Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America

Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America Victoria W. Wolcott Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Notes, index, images. 310 pp. $25.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780812244342Victoria Wolcott's study of urban rec- reation and the civil-rights movement begins with an epigraph from Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" that describes the tears of his daugh- ter upon being told that Funtown, an amusement park in Atlanta, was "closed to colored children." The quote effectively introduces Wolcott's central argument, which asserts that the struggle against the segregation of recreational facilities, primarily swimming pools, roller skating rinks, and amusements parks, played an important role in the history of the civil- rights movement. Wolcott's history of "rec- reation riots," what she defines as "racial conflicts in spaces of leisure," covers both well-known events like the Orangesburg massacre, which stemmed from efforts by students at South Carolina State College to desegregate a local bowling alley, to a series of lesser-known, but significant struggles at recreation sites ranging from Cincin- nati's Coney Island amusement park to the Skateland rink in Cleveland and the public pools and beaches of Baltimore. The work both complements and extends the recent historiography of race relations and urban history in the United States by criticizing the "myth of Southern exceptionalism," calling attention to the long battles over the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and emphasizing the fundamental role that white violence played in sustain- ing segregation.The book begins with an examina- tion of the early decades of the twentieth century, a "tarnished golden age" when commercial leisure spaces were racialized and segregated by a combination of legal and extralegal means, despite black resis- tance. During the 1940s, the rise of racial liberalism and the renewed efforts of black activists produced very uneven outcomes. The successful integration of places like Detroit's Bob-Lo Island Amusement Park was offset by growing white resistance in the form of increased and overt violence against African Americans agitating for change and the proliferation of strategies to avoid desegregation, most notably by making public recreational facilities pri- vate to avoid legal entanglements and by simply closing them down altogether.Although Wolcott's analysis cov- ers events from around the country, it is perhaps strongest in her middle chapters, which focus specifically on the efforts of a committed group of activists to chal- lenge segregation at Coney Island outside of Cincinnati and the impact of a 1956 recreation riot on the city of Buffalo and the Crystal Beach Amusement Park. She explores the complicated political coali- tions and legal maneuvering that so often characterized the desegregation strug- gle, while also highlighting the bravery of individual activists and citizens like Juanita Morrow and Marian Spencer. Wolcott underscores the power that both real and threatened white violence had in dictating the pace of change and the very gradual integration of Coney Island. …