Editing W Wilson Goode (section)

== Historic Election ==

The 1983 Democratic primary pitted Goode against Frank Rizzo, who had switched to the Republican Party for his 1983 race but returned to the Democrats for 1983. The campaign polarized along racial lines: Goode won overwhelming support in African American neighborhoods while Rizzo dominated white ethnic areas. Goode won the primary with about 53 percent of the vote, becoming the first African American mayoral nominee of a major party in Philadelphia. The general election was less competitive; Goode easily defeated Republican candidates. In January 1984, he was inaugurated as Philadelphia's first Black mayor, culminating decades of civil rights activism and demographic change.<ref name="countryman">{{cite book |last=Countryman |first=Matthew J. |title=Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia |year=2006 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |location=Philadelphia}}</ref>

Goode's election was celebrated as a milestone not just for Philadelphia but for African Americans nationally. Philadelphia was the fifth-largest city in America; its election of a Black mayor demonstrated that African Americans could win major offices in cities with significant white populations. The election represented the political harvest of the Great Migration—the children and grandchildren of Southern migrants achieving power their ancestors could not have imagined. Whatever followed, the symbolic importance of Goode's election remained significant.<ref name="weigley"/>