Chicken Bone Beach in Atlantic City, NJ

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Chicken Bone Beach is a reminder of how people find joy even in hard times | Jenice Armstrong
Updated: November 15, 2018 - 5:46 PM




Jenice Armstrong | @JeniceArmstrong | jarmstrong@inquirer.com

John W. Mosley Collection, The Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Library, Temple University

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With the holidays looming, I wasn't exactly in the mood to read about a New Jersey beach, even one as historic as Atlantic City's renowned Chicken Bone Beach.

But then I started thumbing through Cheryl Woodruff-Brooks' new book about the once racially segregated Missouri Avenue Beach, and I found myself gazing at all of the beautiful black and brown faces in the photos.

The beachgoers all look so happy. They're smiling and enjoying themselves in the surf. Mind you, until 1964, black folks couldn't dine in most Atlantic City restaurants because of the color of their skin.

Back then, African Americans were still being systematically denied most of the perks of American citizenship, such as voting and full access to most public accommodations. Yet there they were, happily posing for the camera as if they didn't have a care in the world. To me, the photos are a reminder of the resilience of the human spirit and of how even during the most oppressive of times, people still manage to find joy.



I was really struck by that, as was Woodruff-Brooks.

Sunberry Press
Cheryl Woodruff-Brooks is the author of a new book called, “Chicken Bone Beach: A Pictorial History of Atlantic Citys Missouri Avenue Beach.”


"I think that's what brought so much joy to this project. In my entire schooling, never in one social studies class did I ever see our people just held in such high regard in images," she told me. "Everything I saw, we were downtrodden, beaten, lynched. It was just a breath of fresh air."

After happening across a collection of photos of Chicken Bone Beach taken by the late Philly-based photographer John W. Mosley, Woodruff-Brooks wound up on a circuitous path that eventually led to her writing Chicken Bone Beach: A Pictorial History of Atlantic City's Missouri Avenue Beach (Sunbury Press, $9.99).



Woodruff-Brooks is the author of a new book about Atlantic City’s Chicken Bone Beach.
The area along A.C.'s Missouri Avenue became the unofficial black beach during the 1930s. after whites complained about black people's presence in other areas.

"They didn't want them in front of the hotels," explained Henrietta Shelton, president of the Chicken Bone Beach Historical Foundation in Atlantic City.



Since black people weren't permitted to dine in many restaurants, they brought fried chicken because it held up well in the hot sun, and afterward they would bury the bones in the sand. Seagulls would unearth them looking for forgotten morsels. Cleanup crews would then have the task of removing the bones, and they began referring to the area as Chicken Bone Beach. It initially was considered an insult, but it stuck.

During the beach's heyday, from the 1930s until 1964, when civil rights legislation struck down Jim Crow-style segregation, Chicken Bone Beach was the place to go.

Woodruff-Brooks' book includes a rare photo of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the beach. I did a double-take at the sight of King dressed in a pair of shorts and wearing what looks like a captain's cap.

"It was like a black Hollywood in its heyday," Woodruff-Brooks said. "You could be walking down the street, you could be in a club on Kentucky Avenue and see one famous black entertainer after the other. I'm talking Nina Simone and Ray Charles — the list just goes on."

Former Philly resident Beverly Wilburn, 75, whose teenage image appears on the cover of the book, has no memory of posing on all fours in the sand with a group of friends.

Nor does she recall the names of those in the photo with her. But Wilburn, now of New York, still remembers the good times she had hanging out on Chicken Bone Beach, and how back then, "nobody even thought to go anywhere else.

 

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[get these nets]

Keeping the History of African American Tourism Alive in Atlantic City's Northside


Like much of the United States, Atlantic City, New Jersey, was both de facto and legally segregated throughout much of its history, until the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision of 1954 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act 10 years later mandated integration across the country.

But unlike many other segregated communities, Atlantic City has long been a tourist hub and beach town—and travelers, both black and white, have been vacationing in Atlantic City for more than a century.

After Atlantic City was incorporated in 1854, its economy flourished and its population grew quickly. African Americans moved to Atlantic City from the South during the Great Migration, in search of better-paying jobs. Other black people immigrated to Atlantic City from the West Indies. These newcomers opened many of the town’s businesses.

Though no specific laws segregating the town existed at this time, discriminatory practices including redlining (where potential homeowners are denied access to particular neighborhoods based on race) sequestered African Americans to the Northside neighborhood of Atlantic City, according to Ralph Hunter, founder of the African American Heritage Museum of Southern New Jersey.

“The 80-square-block Northside neighborhood was once a thriving community of businesses, entrepreneurs, and professionals including doctors, lawyers, dentists, and funeral directors,” Hunter said. “They could attend school, own property, and vote, but they had to go to a clinic at City Hall instead of Atlantic City Hospital [when they were sick].”

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Most African Americans who lived in Atlantic City worked as laborers or in the service industry at white-owed hotels. In fact, black workers made up 95 percent of jobs at resorts and in tourism in Atlantic City during the Victorian era, according to a story on according to a story on NJ.com.


The residential areas of Atlantic City may have been essentially segregated from the time of the city’s incorporation, but its beaches and hotels were not segregated until 1900, when white tourists visiting from the Jim Crow South started to complain about integration.

Only then did the City Council officially segregate Atlantic City. Throughout this period of segregation in the early 20th century, African Americans continued to work at white-owned hotels and businesses.

African Americans continued to travel to Atlantic City, but instead of visiting whites-only beaches, they traveled to the only beach open to black people in the area—Missouri Avenue Beach, which was located in front of Atlantic City’s convention center. And though whites-only hotels were now closed off to black travelers, black-owned hotels and residences provided an opportunity for travelers and African American entrepreneurs alike.

