Robert Purvis (1810-1898)

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1994

During the Depression, the Rev. Major J. Divine built a religious and economic movement that fed and housed thousands through his Cooperative Economic Plan, selling life's necessities at pennies on the dollar. In 1948 he acquired the grand Divine Lorraine Hotel, built in 1894, and opened it as one of the first fully racially integrated luxury hotels in the United States — a bold act years before the civil-rights movement's legal victories.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1992

Stephen Girard's 1831 will founded a school for poor white orphan boys, and for more than a century that racial restriction stood. Beginning in the 1930s, attorney Raymond Pace Alexander challenged it, and lawyer Cecil B. Moore later carried the fight into the federal courts. A 1968 ruling finally opened Girard College to students of all races, making its walls a landmark of the modern civil rights struggle.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 2022

On November 17, 1967, thousands of Philadelphia students walked out of their schools and gathered at the Board of Education building to demand an education that reflected their own histories. The peaceful demonstration met police violence, but it stands as one of the earliest and largest youth-led actions in the national ethnic studies movement. Decades later, in 2005, the students' vision was realized when Philadelphia became the first U.S. district to require African American studies.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1991

This building has worn many identities across a century and a half—first the home of famed tragedian Edwin Forrest, then the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, and later Heritage House. In 1968 it became the Freedom Theatre, a community-rooted Black theater dedicated to professional training in the dramatic arts. Amid the era's civil-rights ferment, it gave African-American performers a stage and a school of their own.