![]() ![]() ![]() I was no more than 10 when I stood around the corner and watched neighborhood youths break out the windows of a home with rocks and pelt the facade with eggs.ĭad was a racist. "It is the home for 100,000 proud, irascible, tough, narrow-minded, down-to-earth, old-fashioned, hostile, flag-waving, family-oriented, ethnic Americans," Binzen wrote.įor years, local nightly news broadcasts routinely showed footage of Kensington homes being defaced, bombed or vandalized after rumors surfaced that black families planned to occupy it.Īs a child, I watched my mother and brothers join in the protests. In 1970, journalist author Peter Binzen wrote a book about it titled "Whitetown, U.S.A." The enclave's entrenched hatred of minorities - still alive in many parts today - leaves Kensington as one of the last vestiges of segregated Philadelphia. Yet the river ward earned a second reputation in the 20th century - as one of America's most racist. The factory neighborhood in 1920 stood as the most productive in the nation. I grew up in Kensington, best described as Philadelphia's Brooklyn. The brief exchange caused me to reflect on my own long and difficult racial sensitivity journey. ![]()
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