Palisades Park

by Alan Brennert

  “Oh, you missed all the excitement,” Toni told him. “A young Negro woman tried to get into the pool but they wouldn’t let her in. So this group is protesting until the park agrees to let colored people into the pool.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous.”

  She nodded. “I know, I think it’s terrible that they—”

  “The whole idea’s ridiculous,” Slim repeated. “Everybody knows coloreds don’t have the same standards of cleanliness we do.”

  Toni felt a chill in the eighty-degree heat. Was he kidding her? She looked into his eyes—they were the same eyes she had spent hours gazing into dreamily, but now they seemed suddenly opaque to her.

  Her reply to this pronouncement was a feeble, “What?”

  “I’ve got a cousin goes to high school in East Orange,” Slim said, “and they’ve got the right idea. They only allow coloreds to swim in the pool on Fridays, so over the weekend they can clean it and change all the water.”

  Toni managed to eke out a protest: “But this girl, Melba … she’s a very pretty, very clean-cut girl…”

  “Well, I guess some of them are,” Slim allowed, “but most of ’em come from farms in the South and they don’t know squat about hygiene. How do you know they won’t just shit and pee in the water, right next to you?”

  No, Toni thought, this couldn’t be happening, these words couldn’t be coming from this boy she adored.

  “My dad says if the races aren’t kept separate,” Slim went on, “the next thing you know, you’ll have coloreds living right next door to you.”

  “I—I wouldn’t mind having Melba live next door to me,” Toni said, though her voice quavered as she said it.

  Slim looked uneasy. “Look, honey, I’m sure she’s nice, for a colored girl, but…” He leaned forward, his brow knitting in concern, lowering his voice a notch: “Watch what you say, Toni, okay? You don’t want people thinking you’re some kind of nigger lover, do you?”

  Stunned and sickened, Toni stared desperately into his eyes, hoping they would twinkle with amusement and let her know this was all a joke. But no—his eyes were dead serious. He was waiting for her to say something, she knew what he wanted her to say, so she said—albeit weakly:

  “No … no, of course not.” The words burned in her throat, but she hated even more the guilty blossom of gladness she felt when Slim smiled in relief. That smile could make her forgive anything. Or it used to.

  “All of this will … blow over, I’m sure,” she said, then quickly changed the subject: “So, how were the Poconos?”

  He began telling her about his vacation, but though she nodded and responded with all the right words in all the right places, at the end of lunch Toni could not recall a single thing he had said after the words nigger lover.

  His kiss goodbye was too sweet to enjoy without guilt.

  She went back to the pool and concentrated on her work, eyes tracking back and forth across her zone of responsibility, trying to ignore the distant, angry consonance from the street:

  “Don’t get cool at Palisades Pool…”

  After work she said nothing about any of this to either Eddie or Jack, instead going straight to her room, where she quietly cried herself to sleep. Cried for the boy she thought she knew, the boy she thought she loved. No, worse, the boy she still loved—but how could she, after what he’d said? And loving a boy who felt that way—what did that make her?

  * * *

  That week, word spread throughout Palisades that Melba Valle and others had filed suit in district court against the Rosenthals’ Rosecliff Realty Company for denying her admission to the pool and bathhouse “because of her race and color.” They were seeking damages in the amount of $270,000. By Sunday, the battle lines had hardened on the Rosenthals’ side as well.

  Ticket sellers at the pool were braced for another demonstration, but did not recognize anyone waiting in line that morning as any CORE members who had previously protested. So when a small party of white men and women purchased tickets, they were routinely admitted.

  But soon after, a group of Negroes appeared, tried to buy tickets, and were given the standard, “I’m sorry, you have to be a member of the Sun and Surf Club. You can apply for membership at the administration building.”

  “Well, my friends there just purchased tickets,” one of the Negro men said, nodding to the whites who had just been admitted to the pool. “They weren’t members either, but you let them in.”

  Security guards were hastily summoned.

  Toni watched anxiously from her lifeguard station as the whites returned to the ticket booth to “stand in” with their black compatriots, and park guards arrived shortly thereafter.

