Photographer: H Fruchtman for the Health of Philadelphia Photo-Documentation Project.
About The Photograph
Race-ethnic tensions are laced throughout residents' conversations about the health of the city. Often, the focus is on hostile relationships between proprietors of local shops and the residents they serve (but do not employ). Reactions range from resignation, to "blood boiling anger"—which one resident named as a direct cause of his hypertension—to the resistance described below.
I remember the store, [the owner] was this big-bellied African-American guy. He knew all the kids in the community. When I came back from college...he had sold the store to some Korean families. They put a Stop and Go to sell beer; and one of the major complaints about the community is that when they do that, then it starts bringing the drug traffic in and they sell the paraphernalia in there. And then it's just a bad situation all the way around and then the violence starts to increase. What the community did, they rallied together and they boycotted the store and the store never opened. And so that was good for me to see that that was a way that my community took their power back.
-Health of Philadelphia Participant
