Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times And Corruption of Atlantic City (10 page)

The inability of the more traditional denominations to serve the needs of Black migrants stimulated the growth of storefront churches. These churches made it possible for Blacks to worship in a manner in which many had practiced in the South. Their religious rites were highly emotional, creating a personal form of worship in which all the members of the congregation became involved. Their pastors preached about a very real heaven and hell. Their church services appealed to those Blacks searching for relief from the insecurities of this world through salvation in the next.

The first Spiritualist church in Atlantic City was founded in 1911 by Levi and Franklin Allen. From that church, 10 other churches sprang up almost immediately. While the sermons of their ministers were other-worldly, these tiny sects never lost sight of the hardships their members had to overcome in this world. The Spiritualist church provided material as well as spiritual assistance to help Southern migrants deal with urban life. A fundamental teaching of Spiritualist doctrine was to serve the community by raising funds to help feed and clothe the poor. Like the Spiritualist churches, the Holiness churches of Atlantic City also found support among the lower class, who were as much devoted to the community as to God. A cornerstone of their church doctrine was never to permit a member to be without the bare necessities of food, shelter, and clothing.

Over time, Atlantic City’s Black churches became a social safety net for their members in need. But Sunday was only one day in the week. To build what was required to deal with White racism, namely, a city within a city, Blacks needed more than their church.

Confronted by discrimination and forced segregation, Black leaders began to establish social agencies in the Northside at the turn of the 20th century. The first social agency established by Blacks was a home for the elderly. The Old Folks Home and Sanitarium opened its doors shortly around 1900. Its purpose was to provide convalescent care for Blacks in need, regardless of religion, 65 years or older. The home was run by a Board of Managers consisting of 15 persons who investigated and approved all admissions and established charges depending upon need. The home, which was located at 416 N. Indiana Avenue, was managed well and on July 14, 1922, the Board of Managers had a formal ceremony at the Price Memorial Church, where the mortgage was burned in celebration.

Local Blacks were denied access to the city’s Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). Prominent businessman George Walls organized a group that conceived a plan for the Northside YMCA. Walls was a successful bathhouse operator and a dynamic leader of the Northside who spearheaded numerous causes and lent a helping hand to many Blacks. The “Northside Y” was only one of his accomplishments.

The Northside YMCA operated out of a small cottage on North New York Avenue for more than 30 years. In 1930 it moved to a new building on Arctic Avenue, which contained a gymnasium, recreation room, showers, and dormitory accommodations. Funded entirely through private donations, the Northside YMCA was constructed at a cost of approximately $250,000. The Arctic Avenue branch of the YMCA, as it came to be known, was directed by C. M. Cain. In 1930, a staff of seven secretaries carried on a general character-building YMCA program, with a membership of more than 250 young men. The Arctic Avenue YMCA became the headquarters for many Black community organizations and clubs. Among them were the Northside Board of Trade, the Northside Business and Professional Woman’s Club, the Lincoln University Alumni Associates, the Young Men’s Progressive Club, the Great Building and Loan Association, the Lion’s Social Club, two of the four Black Boy Scout Troops, and the Woman’s Home Missionary Society.

In 1916 the Northside Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) was founded by Maggie Ridley, an active civil leader who was co-owner of the popular Ridley Hotel and one of the founding members of the Jethro Memorial Presbyterian Church. The Northside YWCA operated an employment bureau and provided counseling services to young women. Its facilities were too small for recreational programs so young women used the gymnasium facilities at the Arctic Avenue branch of the YMCA.

As the permanent Black population increased, numerous social societies were established. These groups were often “secret societies,” akin to the Masonic Order. These secret societies were one of the vehicles used by Blacks to cope with their minority status. As early as the Revolutionary period, free Blacks found it desirable to join together for social and cultural improvement, economic self-help, and mutual relief. They did this through secret societies. These societies provided their members with one of the few opportunities they had for group expression and cooperation outside of the church. By 1900, Atlantic City had more than a dozen secret societies, among which were the Prince Hall Masons, the Independent Order of Good Samaritans, the Grand United Order of True Reformers, and the Elks. Societies such as the Masons and Elks emphasized moral and social uplift of their race through the conduct of individual members and provided charity to the less fortunate. The Good Samaritans and True Reformers took the lead in providing insurance and business loans for their members. All these societies met at Mason’s Hall at North Michigan and Arctic avenues.

Meeting places like the Mason’s Hall and the Northside YMCA were critical to a Black social structure. But informal opportunities were also needed. Denied access to the hotels, restaurants, and recreational facilities of the Southside, enterprising Blacks created their own places of amusement. The first known amusement house where Blacks could gather to drink and socialize was established by M. E. Coats in 1879. Another early café and dance hall was Fitzgerald’s Auditorium on North Kentucky Avenue. Built in 1890, Fitzgerald’s grew in popularity, becoming a bar, restaurant, nightclub, and gambling room. During the Depression, Fitzgerald’s was renamed “Club Harlem” and became one of the most chic and talked about nightclubs in the Northeast, frequented by stylish Blacks and Whites. In 1919, the “Waltz Dream,” a large recreation center and dance hall at North Ohio Avenue, was established by a Mrs. Thomas, a White woman from Philadelphia. There were weekly wrestling and boxing tournaments, as well as basketball games, to sold-out crowds. The Waltz Dream was the site of many Black charity events and when dances were held at the hall, popular Black orchestras played to capacity crowds of more than 2,000, young and old alike.

