Cape May’s African American Stories

Almost 30 years ago, a group of 12 women established the Center for Community Arts (CCA). These founding mothers had many interests, one of which was to preserve the Franklin Street School, built on Franklin Street in 1928, to educate Cape May’s African American elementary school children. Periodically discussed for potential demolition and without a lot of community support, the school’s future was very much in limbo when CCA members decided that if the building’s future were in jeopardy, at least the school’s cultural history could be preserved.

As some members began to explore external funding sources for preserving the building, others began conducting oral histories with people who had association with the school as students, teachers, custodians, or in other capacities. Local people began finding photographs and other historical items about Cape May’s African American community and donated them to CCA. John and Dolly Nash, residents of Cape May, who at one time operated the Planter’s Motel on Lafayette Street (now the Boarding House), had collected photographs and other information about African Americans. Their years-long collection was donated to CCA to establish a formal archive about the many ways in which African Americans contributed to Cape May’s growth and prosperity.

Both once enslaved and free Blacks, so labeled in the 1700s and 1800s, established settlements in Cape May County, primarily in Lower and Middle Townships. As early as the 1830s, the City of Cape May, then called Cape Island, provided employment opportunities in hotels, boarding houses, and other businesses supporting the summer resort. By the 1840s, like their white counterparts, prominent Philadelphia African Americans built hotels, boarding houses, and summer houses at Cape Island and began opening their own stores and other businesses to serve summer tourists of the “colored race” and other backgrounds.

In 1840, 198 Black residents were recorded in the county. This number almost tripled to 570 in 1880 and then reached 869 by 1900. As Black southerners moved to the north for better opportunities, Cape May County’s Black population increased to 2,782 by 1930. By 1970 it reached 4,772, 8% of the county’s total population; 10% of the city of Cape May population. Many job opportunities, available for decades, such as porters, chambermaids, laundresses, cooks, and waiters increased as the resort community grew and expanded to include gardeners, drivers, housemaids, seamstresses, nursemaids, and opportunities for owning one’s own business. African Americans operated businesses like hardware stores or dress shops and provided services such as installing awnings for summer or storing furniture over the winter season, which were patronized by both races. 

The closing of military bases and civilian-operated war industries resulted in a decline in the city’s population after World War II. With the rise in automobile ownership, summer tourism also began to decline; other communities like Wildwood and Atlantic City were closer to major cities and more modern than Cape May. Fewer tourists, particularly those families who stayed all summer, meant fewer jobs for people working to clean, garden, cook, and take care of children. In the next 50 years, from 1970 to 2020, Cape May City’s Black population declined to 76 people, less than 3% of city residents.

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, Cape May government leaders and residents grappled with many issues, primarily the town’s severe damage following the 1962 Nor’easter storm, the city’s economic future, high unemployment rates, and the large elderly population. City leaders successfully obtained federal funds to redo the center of town, a massive project which resulted in housing for low income and elderly residents and the creation of the Washington Street Mall. Both undertakings impacted city residents. Black-owned businesses and homes were torn down to become parking lots for the Washington Street Mall or to create vacant land on which to build the new low-income housing. In combination with decreasing tourism, these initiatives began the erasure of long-standing Black neighborhoods in blocks along Lafayette, Jackson, and other nearby streets. Some people relocated to the new low-income housing projects while others moved to West Cape May, other Cape May County towns, or entirely out of the area.

The historical presence of 4,772 Black residents and their communities disappeared until 1995 when the CCA’s History Committee established a walking tour showing visitors photographs of what the neighborhood blocks had looked like before buildings were demolished. Then, in 2022, the History Committee published Black Voices of Cape May: A Feeling of Community, combining photographs with oral histories to not only showcase those neighborhood buildings but also tell stories about the people who lived, worked, worshiped, played, and were educated in those spaces. Around that time, Cape May’s Historic Preservation Commission received Certified Local Government (CLG) grant funding from the State’s Historic Preservation Office to do the research necessary to create additional documentation focusing on the African American population to broaden the city’s designated State and National Historic Districts beyond their original emphasis on Victorian architecture. The additional documentation was approved and entered into the New Jersey Register of Historic Places on July 31, 2024, and into the National Register of Historic Places on September 16, 2024.

