If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning, I’d hammer in the evening…

Harlem J. Lewis recalled words from the moving civil rights anthem, “If I had a Hammer," in West Philadelphia on Jan. 21, 1969, during the dedication ceremony of the Mill Creek Community Center. The song, sung during the 1963 March on Washington festivities where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, rang true for Lewis.

Lewis stood before a crowd of residents and leaders of the area’s church, political and educational institutions and delivered his own vision for the future of West Philadelphia’s Mill Creek neighborhood.

“We will hammer our freedom all over this Mill Creek Community, creating such a deep sense of community spirit, that none of the Mill Creek family will hesitate to move about in the community,” Lewis said.

“We will hammer out love which will give our young men and women that pride in their person and quiet confidence which is so necessary to them as they make their way into an increasingly complex world and one which will demand their best.”

Mill Creek, named for the stream on which the neighborhood streets are built upon, is located north of Market Street and south of Girard Avenue, between 44th and 52nd Streets. The area has had its share of troubles from homes collapsing - due to poor urban planning - to being the site of one of the worst mass killings in Philadelphia history. According to recent data the percentage of single-mother households is nearly twice the citywide average and its crime index is also twice as high as the rest of the city. The poverty level here rates 50 percent higher than the rest of Philadelphia. 

Meanwhile, the community is still working towards hammering out a plan to create a place where residents are safe and children are empowered with the tools to reach their dreams.  

“Say hello. Stop to get to know each other. Tell somebody you care.”
On a warm, sunny day in mid-June, an emcee stands on a stage in front of a small crowd on a temporarily blocked off street next to the Mill Creek playground, located on 47th and Brown Streets. A pack of preteen boys ride around the playground on bikes and halt to watch a hip-hop dancer’s performance. A little girl with pigtails walks around looking for something. She asks a bystander, who is eating a water ice, “Is that free?” Upon learning that the shaved ice costs a dollar, she huffs and walks away in frustration.

Community Day is one of the ways the Mill Creek Community Partnership (MCCP) joins forces with community and faith-based organizations. In this case, the non-profit organization - which was founded in 2004 and impacts some 1,500 residents annually - is partnering with the Mill Creek Advisory Council, which aims to make Mill Creek Playground a place of impact for the community. MCCP's mission includes community and economic development through programs in arts and education. Cass Green, the organization’s executive director, is originally from Newark, NJ. Six years ago, after realizing MCCP was her calling, Green quit her dream job at University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Contemporary Art - where she worked as a business administrator - and began working full time for the organization.

Green works tirelessly to bring Mill Creek’s various community groups together.

“We have a lot of different agencies which is really nice,” Green said, while making her way around the playground and stopping - for what seemed like every few seconds - to greet residents. “We try to see how we can make it work as opposed to starting a new program. We don’t want to duplicate services.”

MCCP partners with 60 community groups, non-profits and educational institutions around the Philadelphia area.  Within Mill Creek, organizations include: the Mill Creek Advisory Council, whose goal is to make the Mill Creek playground a place of impact for the community; The Men of Mill Creek, formed by a group of men who grew up in the neighborhood who now give back through mentoring the neighborhood’s young men and children; The Mill Creek Planning Group, which is working toward a strategy to effectively distribute vital information into the community and ACE after school program, which works to go beyond the typical after school program by providing various workshops and activities for the children and their parents.

Mill Creek's first Community Day was seven years ago after the building of the Lucien Blackwell Homes, a new subsidized housing development, which brought new residents in from other areas.

“These were new people. So, if you said to them, ‘Oh, come up to the playground,’ they don’t know where it is,” Green said. “So that’s why we come together as a community because I live here, you live there. It’s working really, really well. It’s perfect because we got to be part of rebuilding a community.”

One of the community building programs offered by MCCP is the “Fine Art Through Our Eyes” workshop, the brainchild of Green, an artist who studied textile design at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology.

“Our mission is to introduce people to artists of color and in the neighborhood, “ Green said at the workshop’s reception for the senior citizens at St. Ignatius Nursing Home located at 44th and Haverford Avenues. “We also want to introduce people to the creative process, like contemporary art. A lot of people think, ‘Well, I’m not an artist because I can’t make an apple look like an apple, or I can’t make a horse look like a horse.’ But with contemporary art you don’t have to, it’s about what you feel and what you produce.”

The project brought out sentimental feelings for the nursing home residents and the guest artist, Walter Briggs, who is also a resident of Mill Creek.

“I enjoyed the participation of them letting themselves come out of themselves,” said Mr. Briggs. “Some felt they weren’t really interested, but once they started participating in it, it made me feel good because I was able to connect with them, as well as share an experience, and they shared an experience with me as well.”

For this particular project, the seniors created collages representing their personal history with photographs of themselves and pictures clipped out of magazines.  

“Like going through a magazine with them, they’ll say, ‘oh see that cat? I had a cat like that,’” said Fran Renner, an aide at St. Ignatius.  “It makes them use their minds not just their hands. You are also painting out their memories back for them. They love it.”

Finding a Center
Community Day and the “Fine Art Through Our Eyes” workshop are examples of programs Lewis, the council president of the Mill Creek Community Center envisioned for Mill Creek residents. Today these events take place in various venues around the neighborhood.  Some have to be forfeited - such as an Underground Railroad camp a community group envisioned - if they can’t find a space.

After going through many uses, ranging from community center to reggae dancehall, the community center was shut down in 2004 due to structural issues and financial problems.  The lack of a succession plan - all of the original board members have died - has robbed the building of its identity.

Now the 24,000 square foot building, which was bought by a private developer in 2011, sits empty.  Outside, lease space is advertised on a large banner. The bright, colorful mural, which displayed the portraits of those who made the community center a reality, is concealed under coats of beige paint. Against the corner of a chain link fence surrounding the lot leans an American flag. The flag, torn and dingy, serves as a haunting symbol of the freedom and hope Mill Creek Community Center’s original board members wanted to hammer out through the center.

Green believes the center, which housed daycare, a skating rink and art and music classes, has the potential to come back to life.

“You can’t look at it and say, ‘Oh, this is just a raggedy place.’” Green said. “Great things happened here, and it can happen again.”  

ZENOVIA CAMPBELL is a Master of Journalism student at Temple University and lives in South Philly. Send feedback here.