Read Online Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times And Corruption of Atlantic City by Nelson Johnson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Nelson Johnson
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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.
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
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
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