by Here Sen Heru
On Thursday, December 12, 2024, a City Council Committee approved a motion to have the entire City Council vote for a new Sixer’s arena in an area historically home to Chinatown merchants and residents. City government officials see the arena construction as an economic boom to Market Street East and the city’s revenue bank accounts.
But there is something else brewing with this proposed development. It is that old social malady, white racism. Now, carried out with the help of people with black faces.
Up to the early 1970s, Market Street East was an economic Mecca for Philadelphia residents and City Government. It was anchored by arguably some of the greatest multi-level Department Stores in the world at the time! They were John Wanamaker (now Macy’s Department Store), Gimbels, Lit Brothers, and Strawbridge and Clothier Department Stores. The iconic, and if it was not, should have been a historical landmark, the Gimbels Department Store was actually razed to become a parking lot. Two others just permanently closed, and the Macy’s Corporation took over the Wanamaker building and shops.
White European Americans, especially middle-aged and seniors, frequently shopped in the Market Street East corridor. They spent a lot of money. They began cutting back in the 50s and 60s. Why? Because of the successful roar from the nationwide Freedom and Black Power Movements peaking in the 1960s and early 1970s. It prompted many Black people to regularly leave their segregated neighborhoods to shop downtown, in a White town, if you will. And they came downtown with money and an attitude. Not the docility you saw, for example, in the Black actors and actresses in the period movie Django. Though they were not your “uppity Blacks,” they felt privilege nevertheless.
Black shoppers were becoming the dominant group of shoppers in Market Street East. Even though the Market Street East white store shop owners were making money, more than before, their racism would not allow them to continually sell to predominately Black consumers. At the same time, White shoppers stopped coming downtown. In fact, many of them in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, with their counterparts in other cities nationwide, participated in the greatest urban exodus of all time. Supported by legal but unlawful federal government banks subsidizing mortgages and construction bonds–they built a new residential model. Today, simply called the Suburbs. So, one by one, the white old-time owners of the small and big stores in Market Street East closed their businesses forever.
Market Street East became blighted not because of economics but because of white racism.
In an attempt to bring back now suburban white shoppers, city government officials in 1977 helped finance the building of the “Gallery” in Market Street East. It was a series of newly constructed small stores anchored by some national chain retail stores in a mall-type setting. It was expanded in 1984. But white city officials soon had to acknowledge the racism sickness in their culture’s shopping ethos, which is that white people, in general, will not shop in mall-like stores where there is predominately or a significant number of Black shoppers. Now, Black people, in general, don’t mind shopping at malls where white people are dominant. But the other way around? No! Never! So, the Market Street East Gallery was deemed economically unsuccessful.
But guess what? A revival did take shape. This revival didn’t start in the meeting rooms of City Hall but in the vision of Hood Base Black Entrepreneurs. Many Black people invested in mobile vending carts or had large tables and began selling all kinds of products on the sidewalks of Market Street East and its intersecting streets. Do you remember this time? The area was booming. Market Street East was coming back through We the People. Unfortunately, some very wicked people in the city government put a stop to it by saying these people were selling without a license. Maybe true, but the real crime was that many of the vendors had felony convictions and were earning a decent income for themselves and their families. This was unwelcome. The majority of convicted felon vendors were forcefully prohibited from vending.
Later, the Gallery was recently rebuilt as the Fashion District. It too, is not achieving its economic potential. They still won’t come. They (white suburbanites) are more comfortable shopping and dining by going as far east as they can, to the borders of the Delaware River, aka Old City. Market Street East stores and shops, in general, are not generating any economic surge today, according to city officials. So Philadelphia city government officials, many now wearing Black Faces, are colluding with the owners of the multi-billion dollar NBA franchise, the 76ers, to build a new stadium in the heart of Market Street East, spilling over and into what is now Chinatown. It is another ridiculous and expensive economic scheme to attract white people into the Center City district.
Why This “Make America (Philadelphia Market Street East) Great Again” endeavor won’t work for We The People–will be examined in Part Two.
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