{"id":13471,"date":"2019-06-17T12:04:16","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T16:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=13471"},"modified":"2019-06-24T11:13:11","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T15:13:11","slug":"the-objectionable-walt-whitman-gets-his-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2019\/06\/the-objectionable-walt-whitman-gets-his-bridge\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cObjectionable\u201d Walt Whitman Gets His Bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Walt Whitman Bridge, September 6, 1960 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Controversy swirled around the naming of the Walt Whitman Bridge in Camden\u2019s Catholic community late in 1955. As we learned in our last post<\/a>, the Reverend James Ryan of nearby Westville, New Jersey claimed Whitman\u2019s writings conveyed \u201ca revolting homosexual imagery . . . permeates the fetid whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not to be outdone, the Reverend Edward Lucitt, pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Camden, sent a letter of protest to the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA). “Walt Whitman himself had neither the noble stature or quality of accomplishment that merits this tremendous honor,\u201d wrote Lucitt, \u201chis life and works are personally objectionable to us.”<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is not great enough to deserve this honor,\u201d insisted Lucitt, who argued \u201chis political philosophy, dusted off the scrap heap during the depression, as the Voice of the Common Man, has proved alien to Jeffersonian Democracy, and he is now the Poet Laureate of the World Communist Revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

A letter-writing campaign gained momentum on both sides of the Delaware. Students in the South Jersey\u2019s 58 Catholic schools were encouraged to propose alternate “great men of New Jersey” the DRPA might consider instead of Whitman. Within a few months, nearly 1,500, mostly form letters, filled the Port Authority\u2019s in-box. According to historian Marc Stein, \u201c90% of the New Jersey writers were anti-Whitman; 77% of the Philadelphia writers were pro Whitman.\u201d The DRPA received anti-Whitman letters from the Camden chapter of the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic War Veterans, the American Gold Star Mothers; a chapter of Veterans of Foreign Wars in South Jersey and two labor unions. Among Whitman\u2019s most organized and ardent supporters were of English professors on faculty at the University of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

One resourceful letter writer from Philadelphia found a passage by Philadelphia\u2019s Agnes Repplier labeling Whitman \u201can \u2018incurable poseur\u2019 who “loved his indecency . . .\u00a0 clinging to it with an almost embarrassing ardor.\u201d Another writer suggested the contrary, that \u201cthe Port Authority should not be pressured into rejecting Whitman “just because he didn’t think in narrow, dogmatic religious terms, nor behave in strict, puritan, conforming ways.”<\/p>\n

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Statue of Walt Whitman, Broad Street and Packer Avenue, April 6, 1959 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By March 1956, the chairman of DRPA\u2019s Special Committee on Bridge Names, formed the previous June, confirmed the original decision to name the bridge for Whitman. He holds an \u201chonored place in our history,\u201d concluded the committee. Plus, the agency added, they “found no evidence Whitman was homosexual.”<\/p>\n

The 7-lane Walt Whitman Bridge opened on May 15, 1957 at a mid-span ceremony attended by some 3,500 citizens. The following morning the DRPA opened it to traffic with a 25-cent toll.<\/p>\n

Two years later, on June 1, 1959, officials gathered on a grassy patch at Packer Avenue and Broad Street to dedicate a larger-than-life bronze statue of a striding Whitman by sculptor Jo Davidson. \u00a0\u201cI wanted Walt \u201c\u2018afoot and lighthearted,\u2019\u201d wrote Davidson, quoting from Whitman\u2019s \u201cSong of the Open Road.\u201d But in this case, the \u201copen road\u201d would be an on-ramp for six-lanes of bridge-bound traffic crossing the Delaware a mile a minute, 150-feet above the rippling, brackish current so familiar to Whitman.<\/p>\n

[Sources: Marc Stein, City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972\u00a0<\/em>(Temple University Press, 2004);\u00a0The Delaware River Port Authority (chronology<\/a>).<\/span> In chronological order: Edgar Williams, The Bridge Without a Name, Today Magazine,<\/em> The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, April 4, 1954; \u201cCatholics Decry Whitman Bridge,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, Dec. 17, 1955; \u201cGloucester City Claims Bridge as Own,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, Dec. 8, 1956; \u201cBridge is Opened at Philadelphia,\u201d The New York Times<\/em>, May 16, 1957; \u201cWhitman Statue Dedication Set,\u201d The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em>, May 29, 1959; Joann P. Krieg, \u201cDemocracy in Action: Naming the Bridge for Walt Whitman,\u201d Walt Whitman Quarterly Review<\/em>, vol. 12, no. 2 (1994) pp. 108-114. Special thanks to Bob Skiba.]<\/span><\/p>\n

For more posts on the naming of the Walt Whitman Bridge, click here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Controversy swirled around the naming of the Walt Whitman Bridge in Camden\u2019s Catholic community late in 1955. As we learned in our last post, the Reverend James Ryan of nearby Westville, New Jersey claimed Whitman\u2019s writings conveyed \u201ca revolting homosexual imagery . . . permeates the fetid whole.\u201d Not to be outdone, the Reverend Edward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}