Yannick: The last workshop that we did [during TRIPOD and Second Tuesday], we touched on a few things about the Black Bottom; there's a lot to dig through. I hope to be able to get some clarity on some things to bring to the next workshop. With both of your years of wisdom combined, we can really paint a beautiful picture for future descendants. To start, can you both describe your connection to the Black Bottom?

CAROL: I'll start because Norman’s is probably much longer than mine. My connection is through my grandfather on my mother's side and my grandfather on my father's side. Pop-pop on mama's side bought a house at 3841 Cambridge Street. Then my father's father, Pop-Pop McDuffy had 4131 Cambridge Street. I wrote stories about those two addresses too. 3841 was a speakeasy—that's how Pop-Pop made enough money so that they could purchase 4131. My mother and father were married at 14. That's who they purchased the house for.

So I lived at 3841 for years, then we moved to 4131. All that time I was going to Catholic schools... Saint Ignatius was my primary school. Fed me into high school, which was Our Mother of Sorrows. I was raised in the Bottom... As Pop-pop got older, that house had been through multiple generations of family, and as the city starts doing their crazy stuff, it was a choice between my family keeping that home or this home—4131 or 3841—because one of our relatives needed a home and she has 6 kids.

So, we moved into West Philly and found this house on a block of all white people, but all Catholics. That's the uniting and common thing. We were all Catholics, so we weren't intruding as a black family. We were Catholics moving into a Catholic parish and they were accepting of us.

When my parents divorced, my father stayed with his father at that house, and every summer I spent my summers at 4131 with my dad. That house was an anchor for us, but we ended up selling that to the city. We don't own it anymore so it's not mine. Since then, the house was knocked down, a new house was built.

Above: Ms. Carol’s home at 3841 Cambridge St., now demolished.

Below: 4131 Cambridge St., the new build in the place of Ms. Carol’s former home.

NORMAN: My parents are from South Carolina, Florence County... I went down [from Philly] the day school was out [in the summer]; my sister and I were placed on a train. We had our name tags on. Once we got to Washington DC, it was segregated, then we had to go in the back. One of the things that made it possible for us to go down South was because of my father. He worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad. So, we would go down to South Carolina and meet folks on both sides of our family. On my father's side, there were eleven children, and they had a lot of children. On my mother's side, there were only 4 children.

My parents moved up [to Philadelphia] in the early 40s. I was born in 1942. We lived around 43rd and Lancaster. Basically everyone was from somewhere down south. As a matter of fact, 4 or 5 doors away from us was a family, Mr. Wilson, that was from the same place my parents were from in South Carolina...

My father was a very, very quiet man. He got up every morning before we got up. My mother had his lunch and his breakfast ready. He came down and worked, he came back and was so tired, but a very respectable man. I've never heard him curse. If he would curse, it would be “gosh darn it” and that's about it.

When the weekend came, it was a different story. He put on his sport clothes, and then he did some drinking, and he was a very quiet man, but he attempted to recite the Gettysburg address.

Norman explaining his childhood to Yannick, Lillian, and Carol.

We had to make money outside of our jobs and families, so my father had a weekend speakeasy and card game. The folk that came were pairs and relatives from the South because we were close knit, and we stayed together... You could hear a card game—everybody's drinking liquor and you can't get sleep upstairs—and these guys are actually singing that old-time gospel music that you don't know what they’re saying. But they came. This is who they were. They were heavy drinkers, heavy workers, but not so much that rock and roll type side.

There was always somebody coming from down south, staying with us. My mother had a degree. She finished college out in Columbia, SC, but she couldn't get a job because she came out of a Southern HBCU.

But my mother and Mr. Wilson, who I brought up earlier, were pillars in the community. Mr. Wilson had a barbershop. He had a restaurant. He had a corner store. If anybody needed some business taken care of, my mother would take care of that. So, folk would come in. The rule was, when you got your paycheck, you brought the money to her, she gave you enough to get you through the next week. When you got enough money to get a room, you moved and somebody else came in the exact same pattern. Now, the street in the area that I grew up with, everybody was close. Nobody starved. It was a situation where even the older guys took a young guy and mentored them.

