Resilience
If you type "Kensington Philadelphia" into Google Images, the first results are terms such as "drugs," "ghetto" and "prostitution." For many Philadelphians, this is the image of Kensington, or as many call it, "the Badlands."
This stigma erases all of the tremendous and transformative work that community organizations, educators, community members and young people are doing every day to overcome the challenges of poverty, racism, immigration, and more.
This "deficit" view also ignores that Kensington has had a long history with many "firsts" and contributions that cannot be ignored.
History
Kensington, a neighborhood to the east of North Philadelphia, was once known as the “Workshop of the World.” Home to the first ever baseball factory, the first Stetson hat, and hundreds of factories making everything from Automobile Upholstery to Beer, Kensington was the epicenter of 19th and early 20th century industrial Philadelphia.
shackamaxon
Long before Kensington was an industrial center, the Lenni Lenape people called their settlement along the Delaware river Shackamaxon. This was where in 1682, according to historians, William Penn signed a treaty with the Lenape leaders which led to the development of the area that would be known as Pennsylvania.
By the numbers
Kensington is clearly a low-income neighborhood with a strong Latino/a, Black, and white community. These are more thoroughly explained in the Academy section.
more Resources
Community Assets Map (prepared for our Neighborhood Tour by Joshua Kleiman and Charlie McGeehan)