"Integrated Leisure in Segregated Cities: Amusement Parks and Racial Conflict in the Post-War ...

12 Pages·2006·0.13 MB·English

by  Erik Seeman

"Integrated Leisure in Segregated Cities: Amusement Parks and Racial Conflict in
the Post-War North"

Victoria W. Wolcott
University of Rochester
Presented at the
Urban History Association
October, 2004

African-American and urban historians are rethinking the Civil Rights
movement in vital ways. They are challenging a plethora of assumptions by bringing
together studies of postwar cities and black activism in the North, with more traditional
movement scholarship based in the South. By expanding regional and chronological
boundaries scholars have identified what Nikhil Pal Singh calls the “long civil rights
era.”1 This new periodization begins with growing militancy in the 1930s, particularly
the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaigns, and continues through the election
of African-American mayors and affirmative action policies that were a direct
outgrowth of the Black Power movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This era
coincided with the major urban renewal and public housing projects that reshaped
American cities, North and South, and the parallel movement of middle-class whites
into nearby suburbs. Bringing these two narratives together has begun to generate a
more complex picture of postwar America.2 I want to add to this picture by looking

1 Nikhil Pal Singh, Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard UP,
2004), 6.
2 In his article, "Affirmative Action from Below: Civil Rights, the Building Trades, and the Politics of Racial
Equality in the Urban North, 1945-1969," Journal of American History (June 2004) 145-73, Thomas Sugrue, for
example, has demonstrated how the urban labor movement was shaped by the black freedom struggle. The most
explicit discussion of this historiographical trend can be found in Robert Self, American Babylon: Race and the
Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). See also Jeanne F. Theoharis and
Komozi Woodard, eds. Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940-1980 (New York:
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beyond housing and labor, the two most fully explored areas of postwar urban history,
to examine role of leisure in the black freedom struggle and American urban life.
Leisure brings together several key themes in both African-American and urban
history. Struggles over leisure were central to the political activity of African
Americans throughout the twentieth century (and before) and defined segregation's
limits. Since the establishment of Jim Crow, African Americans have targeted the
integration of leisure spaces as a key goal of the black freedom struggle while many
white Americans have sought to maintain white-only recreation. Indeed, Plessy v.
Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court decision that legalized segregation, emerged from
white resentment of elite Louisiana blacks who regularly traveled by train from New
Orleans to Gulf Coast resorts.3 In addition to institutionalized responses to segregated
leisure, from the establishment of “respectable” leisure for black migrants by the Urban
League to the NAACP law suits challenging segregated leisure, there have been untold
quotidian responses to leisure segregation by African Americans. The centrality of
segregated leisure to urban race relations is clear when one considers the spark that
began most twentieth-century race riots: the young African-American boy who swam
on a segregated Chicago beach in 1919, the black picnickers on Belle Isle in Detroit in
1943, the police arrests of participants in a Rochester street party in 1964, and the raid of
a blind pig in Detroit in 1967.

Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); and Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New
York City (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).
3 Mark S. Foster, “In the Face of ‘Jim Crow’: Prosperous Blacks and Vacations, Travel and Outdoor Leisure, 1890-
1945,” The Journal of Negro History 84, 2 (Spring 1999): 130-149.
2
These examples of urban riots--and there are many more--demonstrate the
contested nature of leisure in American cities. Because leisure, particularly commercial
leisure, takes up physical space in congested cities it often becomes a locus of conflict.
White and black urban dwellers struggle over who “owns” a particular beach, park, or
dance hall on a daily basis. When cities go through major demographic and spatial
shifts tension over leisure spaces become even more heightened. Postwar America
experienced both increasingly segregated cities, as a result of urban renewal, public
housing and suburbanization, and increasingly integrated leisure, as a result of civil
rights activity and African American urban migration. This potent combination
heightened the racial tension over coveted recreational facilities. It is not surprising,
then, that traditional urban amusement parks became battlegrounds where city
dwellers staged contests over commercial recreation and urban space. Civil rights
activists and black consumers demanded access to these parks, which were in turn
zealously defended by white urban youth. In the end racial conflict and the spatial
transformation of cities closed most urban amusement parks, suggesting the limitations
of integration.
As well as reflecting dramatic urban transformations, studying leisure places
consumerism in the center of Civil Rights activism. As Lizabeth Cohen has recently
argued, “Mass consumption begot a mass civil rights movement.”4 The integration of

4 Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 190. See also Andrew Hurley, Diners, Bowling Alleys and Trailer Parks: Chasing the
American Dream in the Postwar Consumer Culture (NY: Basic Books, 2001); and Robert E. Weems, Jr.
Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century (NY: New York University
Press, 1998).
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public accommodations by grassroots activists challenged the racialized patterns of
American consumption and the physical segregation of urban landscapes. Indeed, an
individual’s ability to "consume" leisure was bounded by race in a way similar to his or
her ability to "consume" housing. Thus, for civil rights activists the language of
consumption was easy shorthand to assert a set of rights to the American political and
economic marketplace. This assertion could also span the political spectrum within the
African-American community from the economic nationalism of the Nation of Islam to
calls for integration from the NAACP. But these demands often confronted the anger of
white consumers who also had a sense of their “right” to consume white-only leisure in
a private marketplace. These struggles over consumption of leisure shaped the spatial
organization of American cities as well as the trajectory of the black freedom
movement. Examining one area of leisure, the urban amusement park, provides a
window into this dynamic.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s civil rights organizations, particularly local
branches of the NAACP and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), began to target
northern urban amusement parks that excluded black consumers. In some cities this
segregation was blatant, as in Cincinnati where the owners of Coney Island allowed no
African Americans into the park. In other cities, such as Detroit, African Americans
could only visit parks such as Boblo Island only on designated days, usually Mondays.
There were very few northern parks that allowed blacks free access to swimming pools,
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ballrooms, and roller rinks where white fears of interracial contact were heightened by
the close proximity of people at play.5
At the same time that northern civil rights struggles intensified, thousands of
African Americans migrated to East coast, Midwest, and Western cities. These new
black consumers put pressure on white owners of amusement parks to open their gates
to African Americans. Yet scholars have only recently begun to examine the
relationship between increased pressure to integrate northern public accommodations
and the dynamics of the Second Great Migration. In contrast the First Great Migration
of the 1910s and 1920s has been well documented by historians who have demonstrated
the impact that black migrants had on the social, political, and economic climate of
northern cities. Scholars of postwar America, however, don’t have a comparable
literature to turn to when analyzing the Second Great Migration. Yet these migrants
were part of a larger challenge to segregated leisure in northern cities as they sought to
exercise their rights as consumers and urban citizens. In many parks, such as Crystal
Beach near Buffalo, the arrival of large numbers of African-American migrants, rather
than organized civil rights protests, challenged de facto segregation and led to
increased racial violence.
By the mid-1950s racial mixing in spaces of leisure had become a hot topic in the
media, but largely under the rubric of juvenile delinquency and youth culture, rather
than civil rights. Nevertheless, southern segregationists used rioting in newly

5 When Joseph Hall, director of the Cincinnati Urban League, contacted directors in other cities to see if their local
amusement parks were segregated he discovered that the dance halls, roller rinks, and swimming pools in
amusement parks in Pittsburgh, Portland, Cleveland, Denver, Grand Rapids, Omaha and Akron were all segregated.
Letters, Box 36, Folder 5, Cincinnati Urban League Papers, Cincinnati Historical Library.
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integrated northern amusement parks to denounce social change. After the 1956 race
riot in Crystal Beach, for example, The Memphis Commercial Appeal ran an editorial
stating: “When the Supreme Court began substituting sociological decisions for law,
we suggested that if trouble resulted it would start more quickly elsewhere than in the
South.” The editors were clearly pleased to have been proven right. “The Buffalo area
clashes should make all of us in the South more determined than ever to let orderly
processes prevail.”6 Disrupting these “orderly processes” were activists who targeted
amusement parks and successfully integrated several, including Palisades Park in New
Jersey and Coney Island in Cincinnati in the late 1940s and early 1950s.7 When urban
amusement parks opened their gates to African Americans in the wake of these
campaigns, racial conflict increased as white consumers protected their terrain from the
incursion of blacks. These small-scale riots, similar to the housing riots of the same
period, reflected the importance placed on leisure by whites and blacks alike.
Nearly every newly integrated park experienced some level of rioting in the
1950s and 1960s. One particularly revealing example took place in Glen Echo, a
suburban park outside of Washington D.C. in Montgomery County, Maryland. In the
summer of 1960 students from Howard University formed the Metropolitan Area Non-

