Journal of Urban History

In North America almost everyone has assumed that, from the 1860s to the 1960s, suburbs were healthier than cities, but this has not been established as fact by urban or demographic historians. Contemporary evidence is scattered but, especially for the interwar years, significant. The most useful data pertain to infant mortality rates. They indicate that, in terms of population health, suburbs were diverse and so were city neighborhoods. On the average, suburbs were healthier than cities but, partly because of poor sanitation, many unincorporated fringe areas were as unhealthy as the worst city slums. As mortality rates declined, so did the relative advantage of suburbs; in the early postwar period the widespread use of septic tanks caused problems. Future research should utilize neglected, published data and, where possible, supplement these with the analysis of vital records.

This article argues that beginning in the late nineteenth century, New York City’s black population experienced targeted harassment and abuse from the city’s police officers. Antiblack prejudice proved to be fundamentally different from the Progressive Era attitudes about other ethnic groups who often faced scorn but who were still considered to be capable of reform. Blacks were perceived to be innately immoral and therefore irredeemable. Consequently, white reformers and policemen alike sought to limit the impact of black people on the (white) city, while permitting vice and crime to flourish in black neighborhoods.

This article is a history of howMilwaukee urban leaders treated their diverse, ethnic communities by “ Americanizing” them. The Milwaukee experience with their immigrants was both similar to and distinctive of other American cities. Basing their reception on the German tradition of fellowship as other midwestern centers, Milwaukeeans were unique throughout in combining a love for promoting the ethnic diversity of dress, music, and dance with teaching foreigners the English language and American democratic principles. Therefore, from especially the 1920s on, Americanizing foreigners in tax-supported, school social centers meant teaching them to be loyal Americans while offering training in and promotion of cultural differences.

In 1988, the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau established its Multicultural Affairs Congress (MAC) to attract and monitor minority tourism in one of America's most historic cities. Four years later, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce acknowledgedMAC's efforts and ranked Philadelphia the nation's top destination for African American tourists. Coinciding with the fulfillment of several key civil rights projects, particularly the election of Philadelphia's first black mayor, African American tourism ties Philadelphia's existing political and economic growth to the city's racial past. Placing changes in city policies and landscape that accompanied the emergence of this industry in context with overall economic, political, and spatial shifts marking Philadelphia's entrance into a service-driven economy, this article explores the possibility that African American tourism in Philadelphia represents a fusion of politics and racial formation within urban development that opens the door to investigating a new plane of urban racial politics.