Matthew Delmont, “The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia” (University of California Press, 2011)

New Books in African American Studies · Apr 20, 2012 · 59m

Matthew Delmont‘s The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia (University of California Press, 2012) weaves a fascinating narrative in which the content of a popular television show is only one element of its phenomenal impact. Nor is American Bandstand‘s popularity the limit of Delmont’s interest. In The Nicest Kids in Town, American Bandstand marks the confluence of competing, contradictory, and even some complementary forces in 1950s Philadelphia: local civil rights activism, inter-ethnic tensions, defensive localism…