The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (University of California Press, 2012, American Crossroads series)

American Bandstand, one of the most popular television shows ever, broadcast from Philadelphia in the late fifties, a time when that city had become a battleground for civil rights. Counter to host Dick Clark’s claims that he integrated American Bandstand, this book reveals how the first national television program directed at teens discriminated against black youth during its early years and how black teens and civil rights advocates protested this discrimination. Matt Delmont brings together major themes in American history—civil rights, rock and roll, television, and the emergence of a youth culture—as he tells how white families around American Bandstand’s studio mobilized to maintain all-white neighborhoods and how local school officials reinforced segregation long after Brown vs. Board of Education. The Nicest Kids in Town powerfully illustrates how national issues and history have their roots in local situations, and how nostalgic representations of the past, like the musical film Hairspray, based on the American Bandstand era, can work as impediments to progress in the present.

Visit the The Nicest Kids in Town digital project to preview the book and see additional photographs, video, and American Bandstand memorabilia: http://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/nicest-kids

If you have memories of American Bandstand that you would like to share, or questions about my book, I’d love to hear from you.  You can e-mail me at mdelmont@scrippscollege.edu.

Dr. Matthew Delmont has lectured widely on topics including African-American history, mixed race identity, the Obama presidency, hip hop, oral history, and social media, as well as the histories of the subjects that are at the heart of The Nicest Kids in Town, civil rights, television, rock ‘n’ roll, urban history, youth culture, and historical memory

At Scripps College, Delmont is Assistant Professor of American Studies  and the co-coordinator of the American Studies program at the Claremont Colleges.  He is also an affiliate of the History, Africana Studies, and Media Studies departments.

Delmont teaches courses on popular culture, urban studies, and the histories of race and ethnicity in the United States.  He has earned multiple teaching awards, including being voted the 2010-2011 Professor of the Year by the Scripps Associated Students.  He also serves as a faculty and steering committee member for the Scripps College Academy, a college-readiness program for high achieving young women in the greater Los Angeles area.

Born and raised in Minneapolis, Delmont earned his B.A. from Harvard University, magna cum laude.  He worked in management consulting and marketing before going to graduate school in American Studies.  He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Brown University, becoming the first person in his family to earn an advanced degree.

In addition to The Nicest Kids in Town, Delmont has published articles and reviews in Journal of Urban History, History of Education Quarterly, Journal of Pan-African Studies, Journal of Popular Music Studies, and American Quarterly.  His current research project focuses on television coverage of busing for school desegregation from the late-1960s through the 1980s.

For more information on Delmont’s research and teaching, please visit: http://mattdelmont.com

Democracy Now! interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez (3/2/2012).  See video below.  Click here for interview transcript.

“Left of Black” interview with Mark Anthony Neal of Duke University (5/14/2012). See video below.

CNN Headline News Local Edition with Brad Pomerance (3/14/2012). See video below.

John King USA (CNN) (4/18/12) (video link coming soon)

NPR’s Morning Edition with Karen Grigsby Bates (4/19/2012), “Dick Clark, America’s Oldest Teenager, Dies at 82″

KDKA-CBS Radio Pittsburgh interview with Chris Moore (4/15/2012) (audio 40 minutes)

OC Weekly interview with Gabriel San Ramon (2/28/2012).  Part I & Part II

Philadelphia Daily News by Molly Eichel (3/14/2012), “Not so nice: No matter what Dick Clark says, ‘American Bandstand’ blocked black teens”

New Books Network interview with Erin Lee Mock (audio 57 minutes)

The Page 99 Test Blog – “Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.” (Ford Maddox Ford)

—Herman Gray, University of California, Santa Cruz, author of Cultural Moves: African Americans and the Politics of Representation and Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness.

“The Nicest Kids in Town speaks simultaneously to several significant current lines of inquiry among historians of the United States after World War II. Delmont takes on issues that we thought we already knew completely—the social and cultural history of the 1950s and ‘60s, the Civil Rights movement, the birth of television—but he brings original material to his story and connects these issues in new ways. Delmont’s work proves him to be a talented, careful, and thorough scholar, and in a large body of work on these topics, his book stands alone.”

—Jay Mechling, University of California, Davis, author of On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth.