As students at Swarthmore College, we had become accustomed to hearing about the college’s “ongoing responsibility for community care,” “commitment to social responsibility,” and care for “peace and equity” as social values. Likewise, we realized the history of gentrification progressed by many neoliberal institutions, especially those of higher learning, and how they continue to push Black and brown residents out of centuries-old communities and homes. However, like much of Swarthmore College’s untold or glossed-over history of discrimination, we were (somewhat naively) unaware of our own school’s role in the gentrification and displacement of historically Black communities. As we began to speak to our peers and professors, starting conversations on the Historically Black Neighborhood of Swarthmore (HBNS), we realized that they were also unaware of our direct complicity in the displacement and deconstruction of Black communities as an institution of higher education.
As scholars, we realize that no work exists in a vacuum. We must take active steps to critically examine and evaluate why we pursue our scholarship, who our work affects, and the opportunities and threats we present to the communities we live and work in. Our impact statements must be deeply de-abstractified. We cannot look forward to possible future influence while unaware of the current community gentrification and disenfranchisement we are contributing to in the present. With that, we hope that this piece on the gentrification of Swarthmore Borough encourages the students, the faculty, and the administration to take an active role in acknowledging and pushing back against the gentrification we are complicit in at Swarthmore College.
Gentrification by the Ivory Tower
Universities and colleges are often major contributors to gentrification, a process that displaces long-term residents and raises living costs in urban communities. As Professor Davarian Baldwin of Trinity College recently explained in an interview on his book “In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower,” “colleges and universities have become some of the biggest employers, real-estate holders, healthcare providers, and, surprisingly, policing agents in major cities and college towns across the country.”
Their growing presence in these areas leads to increased housing costs, higher rent prices, and more expensive food and services, which disproportionately impact marginalized communities. Many universities across the U.S. have established themselves as significant economic forces in urban spaces without considering the long-term consequences for the communities around them. Institutions like Columbia University in New York City, the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and Swarthmore College in Delaware County drive up living costs, forcing long-time residents out of their neighborhoods. These universities often expand without questioning what their presence means for residents or considering the broader relationship between the university and the city. The rise of gentrification is directly linked to universities becoming unchecked sources of economic, real estate, and policing power in cities.
This process disproportionately affects Black, brown, and other marginalized communities, contributing to the destruction of their social and cultural fabric. As noted in a report by Southwest Tribune, “Most scholars point to two interrelated socio-economic causes of gentrification. The first of these, supply and demand, consists of demographic and economic factors that attract higher-income residents to move into lower-income neighborhoods. The second cause, public policy, describes rules and programs designed by urban policymakers to encourage gentrification as a means of achieving ‘urban renewal’ initiatives.”
Moreover, because colleges and universities are tax-exempt, they often dominate local real estate markets, creating monopolies that push out lower-income residents. This has consequences for poor and marginalized communities/families, who are increasingly excluded from the very neighborhoods they once called home.
A History of Swarthmore’s Gentrification
As universities continue to expand their economic and social influence in urban areas, the long-term effects of gentrification are becoming more apparent. This issue is not new; it has deep historical roots, particularly in neighborhoods like Swarthmore, where racially restrictive practices have shaped the housing landscape for over a century. The Great Migration was the origin of many Black communities in Springfield, Pennsylvania. Springfield, bordering Swarthmore, was a town where African American people migrated north for housing and job opportunities in proximity to Philadelphia, and it expanded over time into an area with many Black families and communities.
In 1915, there were approximately 200 Black residents, concentrated in Kenyon and Brighton Avenue areas — the historically Black neighborhoods of Swarthmore. The Armstrong Association of Philadelphia highlights how racially restrictive community practices, such as petitions led by the white residents of the community, prevented Black residents from being able to buy or rent homes outside their neighborhoods. At the time, only one landowner was willing to rent or sell to Black people in Swarthmore, limiting the available housing to a small section of the neighborhood.
Only ten families owned homes and the majority of Black residents were renters, which further increased the systemic housing discrimination in the town. Furthermore, white residents shut down several attempts to provide housing for Black communities. Initiatives such as an attempt to repair an abandoned property on Union Avenue in the late 1920s received backlash from a majority of white residents towards F.M. Scheible, the head of this project. 200 Swarthmoreans signed a petition to order the immediate removal of Black tenants. Other segregation attempts in 1955 involved massive rejections of interracial housing projects, with 315 out of 350 residents voting against its continuation.
The Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, is known for its historic opposition to slavery in the United States and its subsequent efforts to secure the freedom and safety of numerous enslaved people as a result of its involvement with the Underground Railroad. However, Quaker actions have historically varied from these memorialized ideals, through actions including active participation in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and several instances of opposition to integration, including one in Swarthmore.
The Friends Journal acknowledges a little-known conflict within Swarthmore’s Quaker community that arose due to desegregation efforts within the town in 1958. When Clarence (Mike) and Margaret Yarrow decided to put their house on the market, they insisted it be sold to an African American family to begin desegregation efforts within the neighborhood. Many of the Yarrows’s fellow Quakers opposed this decision, as they were resistant to the idea of an integrated community.
After a forum was held to shift public opinion on the subject, the community became less wary of decreasing housing values they speculated would result from their new neighbors. By the time the forum happened, an African American family had already moved in and received a warm welcome to the community. Discrimination expanded beyond housing; it affected education, social, and civic institutions. Black Swathmoreans were not only constantly segregated and displaced but also excluded from several social and civic institutions. There were only a very few available resources for Black residents, such as the Wesley African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, founded in 1927, and the community center named Jones Hall. Community spaces, including the public library, were segregated which further marginalized Black residents. Moreover, Swarthmore had a segregated public education system. It consisted of a single separate classroom for all Black students under a Black teacher, who was fired after segregation ended.
In light of the ongoing gentrification that has significantly impacted Black communities in Swarthmore, we spoke with Professor Jeannine Osayande from the HBNS. As a senior lecturer in Swarthmore College’s dance department, a former board member of the Philadelphia Folklore Project, an activist, and an artist, Osayande always starts her introduction, “I am Jeannine Osayande from the Historically Black Neighborhood of Swarthmore.”
For Osayande, the hope is that one day, Swarthmore students and residents will all know about the Historically Black Neighborhood of Swarthmore. “They’re going to know about the community and the people, because it is history and it is American history.”
Osayande was born in Swarthmore’s Historically Black Neighborhood, where her family has now lived for seven generations. “I was born into [Swarthmore] when it was segregated, although we didn’t know that when we were little, we had no idea … the first thing that I remember … being in the neighborhood … having this amazing community,” Osayande said. “It covered the areas of Lower Kenyon Avenue, Union Avenue, and Brighton Avenue.”
In the 1960s, Swarthmore desegregated. This temporarily allowed for more stability in enabling Black families to invest in their properties and build their communities. However, gentrification quickly followed.
By the 1980s and 1990s, there was a noticeable shift. A local butcher shop and grocery store was replaced by a restaurant, leading to an increase in traffic, noise, and disruptions in the community, as well as a shift in the local culture. As elders passed away, the area began to attract new residents, which started to displace the long-standing Black families.
“The [cornerstore] started as a grocery, and then they started sneaking in tables and chairs … then one day it was a restaurant … What does it mean if it’s a corner store? You go in, get what you need, get your food, and you go … If it’s a restaurant, you’re driving in and you’re parking here to stay … [this marked a major shift in our neighborhood] in the 90s, it changed our well-being …” Osayande said.
Swarthmore’s historically Black neighborhood has existed for over a century, but gentrification is currently promoting the erasure of this tight-knit community and its history. Black residents are being pushed out of a community that many have been a part of for generations – through segregation, desegregation, and now gentrification. This area is now occupied by mostly white residents and a large number of homes sell for $500,000 or more. The increase in home values has resulted in the exclusion of African American residents who are fighting hard to ensure their voices and stories do not disappear with them.
Mirroring the historical framework of the United States, Swarthmore’s history of gentrification reflects a pattern of constant racial exclusion and displacement where discriminatory white community practices and policies restrict Black homeownership and economic opportunities. No acknowledgement of gentrification or preventative measures are enacted by the institutions, such as Swarthmore College, that perpetuate this displacement.
Modern Gentrification of Swarthmore
Swarthmore Borough’s continued deprioritization of affordable housing means the Black families who have created generational legacies in Swarthmore find it harder to stay in the face of increasing housing prices. When asked about concerns for the future of Swarthmore’s Black neighborhood, Osayande said, “I don’t know if I can afford to live in my house … while that is not something I spend days and nights thinking about … but it’s a reality and it connects to the question [that concerns us]: Can you afford to live in your community?”
