Black Panther High: Racial Violence, Student Activism, and the Policing of Philadelphia Public Schools

Abstract

The school district of Philadelphia built up its security program along a very distinct pathway that was largely unrelated to any real needs protection. This program played out in two distinct phases. In the late 1950s, black and white students clashed in the neighborhoods surrounding schools over integration. Black parents called upon the city to provide community policing to protect their children in the communities surrounding schools. As the 1960s progressed and the promised civil rights gains from city liberals failed to materialize, students turned increasingly to Black Nationalist and black power ideology. When this protest activity moved inside their schoolhouses as blacks simultaneously began moving into white neighborhoods, white Philadelphians began to feel threatened in their homes and schools. As black student activism became louder and more militant, white parents called upon the police to protect their children inside the school house, as opposed to the earlier calls for community policing by black parents. White parents, the PPD, and conservative city politicians pushed the district to adopt tougher disciplinary policies to ham string this activism, to which black parents vehemently objected. The district resisted demands to police the schools through the 1960s until finally caving to political pressure in the 1970s.