The Negro excursions: Recreational outings among Philadelphia African Americans, 1876-1926

Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

Volumn 129, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 73-104

  Alnutt, Brian E ^a  

^a Lehigh Carbon Community College   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61149349517     PISSN: 00314587     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. W. E. B. Du Bois, "The Problem of Amusement," Southern Workman 26 (Sept. 1897): 181.
2. Thomas S. Settle, Play and Athletics for the Public Schools rev. Nov. 1919, 3rd ed. (Richmond, VA, 1920), 508;
3. G. Gordon Brown, Recreational Facilities and Negro-White Relations in Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1947), i.
4. Foster Rhea Dulles, America Learns to Play. A History of Popular Recreation, 1607-1940 (New York, 1940).
5. H. E. Meller, Leisure and the Changing City, 1870-1914 (London, 1976);
6. Paul S. Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920 (Cambridge, MA, 1978);
7. Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (Cambridge, 1983);
8. Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in New York City, 1880 to 1920 (Philadelphia, 1986).
9. William H. Jones, Recreation and Amusement among Negroes in Washington, D.C.: A Sociological Analysis of the Negro in an Urban Environment (Washington, DC, 1927);
10. E. Franklin Frazier, Negro Youth at the Crossways: Their Personality Development in the Middle States (Washington, DC, 1940);
11. St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (New York, 1945);
12. James Roland Coates Jr., "Recreation and Sport in the African-American Community of Baltimore, 1890-1920" (PhD diss., University of Maryland, College Park, 1991);
13. David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York, 1993).
14. Urban studies by Gilbert Osofsky, Allen Spear, and Kenneth Kusmer, among others, portrayed a transformation in northern black city life associated with the ongoing migration of African Americans from the American South: while residential and social segregation increased, a class of elite African Americans who provided goods and services to white customers was displaced by a rising class of black entrepreneurs, including commercial amusement vendors, who catered to an almost exclusively black clientele. See Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890-1930 (New York, 1966);
15. Allen H. Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920 (Chicago, 1967);
16. Kenneth L. Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930 (Urbana, IL, 1976).
17. Brian E. Alnutt, "African-American Amusement and Recreation in Philadelphia, 1876-1926" (PhD diss., Lehigh University, 2003).
18. John F. Kasson, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1978), 41.
19. Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720-1840 (Cambridge, MA, 1988);
20. Theodore Hershberg et al., "A Tale of Three Cities: Blacks and Immigrants in Philadelphia, 1850-1880, 1930, and 1970," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 441 (1979): 67-68.
21. Philip S. Foner, "The Battle to End Discrimination against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars: (Part I) Background and Beginning of the Battle," Pennsylvania History 40 (1973): 266.
22. Du Bois, "Problem of Amusement," 181.
23. Robert Coit Chapin, The Standard of Living among Workingmens' Families in New York City (New York, 1909), 212-13.
24. New York Age, June 2, 1888.
25. "A Grand Combination Excursion to Brandywine Springs," broadside in Leon Gardiner Collection, American Negro Historical Society Records, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Christian Recorder, July 4, Aug. 15, 1889.
26. W. E. B. Du Bois, "The Black Vote of Philadelphia," in Black Politics in Philadelphia, ed. Miriam Ershkowitz and Joseph Zikmund II (New York, 1973), 31-39.
27. Philadelphia Times, June 30, 1890;
28. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Philadelphia, 1899), 320.
29. "Club Work among Colored Women," Colored American Magazine, Aug. 1906, pp. 83-90.
30. Du Bois, Philadelphia Negro, 61.
31. "Second Grand United Excursion, Robert Bryan Guards of Post 80, G.A.R";
32. "Mid-Summer Fete, Stockton Park, for the Benefit of Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital";
33. Albert J. Corcoran and Harry F. Green, The History of Gloucester City, N.J. (Gloucester, NJ, 1964);
34. Edith Blez, "Remember Washington Park?" Haddon Gazette, Feb. 9, 1978, in Washington Park folder, Camden County Historical Society, Camden, NJ.
35. Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 127-28;
36. Frederick Thompson, "The Profit from Laughter," in Reflections of a Decade, 1901-1910 (Indianapolis, 1980).
37. Henry Pincus, "Common Errors in Park Construction," Street Railway Journal 16 (1900): 461;
38. Kasson, Amusing the Million, 41.
39. Ralph Jones, Charles Albert Tindley, Prince of Preachers (Nashville, 1982), 87;
40. Sadie Tanner Mossell, "The Standard of Living among One Hundred Negro Migrant Families in Philadelphia," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 98 (1921): 196.
41. According to contemporary studies of black-owned amusement parks in the Washington, DC, area that catered to black patronage, most visitors were middle class. If this pattern held in the Philadelphia area, neither the most affluent nor poorest blacks numbered among regular patrons of these resorts. See Jones, Recreation and Amusement among Negroes in Washington, D.C., 100;
42. Forrester B. Washington, "Recreational Facilities for the Negro," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 140 (1928): 281.
43. David R. Contesta, Suburb in the City. Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia 1850-1990 (Columbus, OH, 1992), 157-58;
44. David A. Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 1860-1915 (Urbana, IL, 1976), 312-13;
45. Kusmer, Ghetto Takes Shape, 58, 180;
46. Jones, Recreation and Amusement, 100-102;
47. Coates, "Recreation and Sport in the African-American Community of Baltimore, 1890-1920," 153;
48. Washington, "Recreational Facilities for the Negro," 281;
49. Hannibal Gerald Duncan, "The Changing Race Relationship in the Border and Northern States" (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1920), 68-69.
50. New York Globe, July 28, 1883.
51. Harrisburg State Journal, Sept. 1, 1883.
52. "Light Star Lodge No. 1, United Hod-Carriers and Laborers Union, Third Annual Excursion to Atlantic City," broadside, Leon Gardiner Collection, American Negro Historical Society Records; Christian Recorder, Aug. 21, 1890;
53. Isabel Eaton, "Special Report on Negro Domestic Service in the Seventh Ward, Philadelphia," in Du Bois, Philadelphia Negro, 446-47.
54. "First Grand Annual Combination Excursion of H.H. Garnet Lodge No. 1, Wyoming Lodge No. 6, Philadelphia Division No. 2, Knights of Pythias to Atlantic City";
55. "Don't be Misled! This is the Grand Joint Masonic Excursion to Atlantic City . ," broadsides, Leon Gardiner Collection, American Negro Historical Society Records;
56. New York Age, Aug. 29, 1891.
57. Philadelphia inquirer, July 15, 1893.
58. Martin Paulsson, The Social Anxieties of Progressive Reform: Atlantic City, 1854-1920 (New York, 1994), 36, 38;
59. Herbert James Foster, "The Urban Experience of Blacks in Atlantic City, New Jersey: 1850-1915" (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 1981), 187.
60. Paulsson, Social Anxieties of Progressive Reform, 37;
61. "An Enterprising Young Man," unidentified news clipping, Apr. 9, 1899, reel 8, William H. Dorsey Scrapbook Collection;
62. Philadelphia Tribune, Aug. 20, 1898, reel 22
63. Philadelphia Tribune, July 13, 1912.
64. Philadelphia Item, Sept. 8, 1899;
65. Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, Aug. 24, 1900, Sept. 8, 1905.
66. Philadelphia Tribune, Mar. 11, 1916, Aug. 15, 1925.
67. Foster, "Urban Experience of Blacks in Atlantic City," 211;
68. Philadelphia Tribune, Apr. 10, 1926.