  Suddenly, like a storm sweeping in on a previously sunny day, the guards charged at CORE’s standing line. The mildest action they took was to violently push the demonstrators out of line. Other guards, more enthusiastically, hauled off and slugged protestors. One CORE member, a white man, was shoved face-first onto the concrete pavement, a spray of blood marking the place where he fell. When the protestors—refusing to fight back in kind—got up and simply tried to return to the ticket window, they were again punched and shoved with what seemed like personal animosity.

  “Stop it!” Toni cried out, abandoning her station and running up to the gate. “Stop hitting them!”

  Eddie, hearing the sounds of violence, jumped the counter of his stand and hurried toward the pool.

  Irving Rosenthal arrived in the company of a squad of police officers from Fort Lee under the command of Police Chief Fred Stengel. But he and his men just stood by as the guards—many of them moonlighting police officers themselves—attacked the protestors with relish.

  Rosenthal told Chief Stengel, “Get these people out of my park.”

  Stengel nodded and gave the word to his men.

  If the guards had been zealous in executing their duties, the police were even more so. They seized the protestors, slugging them repeatedly as if they were punching bags—which, since the nonviolent demonstrators would not fight back, they effectively were. When one man fell, the police kicked viciously at him. One Negro man was blackjacked from behind.

  This shocked even Irving Rosenthal, who told Stengel, “Now wait a minute—tell your men to take it easy—”

  Chief Stengel snapped back, “We’re handling this.”

  By now a number of white pool patrons had joined Toni at the park gate, sharing her horror at the scene playing out in front of them:

  “Hey! There’s no call for that!”

  “Leave ’em alone!”

  But Stengel’s men continued to beat at the demonstrators, then dragged them roughly away from the pool area.

  Eddie came up behind Rosenthal and said, “I tried to tell you, Irving.”

  When all the demonstrators were finally rounded up, Chief Stengel generously offered them a little advice:

  “Negroes are not allowed in this pool. No Negro will ever be admitted to this pool. They are allowed in the park—if they behave themselves.”

  Then he had them dragged off and herded onto an empty bus. Stengel told the bus driver, “Edgewater Ferry Terminal.”

  A protestor smiled through bruised lips: “See you next week, Chief.”

  Clearly, it was going to be a long summer.

  When Rosenthal tried to scurry back to his office, Eddie blocked his path. “Where the hell are we, Irving? Biloxi?”

  “Things got a little out of hand. It won’t happen again.”

  “I won’t have anything to do with a place that continues to allow this.”

  Irving pegged him appraisingly. “That’s up to you, Eddie. Let’s see, if memory serves, you have a three-year lease at $10,250 a season. If you want to break that lease, just write me a check for $30,750 and we’ll call it square.”

  He brushed past Eddie, who had no response—and nowhere near enough money, of course, to break the lease.

  Eddie went over to the pool to see if Toni was all right.
She looked shaken and angry but said, “I’ll be okay.”

  “You don’t look okay.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “I got put in my place by Uncle Irving. Tell you at home.”

  They arrived in Edgewater exhausted but too keyed-up to sleep—except for Jack, who hadn’t seen the worst of the violence and went straight to bed—so Eddie put on a pot of coffee. “If you’re old enough to see what you saw today,” he told Toni, “you’re old enough for a cup of joe.”

  “The police and the guards just kept hitting and hitting them and the protestors wouldn’t fight back—why not?”

  “It’s what Mahatma Gandhi did in India. Passive resistance, I think it’s called. Not sure I’d be able to turn the other cheek like that.”

  “I wanted to run out there and help them,” she said. “But I didn’t.”

  “And a good thing, too—you saw how those cops were laying into them, you could’ve been seriously injured. Besides, you’ve got a job.”

  “It’s—not just the job.” Her voice broke along with her heart as she told him about her lunch with Slim. Eddie winced as he listened, then as her words turned to sobs he went and held her. “Ssh. It’s okay, honey…”

  “He’ll hate me if I take their side. And not only will I lose Slim, but my job too. I love that pool. I love being a lifeguard there. It’s not fair.”