6 “Trouble Came Elsewhere,” The Memphis Commercial Appeal, 1 June 1956, p.6.
7 August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement: 1942-1968 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1973), 58-59. On Palisades Park see Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 82-84. On Coney Island
see Nina Mjagkij, "Behind the Scenes: The Cincinnati Urban League, 1948-63," in Henry Louis Taylor, Jr., ed.
Race and the City: Work, Community, and Protest in Cincinnati, 1820-1970 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1993), 280-94.
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Violent Action group and picketed the white-only park.8 The protest began when a
group of African-American students refused to disembark from the park's carousel
ride.9 When a security guard asked Laurence Henry, a divinity student from Howard
who sat astride a wooden gray rabbit, "What race do you belong to?" He replied, "I
belong to the human race," and was promptly arrested. Bowing to pressure from
activists, park managers opened Glen Echo in 1961 on a "non-segregated basis."
African-American customers, however, found a newly built gate "for more effective
control of persons entering and leaving the park" and a newly instituted admission
charge.10 Five years later a riot by African-American teens was widely blamed on the
park's integration.
On the Monday following Easter in 1966 large numbers of African-American
teenagers boarded buses and headed to Glen Echo. Alarmed by the crowds and fearing
vandalism (in their words) park operators shut down their rides early, around 6PM.
The youths had purchased ride tickets that they couldn't use and were understandably
frustrated—here is an example of their consumer rights being violated. At this point
the bus company decided to suspend service back to the city, because they could not be
guaranteed police protection. Several hundred teenagers had to walk back many miles
to their urban homes. During this walk they began to throw bottles and stones,

8 Telegram, undated, NAACP Papers, Series III, Box A110, Folder, "Discrimination: Parks and Playgrounds, 1956-
65," Library of Congress; "Negro Picketing Leader is Ousted by Followers," Washington Post, 21 August 1960;
"Glen Echo Park Holds Steadfastly to Jim Crow," Washington Afro-American (28 May 1957).
9 "Five Arrested in Glen Echo Sitdown," The Washington Post, 1 July 1960, p.A1; Brigid Schulte, "Protest on a
Sculpted Horse," Washington Post, 29 June 2004, B1.
10 "Glen Echo Hints Admission Fee," The Washington Post, 18 March 1961, C1. See also, Brigid Schulte, "Protest
on a Sculpted Horse," Washington Post, 29 June 2004, B1; and "Glen Park Opens on Desegregated Basis," The
Washington Post, 1 April 1961, D2.
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frightening nearby residents. Nevertheless, a citizens report later noted, "No instances
were reported where violence was directed at the person of any fellow walker,
policeman, passing motorist or homeowner."11 The local white press reported the
incident as a riot, quoting a Montgomery County police officer describing the black
teenagers as "a bunch of savages." That same officer was quick to point out that there
were "no racial overtones" in the rioting, an opinion not shared by the local civil rights
community.12 Bus service to the park was terminated permanently after the riot and by
1968 the park was closed for business.13
The Easter riot at Glen Echo Park illustrates a pattern that can be seen
throughout the country: integration followed by racial conflict. Indeed just a few
weeks following the riot a similar incident occurred in Coney Island, New York, when
4,000 teenagers, most black and Latino, engaged in a day-long battle with police.14
Integration through formal social protests and consumer demands in the wake of the
Second Great Migration opened segregated parks to African Americans in both the
North and South. Almost immediately park managers, white customers, and the media
complained of widespread vandalism and gang activity. In response some parks, like
Glen Echo and Crystal Beach, cut off public transportation, isolating parks from urban
residents without access to cars or the ability to lease buses. By the late 1960s many

