JSYK: When Black People Owned America's Beaches (Patreon)

This video is apart of an ongoing series investigating the history of black wealth being acquired and/or stolen in America.

After watching this video, would it shock you to know that only one black owned commercial beach remains in America? It's called Atlantic beach in South Carolina, a Gullah owned stretch of land nicknamed the “Black Pearl” that went commercial in the 30s. When segregation ended in the 60s and 70s and public beaches became open to everyone, many black people abandoned the few remaining black beaches they used to frequent, helping along their demise. Another major factor were natural disasters, which you can learn more about in the book referenced in this video, The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in The Coastal South.

1. Black beachgoers dancing it up at Carr's Beach in 1956

2. Sammy Davis Jr. and friends at Chicken Bone Beach in New Jersey (c. 1940s)

3. A couple poses for the camera at Chicken Bone Beach in the 1940s

4. "If you were black, you didn't go to the (Daytona) beah, you were asking for trouble if you did."  Black Floridians could however go to Butler Beach at Anastasia Island. 

Related Intelexual Media Post: Two Minute History: The Gullah Geechee 

Sources

The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in The Coastal South (Andrew W. Kahrl)

Assata (Assata Shakur)

Chicken Bone Beach, Atlantic City, New Jersey

Racism Kept Connecticut’s Beaches White Up Through the 1970s (Amy Crawford)

African Americans Have Lost Untold Acres of Land Over the Last Century (Leah Douglass)

How black land became white sand: The racial erosion of the U.S. coasts (Brentin Mock)

Hurricane Florence and the Displacement of African-Americans Along the Carolina Coast (Adeel Hassan)

Blacks Recall Segregation in Daytona (Derek Catron)