Episode 9 of the “In Pursuit” series focuses on 1968-1990, a turbulent time in Philadelphia’s history as well as the nation’s. It begins with the rise of police commissioner and eventual mayor Frank Rizzo and his focus on order against a backdrop of civil unrest and antiwar protests, and ends with the election of the city’s first Black mayor, W. Wilson Goode, and the infamous firebombing of the MOVE compound.

Author and historian Nathaniel Popkin, writer of the “In Pursuit” series, offers his reflections.

Q: Race relations lie at the heart of the episode. How much do you think race relations changed or improved over the span of the episode, from the days of Frank Rizzo as police commissioner to the bombing of the MOVE house and the destruction of a neighborhood?

A: A broad spectrum of voters came together to elect W. Wilson Goode as mayor in 1983. After years of racial division, police brutality and violence under Frank Rizzo, people were seeking a new way. For the first time, Black Philadelphians felt they had a legitimate stake in city government.

But the episode explores the many personal and societal dimensions of the great structural disjuncture that defines this period: As soon as African Americans gained a political and economic foothold in the American city, the industrial jobs that were the framework of urban life vanished. The tax base diminished just as Black leaders finally got power, and these factors set up a new round of revanchist racism that still defines, for example, the perspective many Harrisburg lawmakers hold toward the residents of the city of Philadelphia.

Q: The relationship of the police to the city’s minority community is another prominent thread. In some ways, from 1968 to 1990, it seems like nothing changed at all. There were charges of brutality at the beginning and charges of brutality resulting in the deaths of children in the Africa compound. Did the bombing of the MOVE house signal the onset of police reform?

A: For the residents of Osage Avenue who charged the Goode administration with perpetrating “structural racism,” nothing much seemed to have changed. And because Goode failed to manage the situation of MOVE making their neighbors’ lives miserable, it came down to the police, the same Philadelphia Police Department that continued to follow a policy of disproportionate rage against MOVE. They sought revenge for the killing of Officer Ramp in 1978, and they were quite willing to take out a majority Black neighborhood to get it.

Q: Even with the bombing of the MOVE compound, how would the tenure of Wilson Goode be regarded today?

A: Goode was hamstrung by the societal disinvestment in cities. Where Rizzo had Nixon to rain funds down on Philly, Goode had Reagan, who turned the spigot off, and whose policies openly penalized poor people. So Goode had no easy task. Then he tragically mishandled MOVE. I think it underscores how hard it is to manage a city, especially one still in economic collapse.

Q: What lessons do we still need to learn from that turbulent period?

A: The greatest lesson, I would say, is that no one figure will ever save you, no matter your position or beliefs. The city is a product in some sense of democracy. The more we practice it, the better the city can be. The more we get involved, organize, engage, the more is possible. And I will say — the greatest lesson is about the role that journalism plays in a democracy. The era of this episode was the golden age for reporting, for investigative projects, for raising truth to power. Never was an age before it and never has been since. And, oh boy, do we miss having such an active, motivated, creative, relentless press.

Episode 9, followed by a Q&A, will screen on Thursday, Nov. 12, at Woodmere’s Smith Hall, 9201 Germantown Ave., Chestnut Hill. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the film starts at 6:30 p.m. RSVP to attend the screening and discussion, inpursuit.tv/attend-a-screening.