Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City

by Nelson Johnson

  From the success with the Luray, White and his sons purchased a nearby property used for retreats by the Academy of the Sacred Heart. In 1902, the Whites erected the Marlborough House. A short time later, the Luray was destroyed by fire. Rather than rebuild, White and his sons acquired additional property near the Marlborough and constructed the Blenheim Hotel. It was one of the first fireproof hotels in Atlantic City and the first hotel with a private bath for every room, something unheard of in the hotel industry. Another first of the Blenheim was that it was constructed of reinforced concrete. It was a new process and its inventor, Thomas Edison, was on hand to supervise the construction.

  The Whites’ hotels, together with several other large hotels that followed them, created a magical aura along the Boardwalk. They were magnificent sand castles that captured the public’s attention and enhanced Atlantic City’s reputation. The Marlborough, named after the home of the Prince of Wales, was built in the Queen Anne style of architecture. The Blenheim, named after the Blenheim Castle, home of the Duke of Marlborough, was designed in a Spanish-Moorish architecture. While most of Atlantic City’s visitors could never afford to stay at the Marlborough-Blenheim, the Whites’ properties set a tone of elegance adding to the illusion of Atlantic City and its Boardwalk.

  Through the leadership of hoteliers such as Benjamin Brown, Charles McGlade, and the Whites, Atlantic City’s hospitality industry gained a reputation as a destination where the vacationer could count on being treated well. They set the standard for the entire hospitality industry, including the smaller hotels and boardinghouses. Regardless of their financial means, upon arrival in Atlantic City, guests knew they would be fussed over. But the pampering of hotel guests—especially before modern conveniences—was labor intensive. The resort’s hotel industry couldn’t function without large numbers of unskilled workers. Cooks, waiters, chambermaids, dishwashers, bellboys, and janitors were in constant demand. These jobs were filled almost entirely by freed slaves and their descendants who had migrated north following the Civil War. These African-Americans were essential to Atlantic City’s surge to prominence as a destination for vacationers. While the money to build a national resort came primarily from Philadelphia and New York investors, the muscle and sweat needed to keep things going was furnished by Black workers, lured north in hope of a better life.

  3

  A Plantation by the Sea

  “Elegant” was a word often used to describe the Windsor Hotel. In the late 1800s, it was one of Atlantic City’s most talked about places. Originally built in 1884 as a small boardinghouse called the Mineola, it was combined with the Berkely Hotel several years later under the name “the Windsor.” The Windsor was a tony place. A small hotel, noted for its service, it had the city’s first French-style courtyard and was a center of social life year-round.

  Until the summer of 1893, everyone at the Windsor understood their place in resort society. That June saw the first effort by hotel workers to stage a strike. It failed miserably.

  Unhappy with the meal he had been given during break time, a Black waiter in the Windsor’s dining room placed an order with the kitchen for himself. When the White headwaiter learned that the meal was for one of his Black staff, the meal was canceled. The workers were told that if they wanted to eat, they could do so in the Black-only help’s dining area, which was off to one side in the kitchen. At the next dinner break, the food was inedible. The waiters refused their meals and politely advised the headwaiter they would strike if they didn’t receive better food. The headwaiter was unfazed by the threat. He… cooly told them to strike out for another job and summoned all the chambermaids attired in their knobby white caps and aprons to wait at supper and the next morning he had a new force of colored waiters.

  Typical of the era, the name of the waiter who led the strike remains unknown. To White society, African-Americans, generally, were anonymous. As for the meal that prompted a strike by workers accustomed to third-rate treatment, one can only imagine how putrid it was. White hoteliers viewed Blacks as little more than beasts of burden. They were brought to town in much the same way Northern farmers recruited migrant farm hands. Any worker who questioned a hotel’s rules was replaced.

