The Retreats of Reconstruction: Race, Leisure, and the Politics of Segregation at the New Jersey Shore, 1865–1920 by David E. Goldberg (review)

Few historians of nineteenth-century America will be surprised that the resorts of the New Jersey shore were racially segregated from the late nineteenth century until well into the twentieth. Historians have long known that racial discrimination of various sorts followed in the wake of northern emancipation, and yet as David Goldberg points out in the introduction to his illuminating Retreats of Reconstruction, we know far less than we should about how northern segregation actually worked. This book, then, serves as a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on northern race relations. While northern racism, the commitment of white northerners to the value of their “whiteness,” was surely critical, Goldfield argues that “whiteness alone did not make segregation at the Jersey shore” (2). According to Goldfield, conflicting ideas about political economy, in particular notions of the rights to be afforded consumers, played an essential role in determining the practices of segregation in this particular time and place.

The resorts of the Jersey shore had been somewhat exclusive in the antebellum decades, but around the middle of the nineteenth century business leaders sought to appeal to a broader middle-class public. The result was what many observers saw as a unique mixture of social classes. “The rich banker does not look down upon the shop boy he meets,” insisted one Atlantic City booster, and “the boy thinks himself equally as good as the banker” (24). Of course, this social mixture presented opportunities for African Americans as well as for whites. Black residents of northern cities had often found seasonal work at the Jersey shore. In their time off, they sought to take advantage of the leisure opportunities offered by the shore. Many of the white patrons of these booming shore towns were uncomfortable with the prospect of taking their leisure alongside black patrons, and yet this discomfort did not automatically yield segregation. While businessmen were sensitive to the desire of white patrons to avoid sharing their leisure with African Americans, those businessmen were also reluctant to resort to out-and-out segregation. They recognized that such an effort would likely provoke a heated response from African Americans, and so in order to avoid the sort of public black reaction that would in turn disturb potential white patrons, white business leaders instead turned to a series of half measures. For example, African Americans were encouraged to enjoy the beach and boardwalk at later hours than white patrons, or after the white season had ended at the end of August.

Eventually, African Americans would reject these half measures and would come to make their argument for access to leisure facilities not as a means of promoting social equality, but rather based on their rights as consumers. Black protest mobilized this claim in order to desegregate the shore, and yet ultimately there were significant limitations to this strategy. White business owners and political leaders developed their own political economy of segregation. In response to the disruptive protests of black consumers, they insisted that segregation was a necessary evil that protected property owners and the free enterprise system itself. Black entrepreneurs responded to this successful segregation of the Jersey shore by building a separate black leisure industry, redirecting black civil disobedience into consumption. Not only did these black business owners provide options for black consumers, but some actually petitioned for legal segregation of beaches as a means of “shield[ing] black patrons from public ridicule, as well as to ensure the economic solvency of these early black businesses” (87). Black entrepreneurs, however, remained dependent on the support of white political leaders, for example, for protection from selective police crackdowns on vice or in order to improve black neighborhoods. Essentially, Goldberg argues, black and white business leaders became cocreators of the political economy of segregation. “Together they...