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An important moment of the Civil Rights movement happened right here in Philadelphia, and it took place nearly 100 years earlier than the well-known demonstrations of the twentieth century.
Philadelphia in the 1860s was a city on the move. The city was growing fast and developing new city-wide services, but progress wasn’t being felt equally by all of its residents. Philadelphia’s free Black population was discriminated against and was excluded from the city’s progress. In response, Black residents of the Seventh Ward established their own system of schools, banks, libraries, and healthcare. However, during the turmoil of the Civil War, Black residents seized the moment to upend the status quo in Philadelphia. The battlefront was on the streets of Philly, and those in the front lines were Black women, ready for the fight.
This episode is the first in a three-part series on the life of one of those women, Caroline Le Count. Find out more in the companion blog post to this episode at https://foundinphiladelphia.com/
I just listened to Part 1 of the Caroline LeCount podcast. Simply exceptional! Although I’ve read about Catto and LeCount, this provided a vivid context for better understanding so many things…such as why streetcar access was so important, what it meant to the black community as ICY students demonstrated their proficiency, colored troop enlistment as a response to the threat of enslavement as Confederate troops moved closer to Philadelphia. I’m looking forward to hearing the next parts and will subscribe to hear other episodes. Wonderful work, especially during this time.
[…] may remember Dr. Giesberg from Episodes 3 and 4 on Philadelphia during the Civil War. She is the Humanities Chair at Villanova University and […]
[…] from Stanford University. I had stumbled across his PhD dissertation at Penn while researching Philadelphia’s streetcar integration fight in the 1860s. Our conversation happened while life was still pretty much locked down in Philly. I […]