Yannick: That's what I wanted to ask about. A lot of the work I'm doing is dealing with black communities, not just in Philadelphia, but all around the country. To look at how they've been lost, maintained, or preserved. One thing both of you mentioned was this idea that it wasn't so much about race. It was about this Catholic community [that Carol mentioned], and [Norman] mentioned that these people playing cards were singing and humming these gospel tunes... You have these things that tie the community together: religion, music. And you have these gangs?

NORMAN: Yeah, the gangs, but back in the 50s, if you were a gang member, you were tough, you were dedicated to it.

Yannick: What I'm really curious about: was the gang for protection of the community or were the gangs inside...?

NORMAN: I think it was protection of the community. I guess guys like to fight a lot. I don't know.

CAROL: Yeah, I'm the only girl, raised with brothers who were in gangs and crossed over. Our generation was younger, but similar... The gangs were for protection and territory. The gangs first were gangs, not against each other, but to protect any outside forces. To protect the peace.

Yannick: So was it about protecting the Black Bottom?

CAROL: Correct.

Yannick: Okay, Not so much territory conflict across neighborhoods, but moreso protecting the entire Black Bottom.

CAROL: Correct. Dr. Palmer will tell you that they organize to protect themselves, their territory, but also to get the young men off the street that were gang warring each other to show them there was a different enemy than them. That's how he rallied these gang members together and had these summits. Not just about the fighting but who owns what, who has what territory, and who's infringing on where. Then, they taught them how to get the permits, how to protect this house from this encroachment, and therefore create their movement that they had down there and that's why you got the Black Bottom today...

NORMAN: Well, one thing is that about Philadelphia, especially with the older generations, is asking “where are you from?” Like in North Philadelphia, an 80-year-old may respond, “I'm from the tender line.” This person may not have even been in the gang. It's always the area, the territory, that's in the mind because of the gang situation.

I was never in a gang, but you knew the gang guys. They played ball and everything. You grew up with them. So, I was an associate. I've never been to a gang war. When I went to high school, I'm from West Philadelphia. I didn't go to Overbrook. I didn't go to Westfield. I decided to go to Bartram. I knew for a fact if I went to Overbrook or West Philadelphia, if my buddies and my friends were from there, I would’ve been [in a gang]. When I went to Bartram, it was 49th and Woodland. I just got off the bus with the trolley. I was breaking traditions.

My big sister that took care of me, she never said a harsh word to me, but she wanted me to go to Overbrook. She was upset, and then my best friend Jimmy Holloway, he was in the Junior Fabulous Kings. They sent him over to my house. And they said, “Look, why are you crazy? Why are you going over there? There's a guy over there named Foots breaking people's legs. 'If you get moved on, we're not coming over to help.” The thing is, they would have done that. Believe me, they would have come over to help.

Yannick introducing cyanotypes at The Arts League

However, I'm looking for this guy, Foots. This guy was a gang leader. He was almost ready to graduate when I got there. Fate had it that we became best friends. He was a mentor because he was graduating. He graduated from Delaware State, and I was one between going to the Air Force and college. He's my oldest child’s godfather. I got over [to Bartram] because I knew him, so I could be on that corner...

Then, when I was going to play basketball for the YMCA, you go to South Philly, you could go to North Philly, you got your gym bag. [The gangs] said these guys are athletes don't bother them.

One time, I was in the alley with a couple of older guys passing a bottle of wine around. The bottle of wine came to me, and they said, “Are you crazy? You can't give him no wine. That's Miss Cain’s son.”

Yannick: Everyone looked out for you.

NORMAN: After I graduated from college, the first job that I really had was three years in the reformatory system. I could relate the gang situation was in the 50s to what it was in the 70s. It was entirely different because these guys were recruiting. They had these shotguns, and the territory expanded. It wasn't the same thing.

There are students that are at Drexel that don't know about the [black bottom] area…I think without this continuation to pass the torch in a digital format, one that can kind of speak to the future, it's going to be challenging to preserve these stories.

