history

A huge electric sign in the neighborhood once proclaimed "What Chester Makes Makes Chester." These words begin the story of the former glory of a great industrial and cultural center on the Delaware River, a few miles south of Philadelphia. The documentary features the reminiscences of elderly residents who fondly recall the streets lined with shops and theaters, the factories and shipping docks by the river, and a large religious community of neighborhood churches. A sense of security and prosperity pervaded in those times, before the post-industrial economic and social changes of the 1960s.

Germantown, originally known as German Township during its colonial days, is rich with history. The area has numerous historic sites, places of worship, and cultural institutions, making this area one of Philadelphia's great treasures. Through it runs Germantown Avenue. In Traveling the Avenue: A Story of History, Faith, Culture and Civic Action, the Germantown Historical Society takes the viewer on a mini-tour of six diverse points of interest along the avenue. Included are Mt. Zion Baptist Church, founded in 1871, and St.

Mount Moriah Cemetery occupies a broad expanse of gently rolling land near Cobbs Creek, straddling Southwest Philadelphia and Delaware County. The burial ground features an ornate brownstone gatehouse built in the Norman castellated style, and its gravestones range from humble markers to grand mausoleums. The final resting place of a diverse array of people from the region, Mount Moriah is especially noted for its Civil War soldiers, particularly from the Battle of Gettysburg.

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Price: 

$20 for individuals/ $50 for institutions and universities
Individuals may purchase this DVD for $20 plus shipping and handling online using Scribe Video Center's secure PayPal account. Institutions should contact Scribe directly by calling 215 222 4201.

Scribe Video Center’s
Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 3

Price: 

$20 for individuals/ $50 for institutions and universities
Individuals may purchase this DVD online for $20 plus shipping and handling using Scribe Video Center's secure PayPal account. Institutions should contact Scribe directly by calling 215 222 4201.

Scribe Video Center’s
Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 2

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Scribe Video Center’s
Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 1

While tourists head straight for the city’s official “Historic District” and native Philadelphian’s think they have seen it all, Scribe Video Center’s Precious Places Community History Project reveals bypassed neighborhood sites as bright landmarks that surprise and inspire residents and visitors alike. Using the video documentary as a storytelling medium, neighborhood residents have come together to document the oral histories of their communities. Over the past 6 years Scribe has collaborated with community groups from Philadelphia, Chester, Ardmore, and Camden to produce 59 community histories. Precious Places is a regional history, an occasion for neighbors to tell their own stories about and the people and places that make their communities unique. This DVD features 15 films assembled into 5 programs of approximately 30 minutes in length.

Program 1

The Taking of Bodine: Never Forget by Community Leadership Institute (North Philadelphia).
The Taking of Bodine confronts the displacement of residents in North Philadelphia through the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI). Led by neighborhood organizer Rosemary Cubas, the Community Leadership Institute contends that many good neighbors are being pushed out, houses bulldozed and land devalued in a plan that promises “development”, but not for the current residents. Read more

What is history and who makes it? Developed under the auspices of the Philadelphia Youth Initiative as part of an eight-city educational project inspired by the PBS series, "Africans in American," the production of Struggles in the Shadows was guided by Scribe Video Center, WHYY TV 12, and Temple University's Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection.

If she had been a bigger fan of capitalism, Louise Thompson Patterson might have been a Horatio Alger heroine, lionized today as a pioneering woman of the Harlem Renaissance and a role model for both African Americans and women of all colors. Instead she put the skills and education that she fought for and won in a racist society to work for the liberation of African Americans, the US working class, and the exploited and oppressed peoples throughout the world.

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This documentary, produced by a life-long resident of Lawnside, New Jersey, tells the story of the historically African-American town founded in the early 1800s as a well-known stop of the Underground Railroad. Using interviews with resident storytellers and footage of its prosperous, tree-lined streets, this video chronicles the history of a town framed by the memories of those who loved it. Since its completion in 1992, the video has been screened annually at the Lawnside Public School, among other places, where it is used as a teaching tool.

The video takes viewers on a tour of the home of Peter Mott, once a safe haven on the Underground Railroad, for which he served as a "conductor." Mott, a free African American man, abolitionist and real estate entrepreneur, didn't have much by today's standards. But considered by 19th century mores, he was exceptional. And he risked everything to help enslaved Africans be free.