  Eddie nodded. “I know what you mean. I’ve loved Palisades ever since I was a kid. I’ve loved working there all these years. But I don’t much love it right at this moment.”

  “So what do I do if it happens again next Sunday?”

  Her father’s answer surprised her.

  “Nothing,” Eddie said firmly. “Not if there’s a chance you’ll get hurt. And judging by what I saw today, I’d say there’s a helluva good chance.”

  “But how can I just—”

  “I’ve never run from a fight in my life,” Eddie said, hating this, “but I can’t watch you get beaten up by goons, and I won’t go bankrupt getting out of Rosenthal’s lease—how would I pay the rent here? You and Jack are all I’ve got—I won’t lose you a home like I lost you your mother.”

  The guilt and shame in his voice nearly brought tears to Toni’s eyes.

  “So I’m supposed to just … look the other way?”

  Eddie suggested, “Call in sick on Sunday. And the Sunday after that, and the one after that. Bunty will cover for you.”

  “I can’t do that. I’d feel like a coward.” She sighed, frowned. “Everything about this is shitty.”

  “Watch your language. And yes, it is.”

  * * *

  On Saturday Toni reluctantly told Bunty she would not be coming in the next day, and Bunty gave her a sympathetic look and said, “I understand, toots. I wish to hell I didn’t have to come in.”

  But she slept badly that night, waking with the same feeling she’d had after failing to swim across the Hudson. So when Eddie started up the car that morning, he was startled when the rear passenger door opened and Toni slid in beside Jack. “I thought you were staying home sick,” Jack said.

  “Do I look sick?”

  Eddie briefly considered trying to talk her out of it, but knew it was pointless—she could be just as stubborn as her mother.

  Once the pool opened, Toni watched nervously as a squadron of park guards and Fort Lee police—overseen by Chief Stengel and Irving Rosenthal—stood by as seven CORE members began a stand-in at the ticket window. But there was barely enough time for them to chant their now-familiar refrain before guards and police swooped in and attacked.

  Toni looked to Bunty, who nodded his okay, and she ran to the gate.

  A Fort Lee police officer grabbed one white man, pinning his arms behind his back while a fat security guard repeatedly punched him in the face, then in his side. The man’s ribs snapped with a sound like walnut shells being cracked open. Another police officer inflicted similar punches on several other demonstrators, who as usual refused to fight back.

  Eddie arrived on the scene in time to see the protestors being arrested, handcuffed, and dragged away like sacks of cement.

  When Toni saw blackjacks being whipped out of policemen’s pockets, she couldn’t take any more. She pushed through the pool gate and made her way through the brutal melee, toward the police lines.

  Eddie saw the fury in her face—it was equal to what he was feeling—and steeled himself to do whatever was necessary to protect her.

  Wordlessly, Toni walked right up to Irving Rosenthal, tore off her Palisades ID badge, and hurled it in his face. He looked stunned.

  Luckily he didn’t notice her hand trembling as she did it.

  Toni turned on her heel, got in line at the ticket window, and began chanting: “Don’t get cool at the Palisades pool! Get your relaxation where there’s no discrimination! Don’t get cool at the Palisades—”

  Stengel started toward her, but Rosenthal stopped him: “No, you idiot, leave her alone! Can you imagine what that would look like in the press—arresting one of our own lifeguards for picketing us?”

  Eddie breathed a sigh of relief, at least for the moment.

  One by one, Stengel’s men dragged the beaten CORE members away, leaving Toni alone and chanting.

  Finally, Irving Rosenthal went up to her and said, “Miss Stopka—”

  She kept chanting, “Don’t get cool at Palisades Pool! Get your—”

  “Miss Stopka!” This startled her into silence, and he continued: “I understand your feelings. You got caught up in the emotions of the moment. Here, take your badge—and don’t do this again.”

  He held out her employee badge, but Toni made no move to take it.

  “I’ll see you next Sunday,” she said, and brushed past him.

