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Health & Fitness

From the Archives: The Summer of '47 – Melba Valle Takes a Stand at Palisades Amusement Park

Civil Rights Heroine Melba Valle at the Gates of Palisades Amusement Park in 1947

Rosa Parks and her story is  well-known and an important part of American history today.  That lone woman took a stand against racial segregation and discrimination simply by refusing to give up her seat in the “Colored” section of a bus to a White passenger after the White section was filled.  This took place in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955.  The event led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and a milestone in the Civil Rights movement in this nation.

 

History is a tricky subject and many of us seem to believe that the Civil Rights movement was fought below the Mason-Dixon line.  The current exhibit at the Fort Lee Museum, Palisades Amusement Park: A Pool. A Book, A Centennial, for the first time in our museum history, and perhaps in Fort Lee history, showcases a Civil Rights battled waged at the gates of the park in 1946-48 and not completely won until the early 1950s.  Thanks to Palisades Amusement Park historian Vince Garguilo and Alan Brennert via his new book Palisades Park are we able to cobble together this history aided with archival photos from the collection of the Fort Lee Historical Society.

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The pool at Palisades Amusement Park, spectacular in every way, opened on June 8, 1913.  The then owners, brothers Nick & Joe Schenck, believed the only thing missing from Palisades Amusement Park in comparison to Coney Island was beaches and salt water.  Together they created the world’s largest outdoor saltwater pool with waves.  The salt water was pumped up from the Hudson each day and filtered and then sent out that night in the same pipes that to this day still cling to the Palisades below the old site of the Park.  From 1913 through September of 1971 when the Park closed forever, this pool sparkled in the summer sun.  However storm clouds circled the pool in the summer of ’47 and a sad chapter of the Park’s history was about to be written.  Yet in a way the heroine who emerged from this struggle should be remembered in both Fort Lee and Cliffside Park today, the original locations of Palisades Amusement Park.  I hope the telling of this story can lead to a program that could be taught at local schools about a Civil Rights struggle right in our own towns here in North Jersey, one in its own way just as significant as what happened in the South.

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Several African-Americans began to challenge Palisades Amusement Park pool’s restrictive Jim Crow policies in the summer of 1946.  Protestor’s showed up at the Palisade Avenue entrance to the park with signs in hand, some reading “Protest Jim Crow”,  Jim Crow meaning state and local laws enacted between 1876 and 1965 mandating racial segregation in all public facilities. 

 

The park established the Sun and Surf Club and only members were admitted into the saltwater pool.  According to Vince Gargiulo, in his wonderful book, Palisades Amusement Park: A Century of Fond Memories:

 

In reality, the club allowed park officials to discriminate according to the color of the patron’s skin.  In July 1946, ten people, eight black and two white, visited the Park as a group.  The two whites were sold tickets for the swimming pool while all the blacks were refused admission. The following month, the American Civil Liberties Union requested the Bergen County Grand Jury to investigate the Park’s admission policy for the pool.  This was the beginning of a controversy that would drag on for several seasons.  By the time the Park closed for 1946, the grand jury still had not acted upon the petition from the ACLU.  But the Rosenthal’s hopes that the issue would disappear from the headlines were swiftly shattered the following season.”

 

The summer of 1947 would see the protests continue and become larger in scope.  Melba Valle, an 22-year-old African-American woman from New York, attempted to gain admission to the pool using a ticket purchased by her friend who was White on the morning of July 13, 1947.  The ticket in Valle’s hands was not honored and she was denied admission to the pool.  According to newspaper accounts Valle was “forcibly dragged and ejected” from the Park.  This rampant discrimination led to Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) demonstrations at the Park gates.  Less than a month after Ms. Valle’s ejection from the Park, eleven members of CORE were arrested.  Demonstrators vowed to return to protest at the Park gates every Sunday until Blacks were admitted entrance to the pool. 

 

Below is an example of a flyer from 1947 handed out by the protestors – the flyer is on exhibit in the Fort Lee Museum:

 

DON’T GET COOL

AT PALISADES POOL

 

Palisades Pool, in violation of the New Jersey Civil Rights Law, bars Negroes and persons with dark skins.  Such a person is told that a club exists and only members can use the pool.  Yet white persons who are not “members” are regularly admitted and then handed a “membership” card inside.

 

Irving Rosenthal, the Park’s owner, refuses to cease racial discrimination, although it violates the New Jersey law.  Members of our interracial group who tried peacefully to gain admittance to the pool have been manhandled by the Park’s private guards and by Fort Lee police.

 

On July 27, a Negro was blackjacked from behind by a park representative while other park “goons” were shoving him on a bus.  On August 3, eleven of us were arrested on trumped up charges and two were beaten by the police.

 

The time has come to end this reign of terror.

 

By staying away from Palisades Park YOU can help.  When the pool is free from discrimination, we can all enjoy it.

 

GET YOUR RELAXATION

WHERE THERE’S

NO DISCRIMINATION!

 

 

This chapter of the Park’s history is showcased in Alan Brennert’s new book, Palisades Park.  Published by St. Martin’s Press with a national run, this book centers on a fictional family who worked at the park from the 1920’s until it closed in 1971.  The main character, Toni, a teenaged lifeguard in 1947, befriends Melba Valle and ends up joining the protesters to witness first hand the discrimination.  This chapter is vital to the understanding of the character and her relationship with the Park owner, Irving Rosenthal.  That relationship is complicated after this incident but Rosenthal, by the early 1950’s, sees that this policy can no longer remain in place.

 

Eventually even the FBI became involved and we have a copy of an FBI report about the Park and the protestors on display in the Fort Lee Museum courtesy of Vince Gargiulo.

 

The final portion of this archive piece will borrow from Alan Brennert’s wonderful new book and it will be the words of that teenaged lifeguard Toni as she takes a stand:

 

When Toni saw blackjacks being whipped out of policemen’s’ pockets, she couldn’t take it anymore.  She pushed through the pool gate and made her way through the brutal melee, toward the police lines.  Eddie (her father) saw the fury in her face – it was equal to what he was feeling – and steeled himself to do whatever was necessary to protect her.  Wordlessly, Toni walked up to Irving Rosenthal, tore off her Palisades ID badge, and hurled it in his face.  He looked stunned.  Luckily he didn’t notice her hand trembling as she did it.  Toni turned on her heel, got on line at the ticket window, and began chanting: “Don’t get cool at the Palisades Pool! Get your relaxation where there’s no discrimination!

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