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Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock 'n' Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (Volume 32) First Edition


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American Bandstand, one of the most popular television shows ever, broadcast from Philadelphia in the late fifties, a time when that city had become a battleground for civil rights. Counter to host Dick Clark’s claims that he integrated American Bandstand, this book reveals how the first national television program directed at teens discriminated against black youth during its early years and how black teens and civil rights advocates protested this discrimination. Matthew F. Delmont brings together major themes in American history―civil rights, rock and roll, television, and the emergence of a youth culture―as he tells how white families around American Bandstand’s studio mobilized to maintain all-white neighborhoods and how local school officials reinforced segregation long after Brown vs. Board of Education. The Nicest Kids in Town powerfully illustrates how national issues and history have their roots in local situations, and how nostalgic representations of the past, like the musical film Hairspray, based on the American Bandstand era, can work as impediments to progress in the present.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Reveals a hidden history of racial segregation on the United States' first television program centered on the teenage population. . . . Provocative.” ― Orange County Register Published On: 2012-02-28

“Well-researched, tightly-written. . . . Impressively bright, clear, and comprehensive.” ―
History News Network Published On: 2012-06-05

“Excellent. . . . Offers a valuable understanding of the . . . melding of African Americans into the national youth culture.” ―
Choice Published On: 2012-09-01

“The study illustrates how . . . nostalgic representations of the past . . . can work as impediments to progress in the present.” ―
Cbq Communication Booknotes Qtly Published On: 2012-10-05

“The Nicest Kids in Town counters the (false) mythology of American Bandstand with valuable descriptions of ‘forgotten’ cultural productions.” -- Gayle Wald, George Washington University ―
Jrnl Of The Society For American Music (Jsam) Published On: 2012-11-01

"Lively and perceptive. . . . Delmont’s book offers a subtle, refreshingly interdisciplinary reading of
Bandstand as a site of the civil rights struggles in Philadelphia." -- Brian Ward ― American Historical Review Published On: 2013-06-01

From the Inside Flap

By challenging Dick Clark s claim that he helped integrate American popular music and culture, Matthew Delmont puts the lie to Clark s air-brushed history of American Bandstand s role in racial desegregation. The Nicest Kids in Town shows how the nexus of sound, place, race, and space operated together to create and reinforce a myth of national memory and belonging. Just as importantly, this compelling cultural history demonstrates the importance of the youth market as a theater of struggle where brave young men and women outraged by the discrimination and racism they faced for the simple act of enjoying music refused to have their bodies, tastes, or desires policed. Delmont shows how the music moved them, and how in turn they moved the music onto television screens across America. Herman Gray, author of Cultural Moves.

The Nicest Kids in Town speaks simultaneously to several significant current lines of inquiry among historians of the United States after World War II. Delmont takes on issues that we thought we already knew completely the social and cultural history of the 1950s and 60s, the Civil Rights movement, the birth of television but he brings original material to his story and connects these issues in new ways. Delmont s work proves him to be a talented, careful, and thorough scholar, and in a large body of work on these topics, his book stands alone. Jay Mechling, author of On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth.

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Matthew F. Delmont
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Matthew F. Delmont is the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth College. A Guggenheim Fellow and expert on African American history and the history of civil rights, he is the author of Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad (Viking, 2022), as well four previous books: Black Quotidian, Why Busing Failed, Making Roots, and The Nicest Kids in Town. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and several academic journals, and on NPR. Originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Delmont earned his BA from Harvard University and his MA and PhD from Brown University. To learn more about the author, please visit: http://mattdelmont.com