11 "Citizens' Group Reports on Easter Monday Outbreak," 5 May 1966, New York Times, p.41.
12 "Thousands of Teen-Agers Riot in a Park Outside the Capital," New York Times, 12 April 1966, p.29. See also
"Youth Role Is Asked in Park Policy," The Washington Post, 19 April 1966, p.B4; "Youth Workers Call Riot
Spontaneous," The Washington Post, 14 April 1966, p.D1; and "D.C. Buses Pulled Off During Riot," The
Washington Post, 19 April 1966, p.A1.
13 Brooks McNamara, "Come on Over: The Rise and Fall of the American Amusement Park," p.86. Al Griffin,
‘Step Right Up Folks!’ (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1974), 21-2.
14 Sharon Zukin, "From Coney Island to Las Vegas in the Urban Imaginary: Discursive Practices of Growth and
Decline," Urban Affairs Review 33, 5 (May 1998): 637.
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integrated parks simply shut down (Palisades Park in New Jersey, Riverview Park in
Chicago, Coney Island in Cincinnati, Euclid Beach in Ohio).15 Other parks, such as
Crystal Beach and Glen Echo Park, began to charge admission at the gate, rather than
charging for individual rides. In doing so they transformed the amusement park from a
public space that could be entered at will to a private space of consumerism.
The integration of urban amusement parks reflected the success of civil rights
activism after World War II; but the racial conflict and decline of the parks reflected
broader changes in American cities. These cities were experiencing ethnic and racial
succession and changing housing patterns. The “instability” of city neighborhoods was
thus reflected in the “instability” of urban leisure. White defenders of home ownership
and property values also sought to defend their racialized leisure spaces. Thus,
perceived and real incidents of delinquency and vandalism by African Americans in
parks that had been extensions of white-only neighborhoods touched off the same kind
of racial conflict documented by historians of housing and employment. Although
these parks constituted public space, before general admission was charged, white
consumers perceived them as a refuge from the city, much as they perceived their
private homes. When this public space was "threatened" by racial integration one
response was privatization, a trend lamented by many commentators on urban life.16 In

15 Judith A. Adams, The American Amusement Park Industry: A History of Technology and Thrills (Boston:
Twayne Publishers, 1991). See also Al Griffin, Step Right Up, Folks! (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1974); Gary
Kyriazi, The Great American Amusement Parks (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1976); and Dale Samuelson, The
American Amusement Park (St. Paul Minn: MBI Publishing, 2001).
16 See, for example, Don Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York:
Guilford Press, 2003), Michael Sorkin, editor, Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of
Public Space (NY: Hill and Wang, 1992), and Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disneyworld
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)
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the late 1950s entrepreneurs, most notably Walt Disney, disconnected amusement parks
from cities altogether by developing theme parks marketed to a white suburban middle
class with enough disposable income to escape the city's dangers. “The theme park,"
argues Michael Sorkin, "presents its happy regulated vision of pleasure—all those
artfully hoodwinking forms—as a substitute for the democratic public realm, and it
does so appealingly by stripping troubled urbanity of its sting, of the presence of the
poor, of crime, of dirt, of work."17
In the eyes of many white city dwellers African-American consumers embodied
the characteristics of Sorkin's troubled urbanity. Problems of vandalism and
delinquency in urban amusement parks following integration became part of a larger
national image of cities in distress. But the history of urban amusement parks
demonstrates the extent to which consumers perceive and use leisure differently. White
suburbanites continue to wax nostalgic about urban amusement parks, viewing them as
symbols of the melting pot and memories of halcyon days. Recollections of African
Americans growing up in the Jim Crow era, in contrast, are replete with the closed gates
of leisure. Eleanor Jordan, who grew up in Louisville, Kentucky during the 1950s
remembered:
Whenever we passed that amusement park . . . you see the lights,
the big Ferris wheel that had green lights on it. And we would
always ask the same question: 'Can we go?"
And my mother and father would almost simultaneously say,

17 Sorkin, Variations on a Theme Park, p.xv. Works on Disneyland include Eric Avila, Popular Culture in the Age
of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (University of California Press, 2004), 106-44;
Leonard Mosely, Disney’s World (New York: Stein and Day, 1985); Steven Watts, The Magic Kingdom: Walt
Disney and the American Way of Life (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997); and Margaret J. King, "Disneyland and
Walt Disney World: Traditional Values in Futuristic Form, " Journal of Popular Culture 15 (1981): 116-40.
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