Making good neighbors: civil rights, liberalism, and integration in postwar Philadelphia

In the 1950s and 1960s, as the white residents, real estate agents, and municipal officials of many American cities fought to keep African Americans out of traditionally white neighbourhoods, Philadelphia's West Mount Airy became one of the first neighbourhoods in the nation where residents came together around a community-wide mission toward intentional integration.

Here, Abigail Perkiss tells the story of West Mount Airy, drawing on archival research and her oral history interviews with residents to trace their efforts, which began in the years following World War II and continued through the turn of the twenty-first century.