Focusing on a period from 1846 to 1948, the additional documentation identifies two areas of significance: African American ethnic heritage and African American civil rights. While many of the historic buildings associated with African American history were demolished, some remain and may be viewed in person in CCA’s self-guided walking tours or on trolley tours sponsored by MAC. The relatively few remaining physical properties may not be as important as the long-forgotten events and accomplishments of the Black community. Many of these have been highlighted in past annual exhibits originally created by CCA at MAC’s Carroll Gallery and are now jointly created, and accessible through a city-sponsored Story Map linked on the historic preservation webpage (capemaycity.com/historic-preservation-commission). 

Most people are not historians and may be unaware of the amount of time and energy needed to prepare these reports. Historians use a variety of techniques and information sources to shed light on past events. But documents and objects often disappear in the transfer from one generation to the next or may be stored away in people’s attics. As a result, past histories are reconstructed using a combination of strategies. A wide variety of documents including newspapers, diaries, histories, census and public records, and such are combined with information from oral histories, group discussion, and photographs. Oral histories allow participants to re-tell stories told by their parents or grandparents and share their own experiences. Photographs allow us to see what buildings or other structures looked like back in the day or to see the people who participated in activities together via yearbooks, group photographs, or family photographs.

The additional 2024 documentation relied on all these sources to put together the stories of the Black experience in Cape May. Fortunately for today’s historians, many photographs, written histories, documents, and oral histories had already been compiled by CCA History Committee members who also contributed to this new document as additional information was learned through in-depth historical research. The result of this work is a detailed 266-page document describing African American life in Cape May under five themes of religion, home ownership/housing, economics (business and employment), education, and recreation.

A central location of the Black community was around the 700 block of Franklin Street, between Lafayette and Washington Streets. The three primary African American religious congregations were all located on this block and all three church buildings remain today. Two have been repurposed, one into condominiums and one into a theater; only the Macedonia Baptist Church remains as an active congregation. The Franklin Street School was repurposed into a library that also houses the CCA offices and archives. The Stephen Smith house is at the top of the block on Lafayette Street. Only one actual house remains on the block, as others have been torn down for the fire station and parking. Some remaining residential properties are clustered on the 800 block of Corgie Street, once a central area for Black residences and boarding houses, and on the blocks around Broad, Elmira, and Bank Streets; many of the residences in these blocks were demolished to clear land for Broad Street Court, one of three still-existing housing developments for low income and elderly people. The greatest concentration of African American homes and businesses was located on Lafayette, Decatur, Jackson, and Perry Streets as well as smaller streets surrounding the blocks of Washington Street that became the Washington Street Pedestrian Mall. 

Above from left: Signed photograph of “Doc” Clifton J. Anderson; William J. Moore

Many different circumstances contributed to the loss of both the buildings and the city’s Black residents. Despite these losses, what may be more interesting are stories about the Black people who lived and worked in Cape May during its heyday. Take as an example, William J. Moore, who, raised in West Chester, Pennsylvania, graduated from Howard University and came to Cape May in 1895 to teach African American children. Well-known for his values in education and work, Moore instilled these values in generations of school children he taught at the segregated West Cape May Annex school. Not only did all 11 of Moore’s children attend college, but as part of his memoirs, he created a list of 39 West Cape May Annex students who had graduated from college. 

William Moore was not just a schoolteacher. He needed to have summer employment and became a tennis instructor at the Cape May Golf Club on Lafayette Street where the elementary school is located today. Since the Tennis Club is named after him, anyone who plays tennis today should know his name but may not be familiar with his athletic accomplishments. Not only did Moore teach generations of full-time and summer residents, but he was named as a tennis pro in the early 1900s, published a manual describing his unique teaching method for tennis, and was granted many national and local awards for his contributions to the sport. After his death in 1973, several of his students established the William J. Moore Scholarship Foundation, which continues to grant scholarships today.

Other members of the Black community such as the Anderson and Wise families were sports minded. Charles Wise, an outstanding basketball player at Lower Cape May Regional High School and La Salle University, significantly contributed to youth sports by managing the Little League program for 20 years and taught tennis to many children at the Tennis Club. “Doc” (Clifton J.) Anderson, Sr.—the Anderson named with Charles Wise in the Wise-Anderson playing field on Lafayette Street—was an outstanding Lower Township track, basketball, and football star. After attending Indiana University, he went on to play for three years in the National Football League and then became a professor and coach at Prince Anne College, University of Maryland, a federally-designated “four year land grant institution of higher learning for negroes,” located on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. As with other African American families in Cape May, the importance of a college education was emphasized and all of Doc and Ruthe Anderson’s seven children attended college, many working in education after graduating as teacher, principal, superintendent, or related jobs. Like their Cape May contemporaries, they passed on their love of sports to the next generations. Today, one of Doc and Ruthe’s grandchildren, Kyle, plays basketball in the NBA.

