Cultivating Potential on the Street Corner: The Wharton Centre’s “Operation” to Eradicate the “Gang Problem” in North Philadelphia, 1931–69

In an era of anti-blackness, anti-immigration, and anti-rural migration to the city, sociologists and criminologists often engaged in nature vs. nurture arguments about juvenile crime among non-white youth. The Wharton Centre took the uncommon stance of juvenile crime being the result of insufficient nurturing from the community. The institution specifically acknowledged in administrative reports and town hall meetings that havens like theirs were necessary because racial segregation and economic exploitation in the housing and job markets created poverty-induced crime. During the Great Migration (1916-1970), the Wharton Centre settlement house managed black juvenile crime under a series of social welfare programs that sought to eliminate gang activity and provide recreation to black youth in desegregated and working-class neighborhoods in North Philadelphia. Local social workers and college-aged staff partnered with community residents, police, churches, schools and affiliates from housing projects to provide outreach programs like all-city art and music shows, day camps, and home economics classes to nurture, educate, and rehabilitate youth. The social work the Wharton Centre did in Philadelphia from 1931-1969 proved that juvenile delinquency and crime arose from how children were poorly nurtured and neglected, not from the nature of their being.