Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape: Deep Roots, Continuing Legacy, by Amy Jane Cohen

Cohen thoughtfully illustrates Philadelphia’s Black history through landscape and legacy, offering a chronological overview of important sites and structures as well as individuals and institutions. While not exhaustive, as Cohen notes in the introduction, the book is an excellent starting point in covering and uncovering history from the colonial era to the Black Power Movement.

Diplomatic and bold

A self-identified “white person”, Cohen adds that she’s aware that some may be critical of her writing a book on Black history. Understandably so. However, it is important to note that Cohen uses her privilege thoughtfully, having sought the counsel of Black historians and culture bearers, such as the city’s beloved Charles Blockson, and amplifying their contributions throughout the text. A diplomatic writer, she also directly yet gently reframes the white public’s historic understanding of Philadelphia—not just a city of liberty and brotherly love but one of colonization, enslavement, and violence. This provides an important context for understanding the development of Black Philadelphia.

She does this by boldly debunking the myth of the North’s racial harmony, which commonly and conveniently situates the American South as the sole perpetrator of enslavement and racism—one without any collaborators. Early on in the text, Cohen works to provide a more accurate history of the city of Philadelphia, including its founding Quaker legacy. Quakers had a reputation for peace and friendship with Indigenous groups like the Lenape, Susquehannock, Shawnee, and Iroquois, and for sheltering Africans, but many Americans today are unaware of the more difficult truth. Cohen notes that William Penn wasn’t just a Quaker leader and the respected founder of the Pennsylvania colony. He was also an outspoken enslaver and racist. We need this correction to understand how the historical context of Philadelphia impacts the city today.

This reminds, and perhaps informs, the reader of Philadelphia’s bloody founding. Philly is not just home to the Declaration of Independence, but also to centuries of racial violence and injustice, from the gruesome Pennsylvania Slave Trade to the horrific MOVE Bombing.

Beginning with Blockson

In introducing Black Philadelphia, Cohen begins with Charles Blockson, known as the Father of Black Philadelphia History. His legacy is rightfully the central theme of the first chapter, and frames the remaining text as his pioneering work spans centuries of Black history and culture, in Philadelphia and throughout the African Diaspora. This includes his Historical Marker Project, which produced 74 markers in the city, including one dedicated to the Pennsylvania Slave Trade, and most notably, the Blockson Collection at Temple University, which is home to more than half a million items related to Black history and culture from around the world.

Chapters on the 17th and 18th centuries follow, highlighting areas like Washington Square Park, formerly Southeast Square, which was once a burial ground for enslaved Black people. Cohen’s writing prompts the reader to recognize that although this history may seem far removed, we still feel its legacy directly. We learn about Dr. William Shippen, a founder of the Medical College of Philadelphia (later becoming part of the University of Pennsylvania), who notoriously stole cadavers of Black bodies to use in his anatomy classes. This is yet another example of nonconsenting Black people being used as a foundation for the medical field, à la Henrietta Lacks, Dr. James Marion Sims, and the Tuskegee Experiment.

Agents, not victims

But Cohen provides an even more important lesson: Black Philadelphians resisted. They used the Southeast Square burial ground as a sacred and social gathering place, and organized themselves to stand guard over the bodies of their relatives, friends, and ancestors, fighting off thieves in the night. This is what makes Cohen’s text unique. She successfully situates Black people not as victims but as agents and as victors. This quality is key to recentering African voices, according to Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, Cohen’s fellow Philadelphian, Afrocentric scholar, and the founder of Temple’s Doctoral Program in Africology & African American Studies (the first in the nation). Although this history may not be easily visible amidst the apartment buildings lining Washington Square Park today, Cohen successfully demonstrates how this legacy remains engraved into the city’s physical landscape and in its social justice culture.

This continues throughout the book, with chapters like the one on Richard Allen and Absalom Jones and the establishment of institutions like the Free African Society and the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the first independent Black organization in the United States and the first independent Black denomination, respectively. This chapter also demonstrates this legacy of social justice through its discussion of the establishment of Mother Bethel Church, which was an important stop on the Underground Railroad.

Black history and brotherly love

Subsequent chapters build on this foundation laid by Black people in the city, highlighting Philadelphia natives and historic artist residents like Alain Locke, Paul Robeson, and Marian Anderson, in addition to civil-rights activists like Cecil B. Moore (whose name is now a part of the North Philadelphia landscape) and W.E.B Du Bois’s The Philadelphia Negro, a sociological study of Black life in the city. Cohen auspiciously articulates the critical impact of activism in Philadelphia. However, more devoted discussion on the impact of the Black arts beyond the aforementioned artists would’ve further demonstrated Philadelphia’s deeply rooted Black culture.

Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape achieves Cohen’s goal of educating the reader on Black Philadelphia. It’s more difficult to gauge whether readers are, as she hopes, meaningfully equipped to use this knowledge to preserve what’s left of Black Philadelphia’s landscape—its monuments, institutions, murals, and markers—but this book is an act of preservation; a monument in itself.

Cohen’s reader gains unshakable understanding that Black Philadelphia is Philadelphia, just as Black History is indeed American History: Black history is ingrained into every part of this city, and without Black people, Philadelphia simply would not be. And if Philadelphia were to ever live up to its nickname as the City of Brotherly Love, it would undoubtedly be because Black Philadelphians made it so.

Editor’s note: Lindsay Gary, PhD, MFA, MA, MPA, is the author of The New Red Book: A Guide to 50 of Houston's Black Historical and Cultural Sites.