  As Cape May had done years earlier, Atlantic City’s hotels reached out to the Upper South for domestic servants. In a short time, the resort became a mecca for Black men and women as hotel workers. Between the years 1870 and 1915, thousands of Blacks left their homes in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina and ventured to Atlantic City in search of opportunity. By 1915, African-Americans accounted for more than 27 percent of the resort’s population, a percentage more than five times that of any other northern city. At the same time, they comprised 95 percent of the hotel workforce. And with the treatment they received, Atlantic City’s hotel industry was akin to a plantation.

  Atlantic City’s evolution into a plantation by the sea is a product of its unique status in the era in which it was growing from a beach village to a major resort. For nearly three generations after the Civil War, as America was shifting from an agricultural-based economy to a manufacturing economy, racial prejudice excluded Blacks from industrial employment. During the years between the American Civil War and World War II, the only occupations realistically available to Black Americans were either as a farm laborer or domestic worker. Domestic work was thought to be peculiarly “Negro work,” with the attitude of most Whites being, “Negroes are servants; servants are Negroes.”

  African-American history is filled with many cruel ironies. Following the Civil War, thousands of skilled Black tradesmen were forced to abandon finely honed skills to become servants. During slavery, many Blacks worked at crafts and became masters. Entire families of slaves were engaged in highly skilled trades, one generation after another. Beyond farm labor, male Blacks were trained as ironworkers, carpenters, wheelwrights, coopers, tanners, shoemakers, and bakers. As for female slaves, they were capable of far more than household chores. Many were skilled at sewing, spinning, weaving, dressmaking, pottery, nursing, and midwifery. Upon emancipation, Black artisans became a threat to White workers.

  When freed Black tradesmen were thrown into competition with White workers, there was often open social conflict. White workers, in both the South and North, reacted violently. They wouldn’t permit one of their own to be displaced by a Black worker, regardless of how skilled he might be. Despite their newfound freedom, few employers risked hiring skilled Blacks, regardless of how cheap they’d work, for fear of reprisals by White workers. African-American historian E. F. Frazier found that at the end of the Civil War there were approximately 100,000 skilled Black tradesmen in the South as compared with 20,000 Whites. Between 1865 and 1890 the number of Black artisans dwindled to only a handful. That such a large reservoir of talent was permitted to dry up confirms the ignorance and inutility of racial prejudice.

  For Blacks who had moved North, their existence was precarious. Ill-equipped to deal with the economic and social realities of post-Civil War America, a disproportionate number of Blacks found themselves in poverty. In Philadelphia, between 1891 and 1896, approximately 9 percent of the inmates in the almshouse were Blacks, although they constituted only 4 percent of that city’s population. Unable to gain a foothold in the expanding industries of the region, and the opportunities at farming limited, freed slaves and their children had little choice but to accept domestic work. Shut out of high-paying, skilled jobs, it was domestic work or the poor house.

  The situation in New Jersey was typical. In 1903, of the 475 industrial concerns surveyed by the New Jersey Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industry, only 83 employed Blacks in any capacity, mostly janitorial. An illustration of the closed doors confronting Blacks in New Jersey’s industries is Paterson, which was a major industrial center not only in the state but the nation. By 1915, 50 years after the Civil War, the percentage of Black male workers employed in Paterson’s factories, at any job, was less than 5 percent.

  The distributi
on of Blacks throughout the American economy is revealing of the prevailing racial attitudes of the day. Prior to 1890, the United States Census did not distinguish occupational classes by race or color, but from that date forward, it did. In the population counts, for 1890 and 1900 upward of 87 percent of all Black workers were employed in either agricultural pursuits or domestic and personal service. The remaining 13 percent breaks down as follows: 6 percent in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, 6 percent in commerce and transportation, and 1 percent in the professions.