In time, the Northside became a self-contained, vibrant community with a wide range of successful Black-owned businesses. The main street of the Black community was Kentucky Avenue. In addition to night spots like Club Harlem, the Northside had its own retail stores, boardinghouses, restaurants, funeral homes, and theaters, which provided a rich life serving most of the Blacks’ needs. As for the fire safety needs of the densely populated Northside, there was an all-Black fire company. Engine Company #9 with two platoons and Truck Company #6 with two platoons had their own segregated firehouse at Indiana and Grant avenues. Engine Company #9 earned a national reputation for excellence throughout the country. It played a major role in fighting all the city’s fires and held the city record for efficiency six years in a row.

Blacks had developed their own city in response to the racism of Atlantic City’s White population. However, there remained two areas where Blacks were unable to build their own institutions and continued to be the victims of racial prejudice: education and healthcare.

There was no discrimination in the school system during the early years of the resort. As long as their numbers remained small, Blacks posed no threat. But as the White community hardened its stance on integrated neighborhoods, so too did it shrink from integrated schools as the number of Black pupils grew.

Prior to 1900, the resort had a single school system with Black and White children being educated together, entirely by White teachers. In 1881, community leader George Walls organized a Literary Society and used it as a vehicle to push for improved education for Black children. Walls presented the local school board with a resolution of his group demanding the hiring of a Black teacher. The board responded by adopting a resolution of its own supporting the idea, but waited 15 years until 1896 before finally yielding and actually hiring a Black teacher.

The lengthy gap in time between the resolution and hiring was in large part a product of the controversy in the Black community caused by Walls’ proposal. Walls wanted Black teachers for Black children. He was, in effect, promoting an early Black nationalistic policy of separation of the races, which many Black leaders rejected. Those Blacks favoring integration believed that if the cost of securing Black teachers was the loss of integration, then the price was too high. Walls had his opponents. M. E. Coats, owner of a popular Northside amusement house, and C. Williams, secretary of the Price Memorial AME Zion Church Literary Society, were bitterly opposed to Walls’ idea. They feared that Walls’ proposal would do more harm than good.

As the controversy raged, Coats and Williams organized a mass meeting of all Blacks. According to historian Herbert J. Foster, Walls might have been physically attacked but for several articles in support of Walls, which appeared in the
Atlantic City Review
. One such article stated:

This young man is right. The child is at a disadvantage with a white teacher because she does not know his history and environment. She does not have the patience and understanding. When a boy’s mother leaves home at six o’clock in the morning, her child is not out of bed, at school time he jumps up, rushes to school without his face washed or his hair combed, a white teacher does not take that boy aside and make him wash his face, she just goes on with the lesson, ignoring that boy, because she does not know that he is not able to get attention from home. If Negro children have Negro teachers, they will have an inspiration, they will have members of their own race, for ideals and not white ideals that are so diligently instructed about in the schools.

Over time, Walls’ proposal gained acceptance and the school board hired Hattie Merritt. Merritt was born in Jersey City and was a graduate of Jersey City Teachers Training School. She was assigned to teach an integrated class at the Indiana Avenue School. Things didn’t go well.

Miss Merritt found teaching in an integrated system more than she had bargained for. Her problem wasn’t the children but rather the parents. The White parents made her job impossible by coming to school and standing outside the classroom, glaring and taunting her as she tried to teach. Many of these parents demanded that the school board remove their children from her class. Merritt complained to Walls and he in turn complained to the school board. The end result of the controversy came in 1900 when the board decided on a policy of separate education for Black children and the employment of additional Black teachers to instruct them.

With the school board’s decision made, Black children were moved out of the city school system and into the basement of the Shiloh Baptist Church. This didn’t work out, and the following year the Black students were moved into the Indiana Avenue School, one of the older school buildings, which was converted to an all Black school. As the resort’s population grew, the building wasn’t large enough to handle the number of school-age Blacks. The next move was to divide the New Jersey Avenue School; half for Whites and half for Blacks. There was a door for “White” and a door for “Colored,” and separate play yards to keep the children from mingling.

By 1901, W. M. Pollard, Superintendent of Atlantic City School, claimed proudly that separate classes for Black children was a good thing. In his annual report he stated:

The employment of colored teachers for separate colored classes has worked very successfully in our city. We employ ten colored teachers. These teachers occupy rooms in the same building where white children attend. The separation is continued as far as the seventh grade, after that the colored pupils attend the same grades with the white children. This plan has been in many respects beneficial for the race.

It’s difficult to determine who was vindicated by the results—Walls or his critics. But the outcome was segregation for as long as it could be maintained.

Unfortunately, there was no one like Walls to lead the charge on healthcare for the Black community. Health services for Blacks were as segregated and meager as Whites could make them. Blacks were not permitted in White doctors’ offices and routine medical services were dispensed out of a separate Blacks-only clinic in a back room in city hall until 1899. In that year, the first public hospital was opened, but it would only treat Blacks in wards separate from Whites. While the hospital hired Blacks for cooking and cleaning, there were none to care for patients. As late as 1931, nearly 100 Blacks were employed as orderlies, cooks, janitors, waiters, and maids, but not one was employed as a nurse or doctor. The few local Black physicians there were could not see their patients in the hospital, and qualified applicants for training as nurses were turned away by the hospital’s administration, forced to go to other cities for their education. The message was clear: African-Americans were servants and that was all they could ever hope to be in Atlantic City.

While upper- and middle-class Blacks of the Northside prospered, the seasonal employment, squalid housing, and poor health services for a majority of Blacks took their toll on the quality of life. Without proper food, clothing, shelter, or medical care, many Black babies didn’t make it through the winter months. A large percentage of their parents contracted tuberculosis at a rate more than four times that of Whites.

A city that could host millions of tourists refused to provide facilities for combating tuberculosis among its Black population. To openly admit to such a problem would have been bad publicity for the tourist economy, and Atlantic City would have none of that.

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