Cape May African American families lived their lives doing pretty much the same things done by their white counterparts even if under restricted situations. For example, in the summer, most people, whether they lived in or visited Cape May, went to the beach—however, African Americans were welcomed primarily to the Grant Street beach unless they were taking care of white children; then they could sit on any beach. Both Black and white people went to some movie theaters together, but Black people were expected to sit in designated locations. Fraternal organizations, clubs, and other societies catered to one group or the other. However, in Cape May, some special events sponsored by African American or white groups were attended by both Black and white groups with no restrictions.

As increasing numbers of Black men were stationed at Cape May’s Navy, Coast Guard, or Army bases, the need for a USO (United Service Organizations) was recognized; black military personnel were not permitted in the existing USO. The Opera House on Jackson Street no longer exists, but in 1944, the Salvation Army sent a representative to Cape May to establish a USO for the African American military. The speaker for the facility’s opening event was none other than Paul Robeson, a distinguished and internationally known actor, singer, athlete, and speaker, at the time starring in New York in Shakespeare’s Othello, one of three Othello productions in which he starred over his lifetime. For the dedication, Robeson sang a variety of songs and shared some of his hardships in getting an education and in traveling the world. The Jackson Street USO Club newsletter described a portion of his remarks as saying that no matter what color people may be, they are “very much alike in many respects …. with a fundamental, universal desire for freedom, liberty, security, and the rights of man.” For attendees, the dedication was reported as “a never to be forgotten experience … and a grand send-off for the new Jackson Street USO.”

Like social clubs and fraternal organizations, churches played a central role in Cape May, which had churches of every denomination. People attended services and bible study, sang in the choir, helped with fundraising events, visited or prayed for sick congregants, and took part in activities centered around their churches. Well-known historians such as Henry Louis Gates have suggested that the Black church especially supported and provided a sense of belonging to buffer its congregants from life’s harsh realities, roles that the three Black churches played in the Cape May community.

Reverend Robert Davis came to Cape May in 1961 to be the minister for the Macedonia Baptist Church where he remained for 48 years. Before coming to Cape May, he had sung with the Wings Over Jordan Choir, touring the United States and parts of Europe, as well as other national groups. One of his achievements was the Macedonia Baptist Church Choir, which was well-known throughout the region, especially for preservation of Negro spirituals which were always part of their concerts. For many years, Cape May residents and summer tourists, African American and white, looked forward to the annual Macedonia Labor Day Concert at Convention Hall. Lois Smith, a well-known jazz and blues singer in and outside of Cape May, was a soloist and central member of the choir. She had an extensive following in Cape May and among jazz and other musicians and during the summer months, could be found nightly singing at the Merion Inn, Congress Hall, the Chalfonte, or other Cape May establishments. 

In addition to his ministerial duties, Rev. Davis was well-respected by Cape May residents for his persistence in making sure that African Americans had a voice in city undertakings. Just after coming to Cape May, he quickly became an advocate for the Black community. When he died at age 90 in 2015, his lifelong work on behalf of the Macedonia Baptist Church and the Cape May community were well recognized. 

Cape May’s original designation on the State and National Historic District was awarded solely on the number, types, and styles of remaining Victorian buildings. State and National Registers were brand new, established under a new federal preservation law in 1966. Nominating buildings that were worthy of preservation due to outstanding architecture or famous residents were a primary emphasis at that time. Today, half a century later, the perspective has broadened. Designations focus not only on architecture or individuals but may emphasize whole communities as has been accomplished with the new information added to the Cape May designation. For some designated structures or districts, the time and energy needed to compile the additional information may not be viewed as a priority. The strengthening of Cape May’s designation has already created opportunities to highlight an otherwise-erased community and tell stories about Cape May history that extend beyond Victorian architecture. Text by Philippa Campbell. Photos courtesy of the Center for Community Arts