One of the premier hotels in the northern United States, Liberty Hotel, opened in the Northside in the 1930s. The six-story hotel was a safe haven for African American performers who were playing at local venues, as well as upper-class vacationers, including C. Morris Cain, a black entrepreneur who developed the first YMCA in Atlantic City and the first housing project in New Jersey. The building still stands today and has been converted into apartments for seniors.

The Lincoln Hotel Apartments was seven stories high and included more than 200 rooms and apartments on the Northside. In addition to the efficiency-style apartments, the building included a dance studio, grocery store, and other businesses. Travelers and seasonal workers would often rent out rooms at the Lincoln for the entire summer.

Several other black-owned-and-operated hotels existed in Atlantic City during this time—including the Randall Hotel, one of the oldest hotels in Atlantic City; Wright’s Hotel, which played host to dignitaries visiting the Elks Lodge fraternal order; and the still-standing Apex Inn, owned by black haircare tyc00n Madam Sara Spencer Washington.

But the majority of black travelers looking for a place to stay during their vacation would bunk at tourist homes, residential buildings owed by African Americans who opened their doors to people with nowhere else to safely stay.

These homes and black-owned hotels were listed in the Negro Motorist Green Book, a travel guide for African Americans looking for safe passage through the country during a period of segregation and increased discrimination.

According to listings in the Green Book, somewhere between 20 and 50 cottages in the Northside were open to African Americans in the mid-20th century. Some residences were owned by families and travelers were welcome to stay in a single room. But individuals like dikk Austin, who immigrated to Atlantic City from the West Indies, owned several homes spanning an entire city block and provided housing for black travelers through their investment in real estate.

Austin's Rose Garden, a restaurant owned by entrepreneur and real estate mogul dikk Austin.

Hotels and tourist homes were not the only black-owned businesses in Atlantic City. In addition to his success in real estate, Austin also owned a restaurant and bar called dikk Austin’s Rose Garden. Several other black-owned restaurants and clubs existed at the time, but the most famous was Club Harlem, located near Liberty Hotel.

Club Harlem was one of the most popular nightclubs in the northern United States, hosting performers from Billie Holiday to Sammy Davis Jr.


Founded in 1935 by Leroy “Pop” Williams and his brother, Clifton, the club hosted performers like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sammy Davis Jr., and Aretha Franklin, as well as their own in-house showgirls. “It was an amazing place,” said Hunter.


Atlantic City also boasted African American-owned garages, cab services, and other businesses necessary to support the infrastructure of any tourist hub. In response to segregation, the Northside neighborhood duplicated businesses that excluded African Americans in the white areas of Atlantic City. In the process, the Northside created a thriving culture where African Americans could feel safe and accepted in a community that fostered black entrepreneurship and achievement.

After Brown v. Board and the Civil Rights Act, Missouri Avenue Beach—and with it, many of the black-owned businesses on the Northside—faded out of existence. And when Atlantic City’s famous casinos were built in the 1970s and ‘80s, many of its historic places were either demolished entirely or altered beyond recognition.

While some historic buildings in the Northside neighborhood remain, the majority have been converted into public housing. Hunter explained, “Black-owned businesses in Atlantic City are few and far between now. There were once 37 owned-and-operated black bars [on the Northside]. Today, there isn’t one liquor license held by an African American. And there’s just one cab license.”

 

[Makavalli]

Props breh. Crazy how back in the 90s my grandparents and their siblings used to fry up chicken the night before and wrap it up in foil for the trip from NY to A.C.

Find a spot on the beach where me and my cousins would chill while the older folks went to gamble then crack open the cooler and eat that chicken with some bread while the seagulls wait for them bones




Black folks we so scrong mane

 

[MIKE SPLEAN]

Pictures are crazy

 

[⠀X ⠀]

Not a fat girl in sight...

 

[get these nets]

Props breh. Crazy how back in the 90s my grandparents and their siblings used to fry up chicken the night before and wrap it up in foil for the trip from NY to A.C.

Find a spot on the beach where me and my cousins would chill while the older folks went to gamble then crack open the cooler and eat that chicken with some bread while the seagulls wait for them bones




Black folks we so scrong mane

We went the reverse route. Rye Beach in NY must have some kind of history behind it because our church, and all the others from same denomination in NJ used to always take trips there.

We rarely if ever went to Jersey beaches on church trips.

Glad the OP story brought back memories of good times for you.

 

[Makavalli]

We went the reverse route. Rye Beach in NY must have some kind of history behind it because our church, and all the others from same denomination in NJ used to always take trips there.

We rarely if ever went to Jersey beaches on church trips.

Glad the OP story brought back memories of good times for you.

same for us. Im from westchester and the rye area is on some around the playland area. Orchard is dirty as fukk and u know jones beach was a dub unless we was deep as fukk. Thanks for the history lesson tho thats some pass down tradition we didnt even know the backstory about.

my grandma always stayed away from sharing the rough shyt they went through but my gramps was with the shyts like dont u trust the crakkkas or bring one home

 

[FLORIDA BOI]

Chicken bone beach huh

White folks dirty was fukkk . that's what they call the beach down here that blacks went too. Hell still goto

 

[NoMoreWhiteWoman2020]

Chicken bone beach huh

White folks dirty was fukkk . that's what they call the beach down here that blacks went too. Hell still goto

I just found out about the inkwell in Martha’s Vineyard having a racist ass name too. Call it the inkwell because that was the only beach open to us at the time

 

[I AM WE ARE]

Black women are gorgeous and timeless

 

[Rell Lauren]

Crazy what Atlantic City looks like now.