African American politics has always had a fierce urgency. The third decade of the twenty-first century has only underscored that fact. The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many other violent incidents have roiled the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic and its attendant economic dislocations have had a clearly disproportionate impact on the African American community. These may have been new events, but in many ways they served as a culmination of centuries of unequal, racist treatment. Well before the 2020’s, African Americans had less access to adequate medical care, lower life expectancies, and poorer health outcomes related to environmental racism. They faced higher unemployment rates and held less wealth than white Americans. And they too often found social systems such as education, public health, and law enforcement arrayed against them as they sought fair treatment in American society.

This “lightning round” panel focuses on the history of Black politics in twentieth-century Philadelphia as a way to understand this context of oppression but also to examine how African Americans have developed campaigns of resistance and empowerment. Historically and today, Philadelphia is one of the most important sites for the expression of Black political power. With one of the largest African American populations in the urban North and a history of activism dating to the colonial era, an examination of Philadelphia’s political past highlights the city’s tradition of electing Black officials as well as supporting social movements that drew on class, gender, and other markers of identity to mobilize Black Philadelphians. The short presentations in this roundtable examine the women and men, poor people and those in the professional class, who all engaged in political activism that demanded a wide array of changes in the city and beyond: job rights, access to housing, equal educational opportunities, and fair treatment by the police, to name a few. Taken as a whole, this roundtable’s brief presentations highlight how the interplay of grassroots activism and formal leadership have given African American politics vibrancy throughout the twentieth century.

The seven presenters in this session all have published or soon will publish books on the African American history of Philadelphia. In fact, all are contributing to a forthcoming volume on Black politics, which helps their presentations hang together and complement each other. This session, then, will offer a deep analysis of African American politics in the city where the AHA is holding its conference. Moreover, the format will allow the panel to engage with the audience in a broader conversation that uses Philadelphia as a launch pad for broader discussions about the African American urban experience across the United States in the long twentieth century. The panelists foresee a session that examines Philadelphia but engages in a conversation about why major cities across the country have never managed to realize true equality. At the same time, the panel and its conversation with the audience will highlight the long and proud history African Americans have of shaping the political and economic landscape of urban America.