Black History: Culture Stories
- Devon Brady
- 17 hours ago
- 2 min read
A City-Rooted Exploration of Pressure, Power, and What We Built
Black History: Culture Stories is a city-centered oral history series created by the Urban League of Greater Philadelphia to examine how systems shaped Black life, and how culture formed in response.
This series is for community members, students, leaders, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of how housing, policing, labor, and economic policy continue to influence life in Philadelphia today. It is both instructional and reflective, grounding Black culture not in trend or aesthetics, but in lived history shaped by exclusion, adaptation, and collective care.
Its purpose is clear: to name the systems that structured inequality, to trace their impact locally, and to honor the durable institutions and cultural knowledge Black communities built in response.
Week One: Home, Land, & Law
Redlining, Housing, and the Shape of Black Philadelphia
Week One examined housing as a system of power. The oral history traced the evolution from post–Civil War Black Codes to federally sanctioned redlining, explaining how policy dictated where Black Philadelphians could live, access mortgages, and build wealth.
The series named specific neighborhoods shaped by redlining and explored how these restrictions produced not collapse, but interdependence, multigenerational households, block culture, church-based support systems, and shared survival strategies.
The central insight: housing policy did not just restrict wealth; it reshaped culture. View Week One's Oral History below:
Week Two: Policing, Prisons, & What Was Taken
Mass Incarceration and Community Destabilization
Week Two focused on the historical evolution of policing and the rise of mass incarceration. Beginning with slave patrols and Black Codes, the oral history traced how enforcement systems expanded while economic investment contracted in Black neighborhoods.
Mass incarceration was examined not only as imprisonment, but as large-scale destabilization, removing parents from households, income from families, and stability from communities.
The week emphasized how culture adapted to absence, developing networks of care and systems of belonging that absorbed what the state removed. View Week Two's Oral History below:
Week Three: Work, Great Migration, & Making a Living
Labor, Dignity, and the Right to Earn
This week, the series turns to labor.
The upcoming oral history will examine the Great Migration and the movement of Black families to Philadelphia in search of wages, safety, and dignity.
It will explore what happened when arrival did not equal access, when unions excluded Black workers, advancement was limited, and economic security remained fragile.
And it will trace what was built anyway.
From Black-owned commercial corridors and neighborhood businesses to labor organizing and cultural institutions, Week Three will examine how constrained work produced a culture of institution-building and shared economy, reshaping Philadelphia’s civic and economic landscape in lasting ways.
The story continues this week. Stay tuned and follow us on all social media platforms to stay connected and informed at:
@urbanleaguegphl
Momentum Newsletter: February 2026 | Issue 2
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