The Kensington Chronicles

Kensington is a North Philadelphia neighborhood which established itself as a premier manufacturing center in the nineteenth century. Its textile mills provided work for legions of immigrant workers from Europe, particularly from Ireland and Germany. Anti-immigrant sentiment, fueled by a virulent anti-Catholic bias, sparked the infamous Nativist riots, aka the Bible riots, in Kensington in 1844. Tensions persisted throughout the twentieth century as unemployment and white flight followed in the wake of deindustrialization. This book is structured around a walk through the working class neighborhood of Kensington by one who grew up there during the decade of the 1950's and 1960's, as the neighborhood was transitioning to its post-industrial manifestation. The book is part-memoir as the author presents a portrait of the neighborhood as the descendants of the original immigrant families coped with the social, economic, and religious challenges of the twentieth century. The book also moves beyond living memory, going into Kensington's past as a means to make sense of how the neighborhood has negotiated conflicts related to immigration, race, religion, and class. Making sense of Kensington implicates a cast of characters which includes Henry David Thoreau, Babe Ruth, Saint John Neumann, Don Quixote, and Mother Jones, among others. It just does.