The Jim Crow North: Segregation and Agency in New
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Te Jim Crow North Research Article Winner of the 14th Annual Graduate History Symposium Best Paper Prize, University of Toronto, 2018 Te Jim Crow North: Segregation and Agency in New Jersey Beaches and Swimming Pools Jason Romisher Simon Fraser University A common misconception is that Jim Crow practices in the United States were primar- ily a southern phenomenon. One theme that has emerged in recent scholarship is that public facilities were operated on an exclusionary basis in many northern areas until concerted campaigns in the mid-twentieth century fnally gained legal equality for Af- rican Americans. New Jersey is a particularly interesting northern state to examine Jim Crow practices because of the complex history of race-relations in the state that have made it one of the most segregated places in modern America. A look at access to swim- ming facilities in New Jersey brings this reality into focus. For example, African Ameri- cans in Atlantic City were confned to one unmaintained section of the beach dubbed Volume 7, Issue 1 7, Issue Volume ‘Chicken Bone Beach’ and some lakes also had racially separate beach areas. Despite the 1 7, Issue Volume 8 achievement in 1949 of a constitutional amendment banning discrimination in New 9 Jersey’s public spaces, African Americans continued to be efectively barred by whites from some activities through informal practices. One strategy that whites used to con- tinue segregationist practices was the creation of private swimming clubs, which also fostered class-based discrimination. Tis paper makes extensive use of primary source Past Tense Past Tense Past accounts and unpublished oral interviews to explore the acts of agency demonstrated by both individual whites and African Americans over the contentious spaces of beaches and swimming pools. Jason Romisher Introduction exclusionary basis in many northern areas until concerted campaigns n a Beautiful new Jersey fnally gained legal equality for African summer day in the mid- Americans. Whites then developed 1960s, an African American strategies to maintain the colour line Ofamily drove to the resort community in some social spaces. New Jersey of Egg Harbor for a day at the beach. is a particularly interesting place to Te family parked their car at the lake’s examine Jim Crow practices because of parking lot and proceeded to carry the complex history of race-relations in their belongings to the other side of the the state. New Jersey’s 566 independent lake, well past the main beach area that municipalities have tremendous was exclusively designated for whites.1 political power and developed a political Tis was not an isolated example as culture that created one of the most segregation in pools and beaches racially segregated states in America.2 throughout the state was commonplace. A look at access to swimming facilities Te United States was and continues in New Jersey brings this reality into to be a nation divided along racial focus. Tis paper reviews New Jersey’s lines. Following Reconstruction (1865- history of race-relations, the state laws 1876), white Americans systematically concerning civil rights, and Jim Crow re-imposed a system of apartheid practices in the state. I use oral history upon African Americans that became interviews, memoirs, newspaper known as Jim Crow. Much of the articles, and government documents United States was efectively a separated to argue that a focus on one issue, society where African Americans were swimming facilities, reveals that both socially divided from whites in schools, whites and African Americans engaged businesses, public accommodations, in legal and extralegal acts of agency and in public transportation. Jim to either maintain or dismantle New Crow practices became entrenched in Jersey’s version of Jim Crow. American society with the landmark 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that Historiography upheld segregation in public facilities provided that said facilities were ofered here has been a recent effort on a separate but equal basis. A common Tby historians to combat the myth of misconception is that Jim Crow southern exceptionalism regarding Jim practices were primarily a southern Crow practices and shif the attention of Volume 7, Issue 1 7, Issue Volume phenomenon. Te South was the focal the civil rights narrative north. Most of 1 7, Issue Volume 8 point of much of the civil rights struggle this work has been done in major cities 9 and saw the most pervasive Jim Crow and ofen focusses on the mid-1960s regimes. However, the North and West ideological turn to black power.3 Tere also experienced Jim Crow practices have been some key works that explore the course of the black freedom struggle Past Tense Past well into the twentieth century. Tense Past Recent scholarship has revealed that in New Jersey.4 Lizabeth Cohen’s A public facilities were operated on an Consumer’s Republic examines racial politics and segregation in New Jersey Te Jim Crow North and Tomas Sugrue’s, Sweet Land of of racial violence, hatred, and exclusion. Liberty is an important macro-analysis For example, in