Beyond the Bell walking tours in Old City focus on unsung American heroes
Business for Skilful: Across the Bell
2 Haverford alums are filling a niche in Philly's tourist economy: Tours featuring lesser-known American heroes
Aug. 19, 2019
Stand up on the corner of 13th and Locust in the Gayborhood, and y'all can hear about how Barbara Gittings, a lesbian activist who spent her formative years in Philly, was the first person to link queer rights to civil rights, and is largely responsible for the American Psyhicatric Assocation'south decision, in 1973, to acknowledge that homosexuality is not a mental illness, as it had previously been thought.
Wait outside of The William Manner LGBT Community Center, and you lot tin learn about Kiyoshi Kuromiya, a grad of Penn's architecture school who served as an openly gay delegate to the Blackness Panther Convention—and was a nationally-ranked Scrabble thespian.
Walk across the street, to a beautiful mural defended to him, and yous can talk over Alain Locke, a black gay poet who created The New Negro, an album of blackness art, in response to the lack of diverseness in the typical bookish arts cannon.
"When you go to the Liberty Bell and don't talk about slavery, you are maxim that slavery is not important in the journey to liberty and liberty," Leroux says.
Then walk a few more blocks to the mural of Gloria Casarez, to hear how she was the program coordinator for the LGBT Center at Penn when the AIDS epidemic broke out. Realizing that health resources, which were concentrated in the Gayborhood were not reaching neighborhoods in Due north and West Philly, she created minute-clinics and staffed them with volunteers to help non-white communities bargain with the AIDS crisis.
These Philly pioneers inverse the course of history—withal they're hardly household names like Ben Franklin, Betsy Ross, or even Gritty.
Joey Leroux and Rebecca Fisher are working to change that with their 1-year-old company, Across the Bell Walking Tours. Unlike more mainstream, anticipated tours offered throughout the city, theirs highlight the higher up-mentioned pioneers alongside other marginalized communities, peoples, and histories; tours include an LGBTQ bout, a Badass Women of Philadelphia tour, and The Philly Classic tour.
Leroux and Fisher met at Haverford College. Fisher grew upwards in the Philly area, and Leroux, originally from Maine, savage in love with the city as an undergrad. While studying Econ at Haverford, Leroux became interested in social entrepreneurship, which marries doing practiced with making a profit. And then when Rebecca came to him with the idea to atomic number 82 tours highlighting underrepresented historical figures, he was intrigued. Would it be possible to make this profitable?
The choice to set shop in Philly was an easy one: It's a historic town that cares near its history. Leroux felt a item pull to stay given the city's rich queer culture, which he discovered while going on dates during college. "Growing upward, I couldn't imagine working while queer, and with other queer people—in Philly information technology'south possible to do because of the history of activism here," he says. Just when he would encounter tours go through the Gayborhood around 13th Street and not even mention it, it was heartbreaking to him—even, he believes, dangerous.
"Tour guides are determination-makers. They determine whom to highlight and who they think is of import," Leroux says. And that doesn't but use to LGBTQ bug: "When you go to the Liberty Bell and don't talk about slavery, y'all are saying that slavery is not important in the journeying to liberty and liberty."
"There is this myth in entrepreneurship that y'all can do it by yourself, but in reality yous inquire everyone you lot know to help you out—Haverford, friends, parents—I use it all," Leroux says.
Betsy Ross is the only adult female talked about in mainstream tourism, he points out—meanwhile, Hannah Penn ran our country for 14 years, and is barely acknowledged. "What does that mean to tell Ross's story over Penn's? That selection is consequential," says Leroux.
In their path to creating a more than accurate expect at history, the duo has had to accost circuitous questions. How exercise you emphasize how far we've come while all the same showing how far we accept to go? How do yous use monuments, statues, and murals to your advantage in your tour? How do you create a bout talking about people who don't have historical tributes or markers? While Leroux and Fisher may not have all of these answers, they are grappling with them, and believe strongly that you take to have a stance.
To appointment, the company has one year and around 700 tours under its belt, and TripAdvisor already ranks it the number-one tour company in Philadelphia. "I didn't know if this was going to piece of work. I didn't know if people would buy women and queer history. We took a adventure because we thought it was important," Leroux says. He attributes their early success to strong back up. "There is this myth in entrepreneurship that you can exercise it by yourself, just in reality you ask anybody you lot know to help you out—Haverford, friends, parents—I use it all."
The answer to their concern question—whether a tour company can make money—is evolving. That first summer after graduation, they participated in a summer program at Haverford College, Haverford Innovations Program's Innovation Summertime Incubator, which enabled them to accept financial support while researching and starting to requite their tours. Since so, they added some other bout guide to the group. Leroux has a side job answering phones for Context, an international tour company; Fisher works for the Franklin Establish part-time during the winter months so transitions to full-time for BTB's summer season. BTB broke fifty-fifty last year, and expects to make a profit this year. The tours are $49, but they exercise have a Caroline LeCount Fund to which you can donate, which enables them to practice a pay-what-you-want tour once a calendar month.
And while PRIDE may have come and gone in June, Beyond the Bell Walking Tours operates its LGBTQ, and all other, tours year-round.
"What does it mean to talk most William Penn and non Lenni Lenape?" asks Leroux, one afternoon. "Information technology erases the way this country was taken. If you don't [address] the fashion this country was taken we are systematically forgetting how this colony was started."
And as whatsoever educatee of history can tell y'all, forgetting our history is the quickest, and most unsafe, way to take a chance repeating information technology.
Joey Leroux '18 giving a Across the Bell tour in Philadelphia. Photograph by Alexandra Iglesia '21 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/philadelphia-walking-tours-beyond-the-bell/
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