July Nineteen Seventy: The Divided Town
Near Asbury Park, New Jersey
On the Fourth of July, nineteen seventy, at the peak of the summer resort weekend, Asbury Park's two worlds collided. Along the boardwalk, tourists spent freely. But here on the West Side, in a heat wave with temperatures in the nineties, young Black residents faced a wall of poverty and shut doors.
The resort jobs that fueled the town were going to white teenagers from surrounding towns. By one account, the West Side neighborhood center received roughly seven hundred applications from teenagers for only forty-six summer positions. That Fourth of July, a gathering near the West Side Community Center turned angry, and over about a week the unrest spread down Springwood Avenue into looting and fires.
Accounts of the toll vary, but sources describe more than one hundred eighty people injured over the week, including fifteen state troopers. On one night, state police fired warning shots that ricocheted into crowds, wounding dozens of civilians, some of them children. Remarkably, no one was killed.
Damage estimates run to several million dollars, with roughly seventy-five West Side businesses hit. Community leaders presented the city a list of demands for jobs, housing, and fair treatment. Only one was approved.
The corridor never recovered, and the town's long decline accelerated from that summer forward.
