Chester, Pennsylvania
The population of Chester had been in decline since 1950 and the demographic was evolving. By the early 1960s over one third of the population identified as African American. A Republican political machine, led by John J. McClure, had dominated county politics for decades. The local NAACP and African American ministers in Chester had followed an incrementalist strategy and had won some gains, but in 1962 a young organizer, Stanley Branche, moved to town and pressed for a more activist approach. He became the leader of a new organization, Chester Committee for Freedom Now (CCFN). Swarthmore students in SPAC (Swarthmore Political Action Club), attracted by Branche’s militance, became involved in protests that earned Chester national attention and the title of “Birmingham of the North.”
On November 4, 1963, Swarthmore students joined a picket and a student boycott protesting the overcrowded conditions of Franklin Elementary School, in support of the work of Stanley Branche and CCFN. The picket led to a sit-in in Chester City Hall on November 13 and to the subsequent arrest of 150 protesters including 35 Swarthmore students. The next morning, 21 more Swarthmore students were arrested as they picketed the entrance to the school building. Most of those arrested spent a night in jail. The action successfully pressured the Chester School Board to meet CCFN’s demands. The arrest of over fifty Swarthmore students prompted the administration to release a controversial statement reminding students that they could be “subjected to disciplinary action for acts contrary to law or for neglect of their obligations as members of the College.” The Phoenix published an editorial condemning the statement.
Many Swarthmore students saw community organizing in Chester as working to build “an interracial movement of the poor,” first in the community and eventually spreading into a national strategy. The growing national organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) made this type of community organizing the cornerstone of its Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP) in the mid-sixties. Swarthmore students were also active in protesting a segregated skating rink in 1962, in running a tutoring program, and in 1965 in setting up CHIP (Chester Home Improvement Project), which was a local version of what Habitat for Humanity became. Swarthmore continues to collaborate with Chester through many co-run programs including the long-running Chester Children’s Chorus.
