While the black experience in America has been told in many ways, it has seldom, if ever, been substantially addressed from the play, recreation, and leisure perspective. That is the primary intent of Black Recreation: A Historical Perspective. Leisure and recreation activities are an important measure of quality of life--of happiness, wealth, and health. Historical interpretation, accurately presented, can help give individuals a better sense of identity--of who they are and how far they have come. Both minority and majority readers will benefit from broad-based analysis of the recreational activities and effects they had on American culture as a whole.
From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, African Americans in the Washington, D.C. area sought leisure destinations where they could relax without the burden of racial oppression. Local picnic parks such as Eureka and Madre's were accessible by streetcars. Black-owned steamboats ferried passengers seeking sun and sand to places like Collingwood Beach, and African American families settled into quiet beach-side communities along the Western Shore of Maryland. Author and public historian Patsy M. Fletcher reveals the history behind Washington's forgotten era of African American leisure.
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.
2020 Miriam Matthews Ethnic History Award from the Los Angeles City Historical Society As Southern California was reimagining leisure and positioning it at the center of the American Dream, African American Californians were working to make that leisure an open, inclusive reality. By occupying recreational sites and public spaces, African Americans challenged racial hierarchies and marked a space of Black identity on the regional landscape and social space. In Living the California Dream Alison Rose Jefferson examines how African Americans pioneered America's "frontier of leisure" by creating communities and business projects in conjunction with their growing population in Southern California during the nation's Jim Crow era. By presenting stories of Southern California African American oceanfront and inland leisure destinations that flourished from 1910 to the 1960s, Jefferson illustrates how these places helped create leisure production, purposes, and societal encounters. Black communal practices and economic development around leisure helped define the practice and meaning of leisure for the region and the nation, confronted the emergent power politics of recreational space, and set the stage for the sites as places for remembrance of invention and public contest. Living the California Dream presents the overlooked local stories that are foundational to the national narrative of mass movement to open recreational accommodations to all Americans and to the long freedom rights struggle.
"Recreation without Humiliation is the first comprehensive study of Black amusement venues established by Black Americans for Black Americans. Mary Stanton's extensive research on African American amusement parks in America explores not only segregation, class, and social barriers but also the notion of the 'pursuit of happiness' as an inalienable right for all races and classes of people. Inspired by summers spent on Coney Island, where Stanton became curious about the existence of African American amusement parks in America, Stanton's research uncovered more than fifty such venues, most of which operated during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These were parks, theaters, juke joints, country clubs, summer colonies, baseball diamonds, and arenas. Although these venues provided much needed recreational services to an underserved Black population, many were threatened by whites, and some destroyed by them. Through her study of these sites of recreation, Stanton illuminates the history of African Americans who strove to create and maintain safe and satisfying entertainment despite segregation. In her research, Stanton also found class divisions among Black American entertainment venues. At the pinnacle of Black society in this era were the upper class, who could afford exclusive Black summer cottages and country clubs. General entertainment for Black working-class families consisted of dancing and drinking in juke joints or patronizing small amusement parks, playgrounds, movie theaters, church-sponsored functions, and Black county fairs. African Americans in the twentieth century, especially in the South, transformed segregation into what historian Earl Lewis calls "congregation." Congregation implies choice, and this congregation "provided space and support for establishing new amusements, entertainments, music, and dance" without interference or oppression"--
Race, Ethnicity, and Leisure: Perspectives on Research, Theory, and Practice provides an overview of the current theories and practices related to minority leisure and reviews numerous issues related to these diverse groups’ leisure, including needs and motivations, constraints, and discrimination. World-renowned researchers synthesize research on race and ethnicity, explain how demographics will affect leisure behavior in the 21st century, and explain the leisure behavior of minorities.
This book is a long-term empirical analysis of the impact of the civil rights movement on the real-life situations of southern blacks. Looking at the period from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s, it assesses the role of black political participation in six Florida cities. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
