Introduction
In August 1957, teenagers across the country started watching teenagers in Philadelphia dance on television. Thanks to American Bandstand,
the first national daily television program directed at teenagers,
Philadelphia emerged as the epicenter of the national youth culture.
The show broadcast nationally from Philadelphia every afternoon from
1957 to early-1964 and featured performances by the biggest names in
rock and roll. In addition to these musicians, the local Philadelphia
teenagers who danced on the show became stars. For the millions of
young people across the country who watched the program every day on
television, these Philadelphia youth helped to shape the image of what
teenagers looked like. Over fifty years after the show first broadcast,
American Bandstand’s representations of youth culture remain closely
linked both to the show’s legacy and to larger questions about popular
culture, race, segregation, and civil rights. Billboard magazine
journalist Fred Bronson, for example, argues that American Bandstand was
a “force for social good.” [i] Bronson bases this claim on Dick
Clark’s memory that he integrated the show’s studio audience when he
became the host in 1957. “I don’t think of myself as a hero or civil
rights activist for integrating the show,” Clark contends, “it was
simply the right thing to do.”[ii] In the context of local and national
mobilization in favor of segregation, underscored by widespread
anti-black racism, integrating American Bandstand would have been a bold
move and a powerful symbol. Broadcasting daily evidence of
Philadelphia’s vibrant interracial teenage culture would have offered
viewers images of black and white teens interacting as peers at a time
when such images were extremely rare. Clark and American Bandstand,
however, did not choose this path and the historical record contradicts
Clark’s memory of integration. Rather than being a fully integrated
program that welcomed black youth, American Bandstand continued to
discriminate against black teens throughout the show’s Philadelphia
years.
The real story of American Bandstand and Philadelphia in
the postwar era is much more complicated than Clark suggests. It
requires understanding not only how American Bandstand became racially
segregated, but also how the show influenced and was influenced by
racial discrimination and civil rights activism in the city’s
neighborhoods and schools.
When viewed in the appropriate local
and national contexts, this history of American Bandstand and postwar
Philadelphia provides new insights on the immense resistance to civil
rights and racial integration in the North, on the early use of
color-blind rhetoric to maintain racially discriminatory policies, on
the ways popular culture serves as a barometer of racial progress, and
on the persistence of myths of white innocence that deny, disavow, or
distort the history of racism in the civil rights era. Dick Clark’s
claims about the integration of American Bandstand, for example, exhibit
the selective memory that historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall has identified
in the dominant narratives of the civil rights era. Against the
distortions in many of these narratives, Hall suggests making civil
rights “[h]arder to celebrate as a natural progression of American
values. Harder to cast as a satisfying morality tale. Most of all,
harder to simplify, appropriate, and contain.” Like the stories that
Hall critiques, Clark’s popular histories of the American Bandstand
present segregation as a simple moral question of right or wrong, rather
than a deeply entrenched system of policies and customs with material
consequences. Clark’s claims of integrating the show not only overstate
American Bandstand’s role as a “force for social good,” they also
obscure the very reasons why integrating the show would have been
noteworthy. He presents himself as the brave individual who broke down
American Bandstand’s racial barriers, rather than describing the immense
economic and social pressures that made segregation the safe course of
action. While Clark’s investment in the rhetoric of racial innocence is
widely shared, Clark is unique because became an extraordinarily
wealthy media personality by hosting one of the most popular television
programs of all time and his self-mythologizing popular histories of
American Bandstand have circulated widely.
As Dick Clark’s claims
about integrating the show suggest, there is something at stake in how
we remember the history of American Bandstand. When I started research
on this project I believed, as Clark has claimed, that American
Bandstand was fully integrated in the 1950s. I expected to contrast the
show’s integration with the segregation of Philadelphia’s public
schools and neighborhoods and explore how popular culture fostered
interracial attitudes that challenged the existing racial order. The
historical evidence ultimately led me to see how American Bandstand
emerged from strong desires to protect racial segregation, both in
Philadelphia’s neighborhoods and schools, but also in local and national
youth consumer culture. Rather than a mythical history in which
American Bandstand made a major contribution to desegregation, this book
investigates how television, neighborhoods, and schools became
segregation battlegrounds in postwar Philadelphia and how these sites
produced racial difference within the burgeoning national youth culture.
I tell this story by drawing on a range of textual, visual, and aural
evidence both inside and outside of the archives, including: letters,
meeting minutes, speech transcripts, handbills, city government reports,
grant proposals, census data, maps, newsletters, newspapers, magazines,
editorial cartoons, high school yearbooks, photographs, television
programs, radio scripts, films, songs, popular histories of American
Bandstand, American Bandstand memorabilia, and twenty-one original oral
histories with people who grew up in Philadelphia and attended, watched,
and/or protested American Bandstand. Through these sources I explore
the choices American Bandstand’s producers made in their specific
contexts, the choices other Philadelphians made under similar
circumstances, and the on-going struggle over how this history of racial
discrimination and anti-discrimination activism is remembered. From
television producers and radio deejays to school officials and civil
rights advocates, all of the people who make up this history understood
the daily lives of teenagers and the representations of these lives as
important sites in the struggle for racial equality in postwar
Philadelphia. Thanks to American Bandstand, images of Philadelphia
teenagers became meaningful for young people across the country. This
book reveals how American Bandstand reinforced, rather than challenged,
segregationist attitudes, and how this discrimination has been
repeatedly disavowed over the past half century.
the first national daily television program directed at teenagers,
Philadelphia emerged as the epicenter of the national youth culture.