Racial wealth gaps and historically discriminatory housing policies in the Philadelphia area mean that home ownership is already more difficult for Black and brown families due to redlining, disproportionate mortgage denial, and inequitable property taxes. Over the past 30 years, little has been done to close the housing gap between Black and white families, while Black home ownership in the Philadelphia metro area has consistently decreased.
The price of houses in Swarthmore Borough is far more accessible to predominantly white, affluent Swarthmore faculty and administration, and increasingly inaccessible to families with generational history in Swarthmore and staff members who often commute to Swarthmore from surrounding communities.
As Davarian Baldwin called attention to in a November conversation with the Phoenix, “…[universities] want to have Black and brown folks not in that environment, but just close enough to be able to come back and clean the floors, or cook the food, but not to be able to afford to live in these environments, to cohabitate, to attend schools. Yeah, they have retail, but at price points that are above the means or the interests of what I call the legacy residencies and communities. So there’s not an explicit demolition and displacement, but through price walls …”
One such hotly debated price wall is the construction of 110 Park Avenue. A February Phoenix article examining the controversial construction in the Ville noted that the luxury condos are set to sell for prices between $600,000 and $1.775 million, in a town that remains exclusive and unaffordable relative to the region. The Phoenix quoted W. S. Cumby President and CEO Bill Cumby III saying that “We would have liked to incorporate a formal affordable housing component, but … between the value of existing land in Swarthmore, the costs of the approval process, the restrictions on density, and the current costs of building materials, the only option was a for-sale luxury condominium.”
The issue with these kinds of developments in Swarthmore is not the surface-level preservation of “quaintness” or fear that Swarthmore may become “just another suburb.” It is the fact that these prices limit housing in Swarthmore to the most affluent, primarily white populations that populate elite college towns while pushing out Black families that have existed here for generations.
If Swarthmore truly wanted to implement affordable housing units, it could refer to the countless proposals from residents over the years to maintain accessibility and diversity in the Borough. Most recently, in 2023, the Swarthmore Borough Task Force on Development and Affordability published a 27-page report covering the issues of inaccessibility and possible solution strategies. Little progress has been made by the borough to implement these proposals.
A Lack of Acknowledgement
Swarthmore students, alumni, and administrators have released multiple statements surrounding the exclusion of Black and brown students from higher education following the Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. Supreme Court decision, which struck down affirmative action. However, we at Swarthmore College are failing to realize and acknowledge that a larger trend is taking place, and has been for decades, in which colleges and their occupants actively displace Black and brown families.
Osayande expresses the importance of acknowledging the active erasure of Black history in light of the current housing crisis and aggressive capital development, “[it is] surprising that people move in … into a Historically Black Neighborhood and not know it is a Historically Black Neighborhood.”
“For me, for a really long time, I felt like I was at a funeral … the loss, felt like something had died. I see ghosts, seeing the traditions and the cultural practices turn into vapor … ”
“Students [and Swarthmore’s residents] remain largely unaware of the neighborhood’s rich historical significance,” Osayande reminisced about the Big Brother, Big Sisters community engagement program that the Black Cultural Center hosted after opening in 1970.
“Students just have no idea that the HBNS exists … I remember a gentleman [who went to Swarthmore College] saying that ‘he never knew there was a Historically Black Neighborhood.’”
It is crucial that Swarthmore College and its affiliates acknowledge their role in gentrification and take measures to repair community harm through student education surrounding the historically Black neighborhood of Swarthmore and public policy improvements allowing preservation of accessible housing for Black and brown families.
While Osayande expressed her appreciation toward coursework that allowed students, professors, and anyone to learn about and engage with the ongoing history of Swarthmore’s Historically Black Neighborhood, she urges the College and students to collaborate with community efforts and historical hubs of the Black communities, such as the Wesley AME Church located on 232 Bowdoin Ave.
Professor Osayande also ended with her hope, that with the Quaker values, students’ active participation in the learning of Swarthmore’s Historically Black Neighborhood, and Swarthmore College’s initiative to educate and engage with the Black communities and history in Swarthmore … “that in 200 years, [people] are going to know we were here. They are going to know our contributions.”
The authors encourage readers to consult “Making a Homeplace: Stories From the Historically Black Neighborhood Of Swarthmore” and “Confronting Swarthmore’s Painful History: An Annotated Bibliography About Race in Swarthmore” for more information.