  In the North Atlantic region, more than two-thirds of all African-Americans earned their income in domestic work. Most Blacks hired to work in a White household were general servants. Routinely, a family hired a single domestic servant who was required to be a cook, a waitress, and a housekeeper. The work of a household servant was hard and the hours were long. The typical general servant worked a 12-hour day and was responsible for maintaining the household seven days a week. Days off were dependent upon the generosity of the employer. Domestic service was a field of work sought out of necessity rather than choice. For most Blacks, working as a domestic servant was only a small step up from slavery. No other group in the American population—including new immigrants from Europe—had such a large proportion of its members in such menial employment.

  But the menial employment in Atlantic City was different. Hotel work was an attractive alternative. There was a crucial difference between the work experience of Blacks in Atlantic City and those of other cities at the time. The work opportunities were more varied and stimulating. The hotel and recreation economy had many types of positions requiring strong backs and quick hands and feet. To keep the resort running smoothly during its peak season, hoteliers, restaurateurs, Boardwalk merchants, and amusement operators relied heavily upon the affordable labor provided by Blacks. While it was often difficult work, an employee was part of something bigger and more dynamic than were Blacks hired to perform domestic work in private homes.

  Those Blacks who came to Atlantic City in search of work found they could make four to five times the wages available in the South. The Civil War had devastated the South and left it destitute. The Union Army had scarred the Southern landscape and wrecked its economy. While there was no longer slavery in the Old Confederacy, freedom had simply lifted the Black man from slave to sharecropper. Both Blacks and Whites were unfamiliar with a free-labor, market economy and upward of 90 percent of the Black population fell into the sharecropping and crop-lien system. Sharecropping produced a nasty, feudal-like economy in which the Black man was a loser. Black sharecroppers were tied to the land in the hopes their efforts would produce enough for them to survive. “Wages,” per se, did not exist. To many freed slaves, any type of work in the North was better than sharecropping. Domestic service and hotel work were welcomed alternatives.

  While the wages of a domestic servant in most Northern cities were comparable to that of hotel employment, work in a hotel was easier than domestic service and more exciting, with the hours fewer and more predictable. Finally, the Blacks who came to Atlantic City found employment as a hotel worker had less social stigma than domestic work. Working as a general servant was synonymous with social inferiority. Unlike other occupations, the individual was hired, not their labor. The use of the word “servant” was a mark of social degradation.

  In Atlantic City, Blacks were not servants but, rather, employees in a hotel and recreation economy that relied upon them heavily for its success. Based upon data available from the late 19th to early 20th centuries, historian Herbert J. Foster concluded that at the turn of that century the weekly wages of hotel workers in Atlantic City compared favorably with other cities and may have been the highest paid at the time. The resort’s reliance upon Black workers evolved swiftly following the boom period ignited by Samuel Richards’ second railroad. Between 1854 and 1870 Atlantic City’s Black population did not exceed 200. But after the narrow gauge railroad in 1877, tourists flocked to town and the hotel industry flourished. Hotel owners recruited Black workers from Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia for the summer season. Working for hotels and boardinghouses, these workers were provided food, lodging, and wages far better than anything they could earn at home. Beginning in the 1880s, Blacks came to Atlantic City primarily for the summer months and then returned to their homes. As the resort grew in popularity and the number of hotels operating year-round increased, Blacks found work beyond the summer months, and many made the resort their permanent home.

  Atlantic City became the most “Black” city in the North. By 1905 the Black population was nearly 9,000. By 1915 it was greater than 11,000, comprising more than one-fourth of the permanent residents. During summer, the Black population swelled to nearly 40 percent. Of those Northern cities having more than 10,000 Black residents, Atlantic City was without any serious rival in terms of percentage of total population. These numbers are critical in terms of understanding the status of Atlantic City’s Black experience in American history.

