Struggle of Black People in Philadelphia, Early 1960s: Affirmative Action and Revitalizing of Community Michiko Yasui This paper examines black movements in Philadelphia at the beginning of 1960’s, in which National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), together with Black community of north Philadelphia, demanded and struggled for the socio-economic rights, mainly equal employment rights. Through this struggle, continuing over two months, they, at last, won the city’s affirmative action policy, in which racial hiring system that had prevailed especially among the construction trade unions and the companies for years was restricted and no longer accepted by the city office. Philadelphia became the first city to adopt an affirmative action policy among the metropolitan cities in the North. The focus in this article is not just on its process but on its community-oriented strategy that made it possible to establish black empowerment politics in the city. The leaders and their leadership played the crucial role in achieving such out come. The federal affirmative action policies took place after similar struggles broke out in the urban areas in the North in the late 1960s. So it can be said that the struggle in Philadelphia initiated the federal affirmative action policies. This paper argues that, even if the federal affirmative action policies have been double-edged since the Nixon Administration passed the revised Philadelphia Plan, it was essential and a matter of emergency for the black people in Philadelphia to establish equal employment practices in the context of 1960s Philadelphia. Moreover, the struggle was unique in the leadership, in its inclusiveness and in its continuity.