--- In AsburyPark@yahoogroups.com, "oakdorf" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
If you think Asbury is like it was in the 70's you're nuts. Tensions
are no way near that level.
Ok - so I read the following article 10 times. How has really
changed
> in 36 years?
>
> To the thousands who flock each summer weekend to its white sand
> beaches and boardwalk carnival rides, Asbury Park, N.J., seems a
> tidy, if somewhat faded haven of tranquillity. But it is also, like
> many American small towns, a community where "across the tracks"
> still has a vivid, invidious meaning. To the east of the Penn
Central
> railroad line, where well-kept lawns sweep toward the Atlantic
Ocean,
> live most of Asbury Park's 12,500 whites. On the West Side, in a
> ghetto of frame houses splaying out from Springwood Avenue, live
most
> of Asbury Park's 8,500 blacks. Last week the tranquillity was
> shattered by four nights of black riots that began on the West Side
> but spilled briefly across the tracks to white Asbury Park as well.
> The toll was 190 injured, 174 arrested and some $4,000,000 in
damages
> to stores and residences.
>
> The trouble began with rock and bottle throwing following an
> Independence Day dance on the West Side. For two days the window-
> smashing, fire-bombing and looting were confined to the black
> neighborhood, leaving it without power and short on food, and
turning
> much of Springwood Avenue into a smoldering ruin. Though the town
has
> a white mayor and a black police chief, efforts to negotiate a
truce
> failed. Angry black teen-agers then led a charge across the Penn
> Central tracks into the fringe of the white business district. The
> litany of their grievances was reproachfully familiar: too little
> urban renewal, too few jobs, inadequate play areas, inadequate
> communication between black and white leaders. When the unemployed
of
> Asbury Park look to the local welfare officer for help, they find
her
> in the telephone directory under the listing Overseer of the Poor.
>
> Giving a hard, immediate edge to the battle was the behavior of
many
> of the 200-odd New Jersey state troopers called in to quell the
> rioting, a job some executed with zeal. Ninety-two blacks were
> wounded by police shotguns and pellet guns. But Asbury Park's black
> residents had smashed the town's complacency. After two days of
> rioting, but before the white district had been hit, Mayor Joseph
F.
> Mattice had said: "We're very fortunate it occurred where it did.
It
> didn't affect our business area."
>
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