousands of newspaper clippings and other sources, detail records of high culture and low, success and scandal, personal and public life. In the final chapters Lane outlines the urban situation today, the strong parallels between past and present that suggest the power of continuity and the equally strong differences that point to the possibility of change. |
Contents
| 1 | |
OCCUPATIONS AND MAKING A LIVING | 57 |
Illustrations | 190 |
THE WEB OF ORGANIZATION RELIGION RACE CLASS AND RECREATION | 229 |
WILLIAM DORSEYS CITY AND OURS | 335 |
APPENDIX I The William Henry Dorsey Collection at Cheyney State University | 411 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
19th century African African-American Afro Afro-American American Association Ball Baptist black Philadelphia Catto census church city's Civil Club Colored Youth contemporary coon songs decades Democratic despite Dorsey Collection Dorsey Files Douglass Ebenezer Bassett economic election elite especially fact Fanny Jackson Coppin Gardiner Collection graduate Henry Ibid important Institute for Colored involved Item John kind labor Lane late 19th century later leaders living lynching majority Minton Mossell neighborhoods Octavius Catto organizations Pennsylvania People's Advocate percent perhaps Phila Philadelphia Negro political politicians population Press problems Quaker race racial racism Republican Reverend Robert Robert Purvis Roots of Violence scrapbooks segregation Seventh Ward simply social Society sometimes South southern story Street Sunday Sunday Mercury Thomas Tribune underclass Univ urban W. E. B. Du Bois Washington William Dorsey's women York Age York Globe young