The Battle of Whitman Park: Race, Class, and Public Housing in Philadelphia, 1956–1982

This article traces the history of the “battle of Whitman Park,” a twenty-seven-year-long controversy over the construction of a public housing project in a white working class neighborhood in South Philadelphia. By the late 1970s, it was the longest-running housing dispute in the United States and one of the longest conflicts over a liberal welfare program in American history. Sketching white community’s development along with the racial, class, and gender politics involved in planning, protesting, and building the housing project, the article draws broader arguments about poverty and political development in postwar urban America. I argue that the grassroots politics of neighborhood and public housing led to the development of a welfare rights movement that espoused a broad commitment to race-conscious welfare liberalism. At the same time, however, the controversy produced a nominally “colorblind” neighborhood protectionist movement that adopted a populist conservatism based upon the selective rejection of welfare state entitlements. Examining the white blue collar opponents of the project along with the predominantly poor African American proponents, it shows how the interaction of both movements contributed to the decline of American liberalism as well as creation of a civil rights conscious welfare rights movement.