a 2010 anthology of the civil rights movement in the about 1970s radical movements, North that includes several New Jersey historian Scott Rutherford cited a vignettes. Walter David Greason’s newspaper report which “described Suburban Erasure explores how the the world of First Nations people in processes of suburbanization in New Kenora [Ontario] as reminiscent of the Jersey negatively impacted the black injustices endured by African American freedom struggle, and Howard Gillette’s men and women in the southern United Camden Afer the Fall examines issues States.”8 Historian Mary Louise Roberts such as deindustrialization, white fight, also used the trope of the egalitarian and the impact of black power politics.5 North, writing in a 2013 book, “Black Te concerted efort by historians soldiers, especially those who hailed to bring the civil rights narrative north from the North, were ofen traumatized should also not elide the key diferences by [white southern] ofcers.”9 Tis between the deep South, the North, simplistic north-south binary can serve and the West. Historian Clarence Lang to exonerate and excuse northern racist has argued that the deep South and practices that have been revealed by border states have diferent regional Sugrue, Cohen, Beryl Satter, Matthew characteristics that shaped how the Countryman, Patrick D. Jones, and civil rights movement developed others in their explorations of African and proceeded. He writes, “Regional American activism and northern white diferences in black-white relations were racism. Tese narratives, coupled with stark and fundamental, and the regional the enthusiastic support in many areas diferences between southern and of the North for Alabama Governor and northern black freedom struggles were segregationist George C. Wallace in his equally as decisive.”6 Sundiata Cha- 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns, Jua and Lang add that the “the fallacy demonstrates the pervasiveness of of arguing for North-South continuity racism and inequality in America is that it ignores regional variations regardless of region.10 in political economy, frequency and Several historians have modes of racial violence, levels of reconceptualised the traditional political incorporation, and the stark timelines associated with the civil rights diferences in wages and wealth between movement that typically see activism African Americans in the South and the begin with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Volume 7, Issue 1 7, Issue Volume North.”7 Tus, the civil rights/black Education decision and end with the 1 7, Issue Volume 10 power era should be viewed as a mosaic Voting Rights Act in 1965. Scholars such 11 of local struggles that all have their own as Sugrue, Peniel Joseph, Robert O. Self, sets of causes, challenges, struggles, and Doug McAdam, and Jacqueline Dowd outcomes. Hall argue that African American While many historians have brought activism both predates and outlasts the Past Tense Past Tense Past attention to the civil rights struggles in traditional timelines.11 Te experience the northern states, some continue to of African American activism in New identify the South alone as the key site Jersey afrms this scholarly critique as Jason Romisher seen through the numerous examples be deemed guilty of misdemeanor, and of legal challenges and direct-action on conviction shall be transported … initiatives against segregation and to Liberia, or some island in the West inequality that took place both before Indies.”16 Some members of the state 1954 and afer 1965. Democratic party even suggested that New Jersey formally secede from the New Jersey’s Nineteenth-Century Union and join the Confederacy.17 New Racial Laws and Jim Crow Foundations Jersey also voted against Lincoln in both 1860 and 1864, only legally abolished ew Jersey has a problematic slavery in 1866 afer the thirteenth Nhistory of race-relations dating amendment was formally incorporated back to its foundation as a colony and into the U.S. Constitution, and did later a state with legal slavery. In 1804, not grant voting rights to African the state passed a gradual emancipation Americans until 1870.18 law regarding slavery, resulting in the Prior to the Civil War, slave resisters continued enslavement of people right who entered New Jersey along the up to the Civil War.12 New Jersey’s established routes of the Underground revised 1844 State Constitution upheld Railroad ofen chose to stay in the state’s the rights of the state’s remaining African American population centers slaveholders and limited the franchise to rather than travelling further north.18 white men.13 Dr. John S. Rock of Salem, Both Maryland and Delaware were New Jersey, expressed his dissatisfaction slave states that were directly adjacent with the state in 1849. He commented, to South Jersey across Delaware Bay. “Te state has never treated us as men.… Virginia had a large population of She has always been an ardent supporter enslaved people, is located just west of of the ‘peculiar institution’ [slavery] these small states, and has sections more – the watchdog for the Southern north in latitude than southern New plantations; and unless she shows her Jersey.