Hidden History: Philadelphia Beyond the Founding Fathers

With its starring role in the story of the “Founding Fathers,” Philadelphia occupies a hallowed place in American memory and mythos. The dominant narrative perpetuates a biased version of the city’s history and shrouds the important roles, contributions, and experiences of women, people of color, indigenous peoples, LGBTQ+, and the poor and working classes. These biases are also evident in policies, programs, investments, and built environments that have historically been designed and implemented by white men in response to their desires, needs, and priorities.

Whitewashed history and biased planning and policies not only ignore the contributions, priorities, and needs of nonwhite, non-male, non-wealthy community members but also, in the most egregious cases, contribute to our most pressing planning challenges: residential segregation, neighborhood disinvestment, gentrification, disparate health outcomes, and more. To counter dominant narratives, and to identify and dismantle systemic planning and policy biases, communities across the country — and the world — are revealing their “hidden histories.”

Philadelphia’s “hidden history” tour illustrates systemic biases and showcases ways to question and dismantle them. Understand a more complete history of Philadelphia and acquire new tools to identify, question, confront, and dismantle biased storytelling and decision making — and their consequences — in your own community.