Camden After the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial City

Chapter 3: To Save Our City

Chapter  To Save Our City Camden today stands at the crossroads. Which turn will it take? Will its people elect to office a group of candidates qualified to guide the reborn city to maturity of industrial and civic growth? Or will lack of foresight blind the people to the importance competent government has for the city’s future? A wrong choice can mean a Camden going downhill. It can mean a Camden blighted by slums, plagued by unemployment, doomed to the role of an ugly shadow to the large city across the river. . . . Streets once again in disrepair, water never entirely free from rust, rising taxes for lack of new ratables-these could be symptoms of the mordant condition of the Camden of the future. —Courier-Post,  Like so many in his generation, Alfred Pierce eagerly enlisted for combat during World War II. A star athlete at Camden High School and an extrovert widely known as the ‘‘flaming redhead’’ for his high exuberance , Pierce had a religious vision while flying his fighter aircraft over Germany . Should he survive this test, he discerned, it was his destiny to save his native city.1 Al Pierce had a chance to realize that dream. Imbued with the era’s positivist view that, with triumphs over depression and world war, anything was possible, he turned his attention to reconstructing Camden. Public opinion was ripe for such an effort, and federal housing and highway legislation provided generous funding for physical renewal. Cities still held sway as the primary engines of wealth and culture in the nation. That they had aged, and seemed with new patterns of development increasingly out of date, required attention. Emerging suburban competition for valuable resources made the challenge all the more pressing. By committing himself to  Chapter  Camden’s reconstruction and renewal, Pierce joined a generation of activists committed to restoring cities to positions of regional primacy.2 As in other older industrial cities, such reformist efforts coincided with social changes that complicated the simple concept of physical reconstruction . Drawn to the opportunities they represented for employment as well as freedoms denied elsewhere, especially during the war years, African Americans flooded cities like Camden. That they encountered discrimination at every level of existence prompted new exertions to assure their share of the wealth at hand. Despite established patterns of acquiescence, they challenged the status quo, forming first a nascent civil rights movement, then activating more militant protests. The struggle to ‘‘save Camden’’ thus acquired multiple meanings. For Pierce and his business backers, success meant an economically viable city, one that generated enough revenue in taxes to sustain the city’s immediate needs for goods and services. For African Americans, the goals were closely related but more personal. They wanted access to employment as well as the benefits that were assumed to follow: decent homes in stable neighborhoods. Full success hung, therefore, on the ability to blend the two purposes. Unfortunately, timing and process conspired to assure a result that fell well short of either party’s hopes and expectations. * * * When Al Pierce returned to Camden in  there seemed no immediate demand for his services as savior. Plants that increased production rapidly during the war cut back, it was true. A number of his friends, finding few opportunities to buy a family home in the city, headed to the suburbs. But Camden seemed to be returning to business as ususal. So Pierce settled down himself, returning to live in the East Camden neighborhood he grew up in and to practice law. He offered his assistance to the Democratic party, for which he was awarded an appointed position on the school board.3 It would be fourteen years before he would have the chance to act on his wartime revelation. In  Pierce announced that he would run for city commission, Camden’s governing body. Prompted by Mayor George Brunner’s decision to retire, he put together his own ‘‘Save Our City’’ slate for the nonpartisan election of at-large commissioner positions—five in all. Pierce pointed to the loss of jobs and the decline in the city’s economic base, which he blamed on the ill effects of machine politics. Speaking for the ticket, Isadore To Save Our City  Bornstein described how he had bought the dilapidated Eagles Lodge building on Broadway at a city tax sale twenty years earlier. Having rehabilitated it, he ran an electrical appliance...