Seaview Beach and Amusement Park: An African-American Gem on Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay. Sherry DiBari September 2017 This research was funded with a 2017 Research Grant from the Virginia Beach Historic Preservation Commission. Seaview Beach and Amusement Park In 1947, Life Magazine published a photo essay on Seaview Beach calling it “Virginia’s best-known Negro resort.” The magazine reported that up to 10,000 tourists visited the beach on the weekends. Images showed well-to-do African-American professionals enjoying social life at the beach and adjacent amusement park.1This was contrary to much of the negative media coverage of African Americans at the time and casts a light on a hidden upper-class population in Virginia. The history of Seaview Beach and Amusement Park began in 1944, when three African-American professionals, with the help of Dudley Cooper, the driving force behind the all-white Ocean View Park, began construction on an amusement park designated for “coloreds only.” Twenty-one local African-American businessmen helped to fund the enterprise, which opened on May 30, 1945 on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay.2 The park was wildly popular and featured famous musicians and artists such as Louis Armstrong and Fats Domino Jr.3 In the early 1960s, desegregation rules led to open beaches for all races making separate beaches unnecessary. The amusement park, located on Shore Drive, operated until 1964 and was demolished in 1966.4 The space now houses a condominium complex called Seagate Colony Condos. This amusement park was a vital part of Virginia’s upper and middle-class African-American society and its history is important to the area. Hampton Roads African Americans in particular were often stereotyped as economically and educationally disadvantaged. The Seaview Beach and Amusement Park history shows 2 there are other race narratives showing African Americans in a more positive and advanced light. The focus of this research is on the founders and businessmen whose vision enabled a vibrant space for African Americans as well as the use of the park as a space for recreation and social stratification during a period when African Americans were limited in the spaces that they could occupy. Literature Review Amusement parks and leisure activities During the early part of the twentieth century, the popularity of amusement parks ballooned as the American population shifted into urban areas. In The Playful Crowd; Pleasure Places in the Twentieth Century, historians Gary Cross and John Walton explained that with good jobs, extra spending money and advanced transportation possibilities, Americans began to experience the era of leisure. 5 In “Going Out, the Rise and Fall of Public Amusements,” author David Nasaw suggested that this “era of amusements” brought about a sense of “civic sociability” and a clear division in how Americans approached work versus leisure time. Leisure opportunities in the early 1900s included theatres, stage shows, sports, dance halls and amusement parks. The majority of these entertainments were for whites only but often had separate days or separate sitting sections for African Americans.6 Segregated amusements also included roller rinks, pools, golf courses and beaches.7 3 Even entertainers were delegated to segregated venues. Walker and Wilson, in Black Eden: the Idlewild Community explained that African-American and Jewish performers had their own entertainment circuits.8 African-American entertainers often played in the same rotating locations in what was called the “Chitlin Circuit.”9 Beaches came of age as popular vacation destinations during the 1920s as well. In almost all locations, particularly in the South, African Americans had to attend separate “black beaches.”10 By the 1960s, interest in amusement parks and other public entertainments waned. Nasaw suggests this was a result of several factors including: suburbanization, television, the decline of cities and the influx of crime. African-American leisure sites In the book, Race, Riots and Rollercoasters, author Virginia Wolcott noted a dearth of scholarship on African-American leisure and recreation. She suggested that historians focus has been on educational and residential segregation.11 Many white amusement parks and recreational sites, such as Coney Island, were well documented in twentieth century history, African-American entertainment sites, particularly for upper-income recreationists, are often absent from historical record. Many African-American resorts, like the Idlewild resort in Michigan, were rarely mentioned in history. An example of one upper-income resort was Highland Beach, which targeted upper-income African-American professionals in Washington, D.C. It was located on the 4 Maryland side of the Chesapeake Bay and sold well-constructed homes and cottages for residents and vacationers who enjoyed fishing, swimming and tennis.12 The growing African-American population In the years after Reconstruction, Virginia gained a large African-American population. In Race Relations in Virginia, 1870-1902, author Charles Wynes