  Eddie couldn’t help but give his daughter an admiring smile as she approached him. She smiled back and said, “Sorry.”

  “Ah, you’ve always been a troublemaker,” he said with muted pride. “Take the bus home. I’ll see you after we close.” He caught Irving Rosenthal giving him the eye and added, “Who knows, maybe sooner.”

  Once Toni had left, Rosenthal came up to Eddie, a chill in his voice. “Eddie—tell your daughter that she is not picketing this park again.”

  “I can’t do that, Irving. If you want to break my lease, go ahead.”

  “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? No three years’ rent to pay. I’m almost tempted. But if I do…” He looked Eddie straight in the eye. “I have a feeling I’ll be seeing you on the picket line next Sunday, too.”

  Eddie shrugged. “You never know about these things.”

  If there was one thing Irving Rosenthal understood, it was the power of publicity—good or bad—as he now seemed to be computing the public relations calculus of father and daughter ex-employees picketing the park.

  He finally shook his head in exasperation. “God help me, Stopka. Your whole family is meshugga, isn’t it?”

  “No, sir. Jack’s fairly sane.”

  “I stand corrected. Now get the hell back to work.”

  * * *

  Up till now, the Rosenthals’ influence had kept accounts of the CORE demonstrations out of the local newspapers (only The New York Times had reported on the previous protests). But this Sunday’s incident had been big enough, with eleven arrests, that the Bergen Evening Record finally had to print something about it. But when she saw the front-page story in the paper, Toni was incensed:

  “Listen to this!” She was sitting at the kitchen table when Eddie and Jack came home that night. “‘Patrolman Arthur Bruns of Fort Lee and Special Patrolman Chester Zaneski of Cliffside Park were standing near the swimming pool in the amusement park when the trouble started. The five men, they said, began pushing them around. Bruns said he thought it was a joke at first until he felt his uniform being ripped…’”

  “So that’s what the whole thing was all about,” Jack said dryly. “Torn apparel. You know how picky cops can be about their uniforms.”


  “They make out like this ‘rumpus’ was all the demonstrators’ fault! And don’t even mention why they were there until the end of the story.”

  “The Rosenthals have a lot of clout in this area. You saw the way the police kowtow to him,” Eddie said. He sat down beside his daughter, his tone sober: “Toni, you got lucky. Irving didn’t want a picture in the papers of you in your lifeguard’s uniform being hauled to the pokey. But if you go on that picket line next Sunday, what happened to those poor bastards from CORE may happen to you … and so help me, if one of those goose-stepping cops lays a hand on you, I’ll split his goddamned head open like a melon.”

  Jack spoke up: “She’s only standing up for what you always told us, Dad. People are people.”

  Toni, surprised, said, “Thank you, Jack.”

  “You’re welcome,” Jack said grudgingly.

  Eddie had never been prouder of her—or more frustrated with her, either.

  “I’ll ask Mr. Robinson if I can picket at the main gate,” Toni told her father, “so you won’t be tempted to split any melons.”

  Eddie wasn’t happy at her decision, but realized it was her decision. God knows at her age he had already left home and done even more reckless things.

  The next morning, after Eddie and Jack left for work, Toni was at loose ends—her summers had always revolved around Palisades. Worse, from Undercliff Avenue she could hear the distant rattle and creak of the roller coaster as the cars ascended, then the falsetto shrieks of passengers as they plunged earthward. This sound, oddly, used to lull her to sleep at night with the comforting proximity of a place she loved; but now the scales of the music it made sounded remote, lost, forbidden. For the first time she began to wonder what would happen if the desegregation didn’t succeed—could she ever show her face at Palisades again? Would she ever want to?

  She jumped on her bike and rode as far north as she could, up Henry Hudson Drive and past Hazard’s Dock, pedaling under the western tower of the bridge before finally stopping at the old Alpine Beach, its sand long ago stripped away by the wind. For several hours she shared the waterfront with a flock of gulls pecking the ground for food, calming herself by watching the Hudson, only a light wind riffling its surface today.