Publisher Description

Throughout the twentieth century, African Americans challenged segregation at amusement parks, swimming pools, and skating rinks not only in pursuit of pleasure but as part of a wider struggle for racial equality. Well before the Montgomery bus boycott, mothers led their children into segregated amusement parks, teenagers congregated at forbidden swimming pools, and church groups picnicked at white-only parks. But too often white mobs attacked those who dared to transgress racial norms. In Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters, Victoria W. Wolcott tells the story of this battle for access to leisure space in cities all over the United States.
Contradicting the nostalgic image of urban leisure venues as democratic spaces, Wolcott reveals that racial segregation was crucial to their appeal. Parks, pools, and playgrounds offered city dwellers room to exercise, relax, and escape urban cares. These gathering spots also gave young people the opportunity to mingle, flirt, and dance. As cities grew more diverse, these social forms of fun prompted white insistence on racially exclusive recreation. Wolcott shows how black activists and ordinary people fought such infringements on their right to access public leisure. In the face of violence and intimidation, they swam at white-only beaches, boycotted discriminatory roller rinks, and picketed Jim Crow amusement parks. When African Americans demanded inclusive public recreational facilities, white consumers abandoned those places. Many parks closed or privatized within a decade of desegregation. Wolcott's book tracks the decline of the urban amusement park and the simultaneous rise of the suburban theme park, reframing these shifts within the civil rights context.
Filled with detailed accounts and powerful insights, Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters brings to light overlooked aspects of conflicts over public accommodations. This eloquent history demonstrates the significance of leisure in American race relations.

Author Biography

Victoria W. Wolcott is Professor of History at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, and the author of Remaking Respectability: African-American Women in Interwar Detroit.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1. A Tarnished Golden Age: Race and Recreation Before World War II
Chapter 2. The Fifth Freedom: Racial Liberalism, Nonviolence, and Recreation Riots in the 1940s
Chapter 3. "A Northern City with a Southern Exposure": Challenging Recreational Segregation in the 1950s
Chapter 4. Violence in the City of Good Neighbors: Delinquency and Consumer Rights in the Postwar City
Chapter 5. Building a National Movement: Students Confront Recreational Segregation
Chapter 6. "Riotland": Race and the Decline of Urban Amusements
ConclusionNotes
Index
Acknowledgments

Review

"History professor Wolcott recounts a staggering litany of large and small-scale protests and riots at recreational facilities across the United States from the 1930s through the 1960s. Wolcott aims to make the case that the struggle to desegregate recreational facilities is an often overlooked but essential facet of the American Civil Rights narrative. . . . Together the stories reveal a national pattern of White violence against protestors and illuminate the shameful tactics employed by recreation facility owners to subvert the growing demand for desegregation."—Publishers Weekly
"The expansion of civil rights in recreational spaces is essential to understanding the civil rights movement of America, but it is not only a narrative of violence against African Americans either to sustain segregation or to admit integration. Wolcott's work adds a much-needed chapter to both civil rights and leisure histories, while it carefully avoids incorporating the very black cultural institutions before World War II that were central to African American participation in modernist identities and part of postwar integrationist advocacy."—American Historical Review
"Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters is a significant contribution to the growing corpus that attempts to rethink the traditional contours of the civil rights movement. Uncovering the neglected struggle over public amusements, Wolcott deepens our understanding of the relationship between civil rights, urban history, and popular culture in twentieth-century America."—Journal of American Culture
"Drawing on an array of sources, Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters makes an important contribution to the history of the civil rights movement by significantly expanding our understanding of the hardships black Americans faced to desegregate public recreational spaces, including amusement parks, swimming pools, and skating rinks."—Journal of Southern History
"Victoria Wolcott's well-written and deeply researched new book adds another crucial layer to the civil rights narrative. She goes beyond the familiar marches and leaders to focus on movie theaters, skating rinks, dance halls, city parks, amusement parks, and swimming pools as places of struggle. In doing so, she brings in a new cast of characters—children, teenagers, mothers—and shows how the battles over access to urban leisure predate Brown and extend well past the March on Washington. No one has identified and chronicled the conflicts in these places with the care and precision that Wolcott has."—Bryant Simon, author of Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America
"In this powerful story, Victoria Wolcott demonstrates why recreation is central to understanding the history of the civil rights movement in America. Her book also asks us to push the existing frontiers of our historical memory—why violence against African Americans in order to sustain segregation has been forgotten, while violence that sometimes accompanied integration is remembered. With Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters, we reexamine more closely both the ideals and nightmares of America in the twentieth century."—Alison Isenberg, Princeton

Promotional

Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters tells the story of the battle for access to leisure space in cities across the United States. This detailed and eloquent history shows how African Americans fought to enter segregated amusement areas not only in pursuit of happiness but in connection to a wider movement for racial equality.

