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The Nicest Kids in Town

Matt Delmont, Author

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Notes for Dick Clark's Memory of Integrating American Bandstand

[i] Richard Robinson and Dick Clark, Dick Clark 20 Years of Rock n’ Roll Yearbook (Buddah Records, Inc., 1973).
[ii] Clark, Rock, Roll, and Remember, 110-112.
[iii] Lawrence Redd, Rock Is Rhythm and Blues: The Impact of Mass Media (Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, 1974); Peter Guralnick, Feel Like Going Home: Portraits in Blues and Rock 'n' Roll (New York: Vintage Book, 1971); Steve Chapple and Reebee Garofalo, Rock ‘n’ Roll is Here to Pay: The History and Politics of the Music Industry (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1977), 231-269; Stephen Walsh, “Black-Oriented Radio and the Civil Rights Movement,” in Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle, ed. Ward, 67-81; Brian Ward, Just My Soul Responding, 339-450.
[iv] Ben Fong-Torres, “‘Soul Train’ vs. Dick Clark; Battle of the Bandstands,” Rolling Stone, June 7, 1973, 10.
[v] Stanley Williford, “Don Cornelius, Dick Clark Feud Ends,” Los Angeles Sentinel, June 7, 1993. On the competition between American Bandstand and Soul Train, see Christopher Lehman, A Critical History of Soul Train on Television (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2008); Jackson, American Bandstand, 255-280; Christine Acham, Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Struggle for Black Power (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 54-84.
[vi] Dick Clark with Allen Daniel Goldblatt, Dick Clark Remembers 25 Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Happy Days, and American Bandstand (Hopkins, MN: Imperial House, 1979), 11.
[vii] Henry Schipper, “Dick Clark,” Rolling Stone, April 19, 1990, p. 126
[viii] Jackson, American Bandstand, 140-141.
[ix] Dick Clark and Fred Bronson, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand (New York: Collins Publishers, 1997), 19, 21. Clark’s co-author, Fred Bronson, repeats parts of this quote in Dick Clark’s American Bandstand 50th Anniversary (2007).
[x] Dick Clark, “Behind the Scenes at Bandstand” in American Bandstand The Rock ‘n’ Roll Years: 1956-1962, 2003.
[xi] Andrew Goodman, “Dick Clark, Still the Oldest Living Teenager,” New York Times, March 25, 2011.
[xii] Ibid., 10.
[xiii] Ibid., 10-24.
[xiv] Countryman, Up South.
[xv] On the racial discrimination in housing and neighborhood housing fights, see CHR, “A Report on the Housing of Negro Philadelphians,” 1953, CHR collection, box A-620, folder 148.4, PCA; ACA, “To Residents of This Section of West Phila.,” March 1955, FC collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 34, TUUA; ACA, “Help!! Help!!,” May 19, 1955, FC collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 34, TUUA.
[xvi] On the racial discrimination in youth recreation, see “Investigation of Skating Rink: Interim Report,” 1952, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 20, folder 383, TUUA; Spence Coxe, letter to Joseph Barnes, December 12, 1952, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 20, folder 383, TUUA; CHR, “Recommendation for Closing Case: Concord Skating Rink,” January 11, 1955, CHR collection, Box A-2860, folder 148.2 “Minutes 1953-1957,” PCA; Commission of Human Relations, Meeting Minutes, September 21, 1953, CHR collection, Box A-2860, folder 148.2 “Minutes 1953-1957,” PCA; “NAACP Radio Report on WCAM,” September 27, 1953, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 21, folder 421, TUUA; West Philadelphia Fellowship Council, Minutes, October 27, 1953, FC collection, Acc 626, box 61, folder 36, TUUA; CHR, “Minutes of Meeting on Skating Rink Project,” March 30, 1954, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 21, folder 421, TUUA; CHR, “Minutes of Meeting on Skating Rink Project,” March 30, 1954, NAACP collection, URB 6, box 20, folder 383, TUUA; CHR, “Recommendation for Closing Case: Crystal Palace Roller Skating Rink,” January 19, 1955, CHR collection, Box A-2860, folder 148.2 “Minutes 1953-1957,” PCA; “Recommendation for Closing Case: Concord Skating Rink;” CHR, Annual Report, 1954, CHR collection, Box A-620, folder 148.1, PCA.
[xvii] Matthew Frye Jacobson, “‘Richie’ Allen, Whitey’s Ways, and Me: A Political Education in the 1960s,” in In the Game: Race, Identity, and Sports in the Twentieth Century, ed. Amy Bass (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 19-46; William Kashatus, September Swoon: Richie Allen, the ’64 Phillies, and Racial Integration (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2004).
[xviii] On school segregation in Philadelphia see, Philadelphia Board of Education, Division of Research, “A Ten-Year Summary of the Distribution of Negro Pupils in the Philadelphia Public Schools, 1957-1966,” December 23, 1966, FL collection, Acc 469, box 23, folder 6, TUUA; “Number of Negro Teachers and Percentage of Negro Students in Philadelphia Senior High Schools, 1956-1957 [n.d.],” FL collection, Acc 469, box 14, folder 10, TUUA.
[xix] Baughman, Same Time, Same Station, xiii.
[xx] Jackson, Big Beat Heat, 168-169.
[xxi] Miscegenation laws remained in place in seventeen Southern states until they were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia (1967). Additionally, a number of other states repealed their laws before Loving, but after American Bandstand started broadcasting nationally: California (1959); Nevada (1959); Idaho (1959); Arizona (1962); Nebraska (1963); Utah (1963); Indiana (1965); and Wyoming (1965).
[xxii] On miscegenation laws, see Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Fay Botham, Almighty God Created the Races: Christianity, Interracial Marriage, & American Law (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Jane Dailey, “Sex, Segregation, and the Sacred after Brown,” Journal of American History 91 (June 2004),
[xxiii] Dailey, “Sex, Segregation, and the Sacred after Brown,” 125.
[xxiv] New York deejay Clay Cole suggests that his locally broadcast Clay Cole Show (1959-1968) was racially integrated, but he does not indicate when this integration began and I was unable to verify his memory with other sources. See Clay Cole, Sh-Boom: The Explosion of Rock n’ Roll, 1953-1968 (New York: Morgan James, 2009), 55, 186.
[xxv] Otis, “Johnny Otis Says Let’s Talk.”
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