noted that in 1870, African Americans outnumbered the white population “in 40 of Virginia’s 99 counties.”13 This trend continued over the next few decades. By 1930, the percentage of African Americans in Virginia was higher than in any other state composing 34 percent of the population.14 From 1910 to 1920, Norfolk’s African-American population increased by 73 percent, from just over 25,000 to over 43,000. African-American population in other Hampton Roads cities increased as well, including Portsmouth, with a 100 percent increase and Newport News with a 93.9 percent increase.15 In The Peaceful Resolution of Norfolk’s Integration Crisis of 1958-1959, Nancy Parker Ford wrote that in 1958, in the height of the desegregation battle, Norfolk’s population of 300,000 contained 80,000 African Americans, at almost 27 percent of the population. She suggested despite the desegregation battles, Norfolk’s military influence had led to a more cosmopolitan and accepting environment than other southern cities.16 Although many African Americans were economically depressed during this time, the sheer numbers in Hampton Roads created an influential economic and political demographic. In the book, The Negro in Virginia Politics, 1902-1965, author Andrew 5 Buni wrote that in the decades from 1930 to 1950, Virginia business owners began to market to African-American consumers. Patronage and support of African-American owned businesses increased during this time as well.17 Norfolk’s African-American newspaper, the New Journal and Guide was the largest circulating African-American newspaper in the state and wielded considerable political influence.18 Norma Cromwell Fields in the thesis, Blacks in Norfolk, Virginia during the 1930s, wrote the newspaper had a circulation of 78,000 and suggested it was “the most important black newspaper in the South.”19 African-American business In Desegregating the Dollar, historian Robert Weems Jr. credits the Great Migration, specifically 1915 to 1918, to a large urban African-American population, which then led to a “viable African-American consumer market.” He wrote that as cities boomed and became prosperous, so did many African Americans. In turn, African Americans supported businesses within the community.20 Weems explained that the 1920s were “a time of considerable interest in black business development” leading to organizations such as the National Negro Business League and the Colored Merchants Association.21 In Hampton Roads in 1930, about 80 percent of African-American men and over 50 percent of African-American women were gainfully employed. While the majority were semi-skilled and unskilled laborers, many had transitioned to professional fields.22 The Norfolk City Directory during the early 1930s listed “18 [African- American] attorneys, 25 doctors and eight dentists.”23 Author Norma Cromwell Fields suggested a 6 distinct “caste” system had developed among Norfolk’s “black society” further dividing those with education and income from their less-educated peers.24 African Americans had established their own banks in response to the lack of assistance from white banks: first the Knights of Gideon Bank in Norfolk in 1905, followed by Brown’s Savings Bank and then a few years later, the Metropolitan Banking and Trust Company. These banks helped African-American businessmen establish and obtain credit for business ventures. Black banks were prolific in Virginia. In the early 1900s, there were twenty-seven, double the amount than in than any other state.25 Labor shortages in World War II enabled many African Americans to transition to skilled labor positions, elevating their economic status further. By the late 1940s, African-American consumers were in high demand.26 In the 1960s, African-American owned businesses began to decline. Walker and Wilson in the book, Black Eden, the Idlewild Community, suggested that desegregation led to the decline of black-owned businesses as African Americans, after the Public Accommodation Act, were free to shop at white stores.27 Black Laws While African Americans were making some progress, legal economic barriers were still in place. Virginia had “economic codes” on the books for many years which entitled employers to pay African Americans less than whites.28 In Patterns of Negro Segregation, Charles Johnson wrote that segregation policies could be “traced back to the period of the Black Codes,” which were “legal” codes that allowed cities to discriminate. These laws affected life in the spheres of education, 7 religion, marriage, living quarters and labor. Most of the laws were aimed at keeping the two races separated, both in public and in private areas.29 Beaches African Americans were limited in the spaces that they could occupy. White amusement parks and beaches were clearly off limits. Hampton Roads most popular amusement park, Ocean View, had been whites only for years. Owner Dudley Cooper recalled in a 1978 interview “Ocean View was segregated. We inherited it that way and it was the custom and tradition of the whole country.”30 Seaview Beach wasn’t the only African-American beach resort area in Hampton Roads.