In Pursuit: Philadelphia and the Making of America

Episode 9 Overview: Liberation (1968-1989)

Episode 9 of In Pursuit: Philadelphia and the Making of America opens in a city crackling with unrest. Anti-establishment protest and the assertion of personal liberty — made visible on walls across Philadelphia by graffiti pioneer Cornbread — collide head-on with the increasingly aggressive instincts of Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo, whose department earns a national reputation for repression and brutality. Yet in a city hollowed out by deindustrialization, white flight, and factory closings, Rizzo reads the moment perfectly — and in 1971, riding a Richard Nixon-aligned platform of law and order, becomes mayor of America's most industrial big city.

The episode then captures the strange contradictions of a Philadelphia in upheaval. As Rizzo funnels federal Model Cities funding to plug a widening budget gap, a different kind of Philadelphia sound is emerging — Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff crafting melodious, soulful anthems that lift a city the rest of America is writing off. But Vietnam, Watergate, and deepening Black poverty make unity elusive, even as the nation's Bicentennial approaches.

In 1976 — two hundred years after the Declaration of Independence — Rizzo's police beat lesbian activists outside City Hall as they push for a gay equal rights bill. The crackdown backfires. Philadelphians respond with a mass petition to remove Rizzo from office, a grassroots surge that ultimately falls short in the State Supreme Court but signals something unmistakable: the city is not done fighting for its founding promise.

In a city that has always struggled to live up to its own ideals, this program asks a central question: two hundred years after independence, what does freedom actually look like in Philadelphia — and who still has to fight for it?