—Yannick Lowery

Yannick: Let me ask really quickly, whenever there's something lost, something we can be nostalgic about, it can be easy to romanticize. With that in mind, thinking about the Black Bottom, were there things that were not ideal? Were there things that you were not comfortable with or were there times where you didn't feel safe?

CAROL: Well, I'm at the tail end of what Mr. Norman said: the 70s. I've got two different decades. My brothers are 10 years older than me, so they were in the gangs where they respected each other. They were from 49th and Woodland, but they knew the guys in West Oak Lane, so they were allowed to come to the party. In the 70s, when the new gangsters came out, they kind of lost track of what the protection was, at least this is my perception, and it was about getting their land.

Then, the drugs came in. Cocaine came first, then cocaine transitioned into crack. That's when Shigity started coming in. The gangs that used to protect us, now we're about protecting their money for their territory and their drugs, and their customers.

When I went in the street in a particular area, I knew I was crossing over into so-and-so's territory. I knew the names of who had what. I had to make sure I was with so-and-so when I went that way.

I didn't have the freedom to see it glamorized. I no longer had the freedom to go and do whatever I wanted in my own culture, my own people. I knew who was who, but I wasn't comfortable because they were shooting across each other.

They had no respect for who I was, my grandmother, the fact that you're on Mr. Jameson's steps with your cocaine and your crack stuff. Mr. Jameson is in the house terrified because back in the day he used to have an open house for all the gangsters, but y'all are different kinds of gangsters...

NORMAN: See, I was a juvenile probation officer for a year. I spent 3 years in the reformatory system, and I was a parole agent. So, I got to know you start off with juvenile probation, then you see some of the guys in the reformatories, then you see some of the guys had no parole. So, I have a general idea of what was happening.

...What happened here in Philadelphia [in the 70s] was that the emphasis was not territorial gang fighting, but the cash money. The leaders and the heavy participants and the gangs in Philadelphia moved towards the crack cocaine industry and you had your cartels and at that particular time you had an organization called the Black Mafia, and you had the Junior Black Mafia after that.

CAROL: For context, these are cartels, not just gangs, but cartels with hooks into real businesses. There are movies about them now.

Norman describing the changes of the Black Bottom to Yannick

NORMAN: They were well organized, and we've got black mafia and from what I understand they were shaking down the Italian mob down South. They were getting drugs out of New York. It was a very serious situation.

The older guys, I think they just remembered the gang war type because well before they came in when I was a kid, there was a different type of gangster. That type of gangster was the big-time number runner. They had bars and most of these number runners, they had their mom-and-pop stores, their hoagie shops, and they actually worked. Everybody knew who they were, so that if you were behind on your mortgage, and if somebody got out of line, it wasn't like “I'm just gonna shoot you.” They might break your leg or have you work it off.

When I was in my early 40s, when the rap first came out, I was like, “What kind of music is this?” But secretly, I would have got the story. You know, Run DMC, Queen Latifah. They were talking about “let's get it together.” Then, all of a sudden gangster rap came in, I think that was..

CAROL: Yeah, I agree with you. I see a couple of root causes for that flip, and it's because I see multiple variables that have happened.

You had the Vietnam War where all of our black men were sent. Most of them were sent and drafted into wars. My brothers enlisted because they were given a choice: prison for something they did or enlist into the services. In the late 60s, that happened while we were protesting the war. You had protesters here, and you had our brothers over in Vietnam. They return, some of them they already got addicted to the poppy, so they were on the opium and the poppy and those drugs. Some of them have undiagnosed neurodiversity and mental health and traumatic experiences and needed to cope. They come home, and they're ill.

Now, the whole structure of the family has changed. The matriarchs were working her behind off the whole time. The patriarch is now damaged. What happens to the youth underneath that family structure? They didn’t have the protections we had, where the neighborhood knows who you are, because they're not there anymore. They're cracked up or they're struggling to try to keep their houses in this environment.

