DN Editorial: SURVIVAL AND REVIVAL: The riots & other forces hurt North Philly, but it is working to jump back

THE 50TH anniversary of the North Philadelphia riot has doubtlessly touched a chord of memories for many who lived in that area in 1964, memories of a vibrant community that was alive with crowds and action.

As described by Will Bunch in yesterday's Daily News, the area around Columbia Avenue west of Broad Street was the epicenter of black Philadelphia. The avenue itself was known as Jump Street for its lively mix of small retailers, nightclubs and bars.

But, like a sudden gust of foul air extinguishing a flame, the 1964 riot changed all that. What was once a crowded, bustling place emptied out over the next 40 years. In 1970, North Philadelphia around Columbia Avenue had a population of 127,000 - equal to the city of Topeka, Kan. Today, the number of residents is 58,000. Large swaths of the neighborhood remain empty zones, where vacant lots outnumber occupied homes.

There are signs of life in the ruins, even a revival of Columbia Avenue - known since 1987 as Cecil B. Moore Avenue - due partly to Temple University's expansion, but also due to the return of private and public investment.

It would be a mistake to blame the neighborhood's decline solely on the riot. While it served as a catalyst, there were other, larger forces at work, including the beginning of industry's (and jobs') migration overseas. The riot took place just one month after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which brought the force of the federal government against discrimination. It was followed in 1968 with a federal law that attacked housing discrimination.

These laws - along with the slow rise in the black middle class - opened an escape hatch for many North Philadelphians, who left the old neighborhood for greener pastures: Mount Airy, Stenton and Cedarbrook, in the northwest; Overbrook and Wynnefield, in the west; and other neighborhoods with better housing, often vacated by whites who moved to the suburbs. The '70s were an era of flight not only out of the city, but within it as well.

In the 1960s, North Philadelphia was segregated by race, but not class. Most of the city's black leaders - the politicians, prominent preachers and businessmen - lived and worked in the neighborhood. By the time the exodus ended, the neighborhood was segregated by race and class. Most of those who remained were too poor to move. It had lost its leadership class.

If North Philadelphia is poised for revival today it is due in part to the severity of its decline. In many areas, particularly east of Broad, the abandonment created almost a blank slate that was filled in by private and public development that is more smartly done than in the '60s.

A ride up North 11th Street illustrates the magnitude of change. For decades, the middle-class Yorktown development was hemmed in by Temple to the north and deteriorating neighborhoods to the south. Now, the sights outside the window of the Route 23 bus are more pleasant, with block after block of new homes, many of them publicly subsidized but sold on the open market. Many of these homeowners are middle-class blacks, returning to the neighborhood of their parents and their youth.

Cecil B. Moore Avenue is far from being the Jump Street it once was. But the cycle of decline and decay set in motion by the 1964 riot may have run its course. For decades a victim, North Philadelphia can now count itself as a survivor.