Long Description

Throughout the twentieth century, African Americans challenged segregation at amusement parks, swimming pools, and skating rinks not only in pursuit of pleasure but as part of a wider struggle for racial equality. Well before the Montgomery bus boycott, mothers led their children into segregated amusement parks, teenagers congregated at forbidden swimming pools, and church groups picnicked at white-only parks. But too often white mobs attacked those who dared to transgress racial norms. In Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters , Victoria W. Wolcott tells the story of this battle for access to leisure space in cities all over the United States. Contradicting the nostalgic image of urban leisure venues as democratic spaces, Wolcott reveals that racial segregation was crucial to their appeal. Parks, pools, and playgrounds offered city dwellers room to exercise, relax, and escape urban cares. These gathering spots also gave young people the opportunity to mingle, flirt, and dance. As cities grew more diverse, these social forms of fun prompted white insistence on racially exclusive recreation. Wolcott shows how black activists and ordinary people fought such infringements on their right to access public leisure. In the face of violence and intimidation, they swam at white-only beaches, boycotted discriminatory roller rinks, and picketed Jim Crow amusement parks. When African Americans demanded inclusive public recreational facilities, white consumers abandoned those places. Many parks closed or privatized within a decade of desegregation. Wolcott's book tracks the decline of the urban amusement park and the simultaneous rise of the suburban theme park, reframing these shifts within the civil rights context. Filled with detailed accounts and powerful insights, Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters brings to light overlooked aspects of conflicts over public accommodations. This eloquent history demonstrates the significance of leisure in American race relations.

Review Quote

Victoria Wolcott's well-written and deeply researched new book adds another crucial layer to the civil rights narrative. She goes beyond the familiar marches and leaders to focus on movie theaters, skating rinks, dance halls, city parks, amusement parks, and swimming pools as places of struggle. In doing so, she brings in a new cast of characters-children, teenagers, mothers-and shows how the battles over access to urban leisure predate Brown and extend well past the March on Washington. No one has identified and chronicled the conflicts in these places with the care and precision that Wolcott has.

Promotional "Headline"

Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters tells the story of the battle for access to leisure space in cities across the United States. This detailed and eloquent history shows how African Americans fought to enter segregated amusement areas not only in pursuit of happiness but in connection to a wider movement for racial equality.

