Mantua is an underdeveloped black urban
neighbourhood in Philadelphia, lying just to the north of the University of
Pennsylvania, close to the center of Philadelphia. When this process began, the
neighbourhood was referred to by black people in the city as "The Bottom". It
contains about eighty city blocks and had an official population of about
15,000, but unofficially was at least a third larger. About 98 percent of the
population was black. By almost any standard it was critically depressed and
disadvantaged. About 25 percent of its housing units were overcrowded, and more
than 50 percent were in substandard condition. Its male unemployment rate was
between 15-20 percent during the 1960s, more than three times the rate in the
city as a whole. Thirty-seven percent of its families earned less than $3000 per
year during this period. More than a third of Mantuans who were over twenty-five
years old had less than eight years of education. About 50 percent of its minors
received some form of public assistance, more than six times the city's rate.
Sixteen percent of its population from seven to seventeen years old were
arrested in 1964, nine times the rate of the city as a whole. Its adult crime
rate was more than twice that of the city. Use of narcotics was
widespread.
What the less developed have been most deprived of is not
the fruits of development, but the opportunity to develop themselves. Only
self-development can bring with it the self-confidence, dignity and self-respect
that makes continuous development possible. This set of beliefs does not imply
that those who are deve>
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veloped go it alone. They need access to human and
material resources that are controlled by the developed. They need the developed
working for them, not on them. This requires the developed placing themselves
and some of their resources at the disposal of the less developed, to be used as
the less developed see fit. Control and management of investments, financial and
intellectual, should be placed in the less developed community because so doing
maximizes its learning and that of the giver as well. The solution lies in
investment, not charity. Development can be neither given nor received - it must
be generated from within.
Early in 1968 Forrest Adams, a Mantuan, came to
the Busch Center for help in preparing a request for neighourhood assistance
from a city agency. The help was given but he was asked if he would be willing
to bring his neighbourhood's principal leader to the University to discuss a
proposal that the Center would like to make to him. This proposal had been
carefully worked out in the hope that just such an opportunity would arise. The
funds need for it had already been obtained. The next day Forrest Adams brought
Herman Wrice, president of he recently formed Young Great Society (YGS) to the
University for a meeting. YGS was an indigenous group dedicated to the
development of Mantua. The Center offered to employ any three people selected
from the community by Mr>
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velopment of their community in any way they saw
fit. There were no constraints on how, when, or where they worked. They were not
required to be present at the University at any time, but the personnel and
facilities of the Center were made available for them to use as they desired,
and they were encouraged to use them. Mr. Wrice accepted the proposal. The
Mantuans found discussions with the Center helpful and regular weekly meetings
to review plans and accomplishments were instituted.
Before long, more than
thirty people from the University, faculty members and graduate students, were
involved in providing the assistance asked for. Over the next ten years a great
deal was accomplished in Mantua by YGS and members of the community, much of it
with help from the Center. Since the early nineties, Mantua has been the one
community able to banish the drug dealing culture from its street corners,
marching with candles and hard hats at night claiming back their streets.
The Mantua Industrial Development Corporation was formed as a subsidiary
to YGS. It created and operated a black industrial park that housed eight
minority-owned and two white-owned industrial enterprises. Employees were drawn
from Mantua. A number of small businessmen obtained loans from banks with the
aid of the Center, which also provided them with managerial and technical
assistance. YGS established an employment service that placed about 250 Mantuans
each year, and also initiated and operated a number of job training programs for
young people. YGS and its subsidiaries redeveloped apartment houses, and
thirty-nine townhouses were built on a parcel of land returned to the community
by the University. It also brought to Mantua a large federally funded housing
project.
YGS established and operated three medical facilities, and
established and operated seven schools, which began with infant care and went
through undergraduate college. By means of these schools, dropout rates were
drastically reduced and the number of young Mantuans who went on to universities
increased dramatically. In 1969 the Community-Wharton Education Program was
initiated at the University of Pennsylvania, offering courses in business to
students who do not have the resources to attend a regular college. In 1970 YGS
and the University's Center conducted a twenty-two-week Urban Leadership
Training Program (ULT).
In a neighbourhood that had been at war with
itself, characterized by gangs, crime, hopelessness and the associated drug
scourge, began to be turned around, prompting a former gang member (Ronald
Thompson) to end a letter to the newspaper praising the initiative, with these
words: "the brothers are not fighting now. This is why the program might be the
greatest event in urban historyÖThe great thing about the program is that the
young men have unit>
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f that it is good because without unity you do not
have anything."
Of those who went through the ULT program, about half
went to work for community development groups or government agencies. Most of
the rest took positions in business or industry. YGS went on to conduct courses
for corporate executives to familiarise themselves with the black ghetto,
written up in Business Week (June 19, 1971). YGS also established an
athletic program that covered every major sport and several minor ones. Each
summer YGS conducted extensive recreational and work programs for young people,
involving repair, maintenance, and cleaning up of the community facilities. An
art program was established with the Philadelphia College of Arts, and the
Mantua Academy of Theatrical Black Arts was founded in which some fifty young
men and women were trained in dance. YGS and the Busch Center were increasingly
asked by other neighbourhoods in Philadelphia and as far as California to assist
them in setting up similar programs, many having been successfully established.
In 1993, Herman Wrice received the President's Award for Outstanding
Citizenship.
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