You layer that on top of all this nice stuff. Showing these kids what it is like to have a nice car, wearing the furs, and all the gold chains. Kids think, “How do I obtain that? I don't have a real job, but if I sell some crack, sell some drugs, I get it quick.” They start talking about, “Oh yeah, I got a 75, I got a deuce and a quarter,” and they're rapping like that. Now, they're rapping about how I got it, and then that perpetuates. That creates the negative thing in the culture that separated us.

Carol envisioning a future of the Black Bottom to Lillian

Kids believed they could belong with this gang because they're going to take care of me because they don't have that protection that they used to have before. “Well, I know my back is protected now if I go over to the whatevers versus stay here and be by myself.”

Then you add that into economics and what the government was doing to us systemically: Not allowing us to have specific jobs, putting only this kind of face on the camera, not showing opportunities for people. People started to think there's nothing for me to do but do nails and do hair and sell drugs or be with my man. Even the women were broken down into thinking the only dude I want is somebody that's out there getting it. So that flipped around too.

It was a lot of psychological stuff going on top of the other stuff, too. You have leaders in Philadelphia, like Frank Rizzo, who was an open racist, stamping down people who wanted to fight for freedom and fight for civil rights and all that. It's a combination of all that which screwed us up after the 70s.

Yannick: So this is happening at the time of the actual displacement of this area...What I'm curious about is what we just spoke about: all these factors that were seemingly targeted. Not just to the Black Bottom, but to black people in this country.

Then, you have this specific area being targeted by Drexel and Penn as a place that they consider a “blighted area.” Something that is not deemed livable for people who are already living there. That was their justification for tearing these places down, for getting the people out. This is all happening all at once. How do we maintain the memory of these stories that you're telling? The older people know what it was, but is it recorded?... How do you preserve this kind of memory?...

CAROL: You need the Black Bottom library!

NORMAN: Years ago, there was a lady from the Black Bottom that wrote a novel about the Black Bottom. She was a graduate of Cheyney. I would look for that book, and it's not there when I go to the library and pull up this area. It's not there, but there is also a lady, I guess she would probably be about Palma's age now, who’s a social worker. She wrote an excellent booklet not that long about the Black Bottom...

Yannick: I feel a little bit late. I just found out about the area, and I know that I'm not from here. There are students that are at Drexel that don't know about the area. At that workshop that we did, I asked a lot of people who were just like, "What is that?” And they were in it. I think without this continuation to pass the torch in a digital format, one that can kind of speak to the future, it's going to be challenging to preserve these stories.

CAROL: That was my whole assignment with Professor Palmer. To take a story and digitize it, and make sure that there was an archive in the future. To your point, [Yannick], we collected all his hard copy stuff and scanned it all in. He has a website with some of the information on it...

We have been thinking about this for a long time ago. How do you preserve these stories that are basically on the street, right? It was word of mouth. If you think about all African tales in the world history, it had to be collected in a book for me to be able to share folklore with my grandkids, so there needs to be one in my opinion.

A group of, I'm going to call them archivists. They collect all this information and put it in media, in hard copy, in song. You also have people who write books about the Black Bottom that may be fiction or nonfiction that could be included in this archival thing. When Doctor Palmer and I were talking, we were specifically talking about this change in education. He went to Washington to make sure that black history was taught in schools because it wasn't taught in schools until he put that bill in Congress to make it happen. That was historical information.

We started with history. I hate to say it, but nobody is going to respect this if you didn't make a change in society. Forget that we're society too, meaning our culture, but the dominant culture society. We started with, remember when you went to Washington and got that law started? That is a historical thing that white, black, Puerto Rican, Asian, everybody can identify with it because when they go to class now, they can pick African American history. Black history. We talked about doing exactly what you're talking about. How do you preserve it not just for us, but for those who come after us and in a medium that's still accessible in the future...

Yannick: I am going to ask, do you all think that residents or descendants of the residents of the Black Bottom deserve any type of restitution or reparation? What would that look like for us?

CAROL: Oh yeah, we've been trying to get reparations for years. To me, Drexel was trying to do a job on it with the Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships. Penn never did that. I went to both schools, and there's a difference in their approach to damage and reduction of harm.