Excerpt from Book

IntroductionWhen you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can''t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children . . . then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. --Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (1963) I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be "accepted" by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don''t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. --James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time When Martin Luther King, Jr.''s daughter Yolanda Denise asked her father why she could not go to Funtown, she touched on a painful reality that has been largely forgotten. Across the country, North and South, young African Americans discovered that time-honored discriminatory practices limited their access to amusement parks and other recreational facilities. And when they did approach these spaces they often confronted the white violence invoked by James Baldwin. Blacks wanted freedom and mobility without being "beaten over the head." They sought to live their lives fully as citizens and consumers without the constraints of segregation. Like King, they wished to protect their children from the reality of racism. Blacks desired not to be "loved" by whites but to coexist with them--and to use the swimming pools, roller-skating rinks, and Funtowns that made urban life in mid-twentieth-century America pleasurable. The segregated recreation that the King family encountered in Atlanta was present throughout the country. The problem of segregated amusements was national in scope and the solution required a broad-based movement. African Americans in the twentieth century engaged in just such a movement, not simply for integration but for the occupation of public space in American cities. Among the most coveted urban spaces were those that encouraged young men and women to put aside their daily cares, flirt, and play. This potential for romance, and the association of African Americans with dirt and disorder, led to whites'' insistence that recreational spaces be racially homogenous. Owners and managers of amusements constantly reassured their white customers that their facilities were clean and safe places to let loose and mix with the opposite sex. The result was an elaborate system of racial segregation in urban recreation. How African Americans challenged this segregation is the subject of this book. Historians have developed a deep understanding of racial discrimination in housing and labor in mid-twentieth-century cities, yet their understanding of recreation remains shallow. Recreational facilities are public accommodations and can appear marginal compared to economic and political structures. Historians who have challenged the "master narrative" of civil rights by expanding their analyses both chronologically and geographically have promoted the primacy of economic and housing issues in the past decade and moved away from the examination of public accommodations. The long civil rights movement now incorporates the class struggles of the Great Depression and the welfare rights and black power movements of the 1970s. Rather than focusing on the conflict between the southern civil rights movement and whites'' massive resistance to integration, historians have reached north and west to examine myriad local struggles for racial equality and freedom. Central to these examinations are economic policies, particularly in works that incorporate labor struggles during the Great Depression and World War II. And the civil rights movement''s expansion north and west has shifted our attention to discriminatory housing patterns that segregated American cities. For historians who focus on political economy, the struggle to open public accommodations is sometimes viewed as legalistic. Some see efforts to desegregate public accommodations as part of an "integrationist framework" that ignores black nationalism and views the 1964 Civil Rights Act as the culmination of the movement. Integration, it has been argued, also undermined black economic power and self-determination. Focusing on public accommodations can also reify the dichotomy of the "innocent" North, where Jim Crow supposedly did not exist, versus the "evil" South, with its system of legal apartheid. Historians of the long civil rights movement reject this dichotomy and demonstrate the culpability of the state in creating and reinforcing patterns of segregation throughout the country. These historians also reject the notion that black power activists'' commitment to self-defense undermined nonviolence and interracialism, thus leading to the movement''s decline. Instead, they take seriously the broader goals of black nationalism and refuse to elevate nonviolent activists to near saintly positions in the American imagination. With these important correctives in mind, is it possible to revisit the struggle to open public accommodations while escaping the "integrationist framework"? I believe it is, but historians must recognize that our view of what constituted civil rights activism cannot be a zero-sum game. Desegregating public accommodations was a goal powerfully desired by African Americans throughout the country. Just because white liberals, who saw integration as the primary goal of racial equality, also embraced this objective does not diminish its centrality in the black freedom movement. Liberal interracialism coexisted with radical interracialism promoted by nonviolent pacifists and ordinary black citizens who demanded immediate change, not the gradual process of moral persuasion promoted by racial liberals. These movements are related but should not be conflated. Therefore, writing public accommodations out of the civil rights narrative, or downplaying it, is a mistake. Rather, we need to rethink the struggle for public accommodations with the insights of the long civil rights movement historiography in mind. One way to broaden our understanding of desegregation is by conceiving of it as part of a broader struggle for control of and access to urban space. The segregation of public accommodations denied African Americans their right to occupy the same spaces as whites. They could not act as consumers on an equal basis, and they could not fully inhabit the cities and towns in which they lived. African Americans'' demand for the right to use recreation was not simply about integration and interracial friendship but about power and possession. For this reason the struggle for recreational space was not only the purview of southern nonviolent activists but a national movement that included teenagers, mothers, and ordinary consumers who demanded equal access without having to face racial epithets and daily violence. African Americans wanted to participate in all the recreation cities had to offer, and they wished to protect their children from white violence. Violence perpetrated by whites, however, has not been widely recognized as a major factor in maintaining segregation. Popular memories of mid-twentieth-century urban amusements are replete with nostalgia and rarely contain references to segregation. This erasure of white violence has led many to blame the decline of urban recreation on "deviant" behavior by African Americans in newly desegregated amusements. The struggle to desegregate public accommodations in the face of white terror did not begin with Rosa Parks''s defiant stance in 1954. Even when identifying only activists who employed nonviolent passive resistance to challenge Jim Crow, one has to look at least a decade before the Montgomery bus boycott. The pioneering members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) carried out a major campaign against Chicago''s segregated White City Roller Rink in 1942 and fine-tuned organizing strategies that would prove enormously effective a decade later. And prior to the war years many ordinary African American citizens challenged segregated recreation nationwide, swimming at whites only beaches, boycotting segregated roller rinks, and picketing Jim Crow amusement parks. For most the goal was desegregation, obtaining the right to occupy recreational space, rather than integration, fully sharing facilities with white neighbors. But motivations for engaging in the struggle over recreation varied. Liberal and radical white supporters of desegregation campaigns--for example, the white members of CORE who put their bodies on the line to fight for racial equality--were more likely to view full integration and interracialism as the goal. Middle-class African Americans often sought the respectability that came with full participation in consumerism. Working-class African Americans frequently conceived of the occupation of public space as a form of community control and a means to protect family members. Together these actors challenged the racial logic that associated white spaces with safety and security. Moreover, the struggle for desegregated public accommodations was never fully distinct from the struggle for equal access to housing and employment. A local swimming pool or playground was an extension of a neighborhood, and as the racial composition of neighborhoods changed, urban dwellers contested these spaces. Whites who defended their "rights" to all-white workplaces and communities perhaps best understood this connection. Indeed, there is a relationship between what I term "recreation riots," racial conflicts in spaces of leisure, with housing riots in mid-twentieth-century American cities. Historians have documented hundreds of small-scale and large-scale housing riots in the 1940s and 1950s. In most cases, these were precipitated by an

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