  Following the Civil War, between 75 and 90 percent of all African-Americans who traveled North gravitated to cities, with most living in larger cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Those who settled in smaller cities and towns found a bitter isolation. Without sufficient population of their own to establish a separate community life, many Blacks had no life but work. This was especially true of the smaller communities in New Jersey where there had been support for the Confederate cause. New Jersey’s reaction to Lincoln’s election in 1860 included talk of secession. When war broke out, former Governor Rodman Price and other Democrats openly stated that the state should join the South. Local sentiment didn’t change during the War. In addition to being the only Northern state where Lincoln failed to gain a majority, New Jersey selected pro-Southern Democrat James Wall to serve in the U.S. Senate in 1863. The same year, Democratic Governor Joel Parker denounced Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation as an improper trespass on state’s rights and the New Jersey legislature adopted legislation banning Negroes from the state. Finally, the Legislature elected in 1864 rejected the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which ended slavery.

  For many years following the Civil War, in the towns and cities throughout New Jersey, there was a deep division between Blacks and Whites. The vast majority of the African-American population was relegated to blighted areas, which were located “across the tracks,” “over the creek,” “by the dump,” or “back of the hill.” Nearly all were employed at unskilled labor and domestic work.

  U.S. census statistics show that by the beginning of the 20th century the overwhelming majority of Blacks in Atlantic City were “domestic and personal service workers.” But the recreational orientation of Atlantic City’s economy makes those numbers misleading. The variety and pay of domestic service positions and, consequently, the social structure of the Black community differed greatly from other Northern cities, both large and small. Hotel/recreation work in Atlantic City paid more than domestic service in other cities, not only because of higher wages, but also because Black hotel workers came in contact with tourists and earned tips. Additionally, most employees were provided with regular daily meals in the hotels. Equally important, there was a hierarchy of positions within the hotel and recreation industry. As a result, the Atlantic City tourist economy provided Black workers with the ability to move from one type of job to another. Such mobility in the workplace was unavailable to Blacks in other cities. The result of this phenomenon was development of a Black social structure in Atlantic City far more complex than other Northern cities. By virtue of their higher income, property ownership, and greater responsibility attached to their hotel positions, a substantial portion of Atlantic City’s Black residents were, by comparison to other Blacks nationally, part of the middle and upper classes.

  The social structure among African-American workers in Atlantic City roughly broke down along the following lines: Upper—hotel-keepers, boardinghouse keepers (and owners), hea
dwaiters, stewards, cooks, head bellmen, and rollingchair managers; Middle— waiters, waitresses, chambermaids, elevator operators, lifeguards, actors, musicians, entertainers, and performers; Lower—bellmen, busboys, porters, dishwashers, kitchen helpers, and rollingchair pushers. Intelligence, experience, and personal initiative counted for much in the hotel and recreation industry. Unlike many other cities where Blacks were simply servants, those in Atlantic City had a realistic chance for advancement in the tourist economy.

  But the mobility available in the workplace did not translate into social mobility. As Blacks grew in numbers, the racial attitude of Atlantic City’s Whites hardened. While White racism has been a strong force throughout American history, historians have noted that at the close of the 19th century race relations began to develop more formal patterns.

  History rarely marches in a straight line. Succeeding generations have a way of retrenching as they reject portions of social changes made earlier. Time and again, positive social advancements are made only to be followed by negative reactions. Weariness of the federal government’s role in the South and political expediency prompted Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and James Garfield to preside passively over the dismantling of efforts to bring about interracial democracy. Northern Republicans, Hayes’ and Garfield’s attitudes reflected the views of their constituents.

  As part of a bargain to hold on to the White House following the disputed Hayes-Tilden election, in which he was actually the loser in the popular vote, President Hayes withdrew the last federal troops from the South and “home rule” was restored. Hayes and the Republicans wanted tranquility and promoted an alliance of “men of property,” both North and South. In expressing his views in letters to friends, Hayes stated, “As to the South, the let-alone policy seems now to be the true course.” In another letter he advised, “Time, time is the great cure-all.” Hayes’ successor, James Garfield, was no more eager to confront the South. Shortly after being sworn into office in 1881, he wrote to a friend, “Time is the only cure for the South’s difficulties. In what shape it will come, if it comes at all, is not clear.”