Manufacturing Self-Determination: Cold War Electronics and Black Economic Development in Philadelphia

In scholarship and public discussion, the “military-industrial complex” has been a preeminent symbol of problematic partnerships between the US government and private enterprise. However, for some Black Philadelphians in the 1960s and 1970s, it was more than that. Ironically, this system of imperial and corporate power became a place for projects of Black empowerment and economic self-determination. In Philadelphia, civil rights leaders partnered with the city’s defense industry to make electronics manufacturing an avenue for employment and Black business development. Leon Sullivan’s Progress Aerospace Enterprises (PAE) quickly became a national symbol of “Black capitalism” and a model of Black self-determination through manufacturing. As federal officials increasingly saw defense contract set-asides as an anti-poverty tool in the 1970s, civil rights and business leaders in other cities, including Rochester, Chicago, and Oklahoma City, replicated Philadelphia’s example. Historians have emphasized that employment in the “high-tech” Cold War defense industry was limited to skilled, white labor. At PAE, however, purportedly “hardcore unemployed” Black Philadelphians found jobs building electronic components for technological icons of the Cold War, from the Apollo program to Minuteman Missiles. This paper draws on archival sources from electronics manufacturers, government publications, and periodicals to analyze the different meanings that PAE bore for government officials, business leaders, and electronics technicians. In particular, I show that sustained conflicts between workers and management at PAE called into question the model of economic development the firm represented.