I feel like Drexel does a little more in terms of reaching back to the hood. I remember when Papadakis came. The president of Drexel who was Greek. His philosophy was more of a community-based philosophy, at least that's what I saw when he came. He started things like the co-op program, things that allow students to integrate into the community, not just be a building where you're educating millions of people around the world, and they don't even know what the Bottom is.

I think reparations look different for different people depending on where they are in their lives. There was a whole plan written up by Doctor Palmer of what reparations looks like to me for what you did to my hood. I think there is some accountability needed in these institutions. They need to give back to the families where they destroyed their generational wealth.

I'm one of them. 4131 is gone. If we had not known, if we hadn't been educated enough to do our research at City Hall, they would have snatched it for the sheriff's cell. We wouldn't have known the difference, and they're doing that today now. The predators are calling people in West Philly where those old Victorian homes, and the taxes have gone up so high, the original residents can't afford to pay the taxes. When you can't pay your taxes, the city takes it, somebody pays the taxes, they got it. The same thing is happening, so they're going to need to do reparations forever because it's still happening.

I think these residents, these families, their generation underneath them, they need some kind of restitution for the harm that's been done. But here's the kicker: Some of them don't know they've been done harm. They've been harmed because they aren't educated enough to know about the Bottom like we’re doing here. We need a class action suit, huh?

Yannick: I mean, if I was a lawyer, I would take the case. There are so many injustices... but we do what we can. I'm an artist, this is what I'm trying to do, but I think it takes more than. It's going to take more than one person. It's going to take people from all types of perspectives and influence and allies to really make some type of substantive change...

CAROL: What are you going to do with all this stuff?

Yannick: Honestly, I want to do a better presentation [when giving my workshops], so I'm thinking about the places that you have named. I want to build out a map that we can kind of fill in with those transparencies to make those blueprints.

After this conversation, I now want to find images of speakeasies and Catholic churches and of locations that you all have kind of just talked about. I can paint a picture of what this place looked like...

I have one more question. Without the impact of Drexel or Penn, what do you think that the Black Bottom would have been like? Are there other cities that you look at and think--

CAROL: Cape Town. I haven't been to Cape Town. Have you been to Cape Town ever?

Yannick: I would love that. No, I mean, I think a lot of this work that I'm doing is imagining what it could be like in a perfect ideal setting.

CAROL: Wakanda!

Yannick: But without the fantasy. Something that's relevant or in reference to another place that you could imagine what the Black Bottom has the propensity and the capability of being. How would you like it to look like?

NORMAN: I don't know if I can answer your question about how it would look because I grew up in the shadows of Penn and specifically Drexel. When I was coming up, all we knew was they just had a football team, and they had a field. They had the practice we could go over there and watch. All I knew about Drexel was set down this way. It was the armory on 33rd where we’d get the food...

Drexel is all over the city now, and I'm looking at the Dornsife Center, but not everyone knows about the Dornsife Center. When you get to Penn, they had two programs there, but there's still not reaching out there. You also got the Mantua Civic Center, and they're trying. Then, you get to Temple University, they wanted to take North Central and put a football stadium there, so that's the only way I can answer that.

Yannick: Yeah, it's a hard one.

CAROL: It's not hard for me at all. I write Afrofuturistic stuff, sci-fi too, so it's not hard for me to imagine what it would be if these two monolithic universities were not here. When I said Wakanda, I was only kind of kidding, but what I mean is a mecca of businesses black owned that everyone enjoyed no matter what race. Think about the Harlem Renaissance. Think about all the different theaters that we've experienced on Broadway. None of them are owned by black people.

My family would have been able to possibly create that home at 4131 to be a dorm for Azaira and her friends to come to be off campus for a little. We can't do that now because we don't have it.

I see Lancaster Avenue full of stores. Shops... We used to have lots of tea salons, black women. I imagine tea salons that anybody can come. Hotels, Airbnb on Lancaster Avenue, all the old houses converted. Why not be owned by the people who used to own them? But everybody shares. We're not saying we're black owned and only black served. We're saying just like any other business that's out here.

It's not hard for me to imagine it just being bigger, better, bolder, beautiful for this time. Can you imagine that?

histories of west philly and re-envisioning the future