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Gee Whiz! This is a page
that I've looked forward to beginning for quite some time, and to a
great extent dreaded as well- there simply far too many parties with an
ax to grind and/or with an agenda to make this a topic to attempted
carelessly.
A lot of what I've learned
about Camden as a whole came from looking at census sheets, which don't
have opinions, merely report things as they are found to be. More of
what I've learned was from being married into a large African-America
family here in Camden, and from simply asking questions and talking to
friends, neighbors, and bar patrons during the 13 years I worked as a
disc jockey in various South Camden bars.
For most people alive
today in the city, it would take a great leap of the imagination to
imagine a time where African Americans were not a large percentage of
the population. Ask, lets say, 20 people at random when there family
came to Camden and where from that the answer will be after 1920 and
from any of the coastal states - Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North
Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. That being said, one can
infer that in a practical sense one should look at black life in Camden
in three or perhaps for different stages; one being lets say before
roughly 1880, a second from that time until 1920, a third from about
1920 though 1960, and the last being after 1960.
Segregation was a fact of
life in America prior to World War II and for some years afterwards, the
degree and extant varying widely all over the country. In Camden it
followed a peculiar pattern. Public Schools were segregated at the
elementary levels, but the High Schools never were. The city was simply
not large enough to afford to build a separate high school. An
examination of census records, which are available up to 1930, show that
neighborhoods may have had a majority of one ethnic group or another,
one would be hard put to find an entire block anywhere in the city that
was all-Black, all-Italian, all-Jewish, or all-anything. The current
assumption of most people on the street that Parkside was all Jewish,
Whitman Park all Polish, and Centerville all black, simply does not hold
water. A more realistic picture could be had by taking a virtual walk
from Broadway east on Kaighn Avenue to Seventh Street, north on Seventh
Street to Chestnut, and East on Chestnut to Eight Street. This walk,
only four blocks, mind you, would take you from a block or so with a lot
of Jewish people on Kaighn Avenue, though a block or so with a lot of
Black residents on 7th Street near Sycamore and Chestnut, then up
Chestnut to another pocket of Jewish people.... the bar at 789 Chestnut
was the Jewish owned Weisfeld's Cafe for something like 50 years, and
there was a synagogue at 8th and Sycamore. What one has to understand is
that Camden was (and is) so geographically small, and that there were so
many different ethnicities here, that it was literally impossible for
anyone to disentangle oneself from another.
One in retrospect very bad
thing happened in the mid 1930s when public housing came to Camden. One
project, Westfield Acres, was built for whites only, while another,
Branch Village, was built as all-Black. This was repeated in the 1940s
when the Ablett Village and Chelton Terrace projects were built. Never
before had there been enforced segregation in the city in terms of
housing, and although segregation in Camden Public Housing ended in the
mid 1950s, this very bad idea of keeping people apart gained a whole lot
more traction than it was ever worth, to the city's
detriment.
As times changed, as the
nation as a whole changed, as the percentage of population changed, and
as the community itself changed, African-American life in Camden and the
roles that African-Americans played evolved, especially in the realm of
politics. Camden politics prior to the 1920s had been a pretty
homogeneous affair, after that point, every ethnicity in town had its
own Democrat and Republican Club in just about every ward. With the
influx of Black voters from the South in the 1920s and 1930s the
African-American vote, while not anywhere close to a majority or even
close to being the largest ethnic block in the city, had become
significant to the point that its leaders were able to gain increased
city services and two large public works projects. By 1951 it was
politically feasible for Dr. Ulysses Wiggins to run for a place on the
five person city commission. He was defeated, but within a decade Elijah
Perry achieved that position.
Most of my source material
for web-pages is from before 1950, or from my times working in
African-American owned bars here in town. With that in mind, please note
that I am open to suggestions about topics for this and any other page
on the website. Have fun!
Phil
Cohen
Camden NJ
March 2005
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