The show broadcast nationally from Philadelphia every afternoon from
1957 to early-1964 and featured performances by the biggest names in
rock and roll. In addition to these musicians, the local Philadelphia
teenagers who danced on the show became stars. For the millions of
young people across the country who watched the program every day on
television, these Philadelphia youth helped to shape the image of what
teenagers looked like. Over fifty years after the show first broadcast,
American Bandstand’s representations of youth culture remain closely
linked both to the show’s legacy and to larger questions about popular
culture, race, segregation, and civil rights. Billboard magazine
journalist Fred Bronson, for example, argues that American Bandstand was
a “force for social good.” [i] Bronson bases this claim on Dick
Clark’s memory that he integrated the show’s studio audience when he
became the host in 1957. “I don’t think of myself as a hero or civil
rights activist for integrating the show,” Clark contends, “it was
simply the right thing to do.”[ii] In the context of local and national
mobilization in favor of segregation, underscored by widespread
anti-black racism, integrating American Bandstand would have been a bold
move and a powerful symbol. Broadcasting daily evidence of
Philadelphia’s vibrant interracial teenage culture would have offered
viewers images of black and white teens interacting as peers at a time
when such images were extremely rare. Clark and American Bandstand,
however, did not choose this path and the historical record contradicts
Clark’s memory of integration. Rather than being a fully integrated
program that welcomed black youth, American Bandstand continued to
discriminate against black teens throughout the show’s Philadelphia
years.
The real story of American Bandstand and Philadelphia in
the postwar era is much more complicated than Clark suggests. It
requires understanding not only how American Bandstand became racially
segregated, but also how the show influenced and was influenced by
racial discrimination and civil rights activism in the city’s
neighborhoods and schools.
When viewed in the appropriate local
and national contexts, this history of American Bandstand and postwar
Philadelphia provides new insights on the immense resistance to civil
rights and racial integration in the North, on the early use of
color-blind rhetoric to maintain racially discriminatory policies, on
the ways popular culture serves as a barometer of racial progress, and
on the persistence of myths of white innocence that deny, disavow, or
distort the history of racism in the civil rights era. Dick Clark’s
claims about the integration of American Bandstand, for example, exhibit
the selective memory that historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall has identified
in the dominant narratives of the civil rights era. Against the
distortions in many of these narratives, Hall suggests making civil
rights “[h]arder to celebrate as a natural progression of American
values. Harder to cast as a satisfying morality tale. Most of all,
harder to simplify, appropriate, and contain.” Like the stories that
Hall critiques, Clark’s popular histories of the American Bandstand
present segregation as a simple moral question of right or wrong, rather
than a deeply entrenched system of policies and customs with material
consequences. Clark’s claims of integrating the show not only overstate
American Bandstand’s role as a “force for social good,” they also
obscure the very reasons why integrating the show would have been
noteworthy. He presents himself as the brave individual who broke down
American Bandstand’s racial barriers, rather than describing the immense
economic and social pressures that made segregation the safe course of
action. While Clark’s investment in the rhetoric of racial innocence is
widely shared, Clark is unique because became an extraordinarily
wealthy media personality by hosting one of the most popular television
programs of all time and his self-mythologizing popular histories of
American Bandstand have circulated widely.
As Dick Clark’s claims
about integrating the show suggest, there is something at stake in how
we remember the history of American Bandstand. When I started research
on this project I believed, as Clark has claimed, that American
Bandstand was fully integrated in the 1950s. I expected to contrast the
show’s integration with the segregation of Philadelphia’s public
schools and neighborhoods and explore how popular culture fostered
interracial attitudes that challenged the existing racial order. The
historical evidence ultimately led me to see how American Bandstand
emerged from strong desires to protect racial segregation, both in
Philadelphia’s neighborhoods and schools, but also in local and national
youth consumer culture. Rather than a mythical history in which
American Bandstand made a major contribution to desegregation, this book
investigates how television, neighborhoods, and schools became
segregation battlegrounds in postwar Philadelphia and how these sites
produced racial difference within the burgeoning national youth culture.
I tell this story by drawing on a range of textual, visual, and aural
evidence both inside and outside of the archives, including: letters,
meeting minutes, speech transcripts, handbills, city government reports,
grant proposals, census data, maps, newsletters, newspapers, magazines,
editorial cartoons, high school yearbooks, photographs, television
programs, radio scripts, films, songs, popular histories of American
Bandstand, American Bandstand memorabilia, and twenty-one original oral
histories with people who grew up in Philadelphia and attended, watched,
and/or protested American Bandstand. Through these sources I explore
the choices American Bandstand’s producers made in their specific
contexts, the choices other Philadelphians made under similar
circumstances, and the on-going struggle over how this history of racial
discrimination and anti-discrimination activism is remembered. From
television producers and radio deejays to school officials and civil
rights advocates, all of the people who make up this history understood
the daily lives of teenagers and the representations of these lives as
important sites in the struggle for racial equality in postwar
Philadelphia. Thanks to American Bandstand, images of Philadelphia
teenagers became meaningful for young people across the country. This
book reveals how American Bandstand reinforced, rather than challenged,
segregationist attitudes, and how this discrimination has been
repeatedly disavowed over the past half century.
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