In Jim Crow New Jersey, this Wildwood hotel was a haven for Black travelers

WILDWOOD — The chatter of the international student workers was in the air this week at 119 W. Roberts Ave.; dozens of bikes and scooters filled the courtyard where big sedans once parked, and the windows of the building’s many rooms were thrown open to the July heat.

Back in the day — the 1950s, ‘60s, and early ‘70s — this was the Elfra Court Motel, the first Black motel in Wildwood. It was built by Ella and Frank Foster of Philadelphia to accommodate Black travelers and famous Black entertainers — Ella Fitzgerald, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Platters, Dinah Washington, and on and on — who performed in Wildwood but were not welcome in its motels.

The building still stands, and it’s now known as the Bright Inn, which is not always the case with historic places in Wildwood, and now it has a historical marker out front that tells its story.

The plaque was dedicated July 18 by Bruce Harris, a retired Ph.D. chemist and the grandson of the Fosters, along with Wildwood Mayor Ernie Troiano, Taylor Henry of the Wildwood Historical Society, and Pary Tell of Preserving the Wildwoods.

“They decided to build the motel because there were not facilities for Black people to go to Wildwood, and have a place to stay, a place to shower, even if they were staying for a day,” said Harris, who is writing a book about his late grandparents’ motel and about the Jim Crow era in New Jersey.

“Both of them had a very clear vision of what they wanted to achieve,” he said. “They were two Black people who came from very poor, modest backgrounds. They wanted to run a first class motel that both Black and white people would be impressed with.”

His grandfather insisted that each room have a private bathroom, a departure from the rooming houses and motels of the day, where the bathrooms were down the hall, Harris said.

Even into the 1970s, Harris remembers working at the front desk late at night, waiting for the inevitable appearance of travelers turned away elsewhere.

“I did everything from pulling weeds in the yard to sweeping up in the courtyard, to sitting in the office when I had to,” said Harris, a resident of St. Petersburg, Fla. “I checked people in.

“Black families would make reservations at white motels, and they would show up and find out they didn’t have reservations,” Harris said. “The white motels would send them to us, sometimes late at night. I would have to clean out a room.”

His grandparents both came from humble beginnings, Harris said, Ella from Florence, S.C., and Frank from Pocomoke City on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Ella was the daughter of a Black mother and a white father who was a shop owner in Florence. Her father drowned when she was six months old, and she and her grandmother moved to Philadelphia. She met Frank on Jewelers Row, where he worked for Sol Mintz and was the only Black man working on Jewelers Row, Harris says.

Ella worked at the Royal Theater at 1524 South St., a renowned center of Black entertainment and culture in Philadelphia, where she met Black entertainers and others who spoke about not being able to find accommodations at the Shore. She and Frank purchased an apartment building on West Roberts Avenue, tore it down, and built the Elfra Court Motel.

They later moved a cottage to a lot across the street, and built a pool for motel guests. Although Frank hoped it would be a motel that accommodated both Black and white people, Harris said it did not turn out that way, for the most part.

“White Canadians would come and stay,” Harris said. “Usually when white Americans came mistakenly, they didn’t know it was a Black motel, they would not stay. Or if they stayed, they stayed one night until they could find another place to go to.”

People who stayed at the Elfra Court included famed musicians and musical groups like Fitzgerald, Washington, Robinson and the Miracles, Fats Domino, Brook Benton, Roy Hamilton, the Drifters, the Platters, the doo-wop group the Chords (“Sh-boom”), the Four Tunes, pianist and organist Bill Doggett, the drummer Cozy Cole, and the Drinkard Ensemble, including Cissy Houston, Whitney’s mother.

This was Wildwood’s early rock and roll and doo-wop heyday, when groups performed in clubs and bars into the wee hours, their music cross-pollinating over racial lines.

Bill Haley and his Comets, the story goes, remade the band from the Saddlemen and debuted his “Rock Around the Clock” in 1954 in Wildwood, having first encountered the frantic energy of Black groups in Wildwood’s clubs and bars like the Treniers, who sang the enthusiastic “Everything’s Wild in Wildwood.“ (”Of course you can go to Atlantic City ... If you really want to have a ball, just come Wildwood, and that’s all.”)

But while the music was cross-pollinating, the accommodations were segregated, not by law but by practice.

“It was just the way things were,” Harris said. “It turns out that New Jersey had extremely strong antidiscrimination laws.”

Harris remembers his grandmother as “very warm, affectionate, a little bossy.”

“She loved her grandchildren,” Harris said. “She was always kissing us. She was tough.”

By the mid-1970s, the Fosters were ready to move on, and sold the 36-unit motel, the cottage, and other property and moved to Woodbine, N.J., where they had a big house and yard. They eventually retired to Florida. Harris’ grandfather died in 1995; his grandmother died in 2003.

And while none of the children or grandchildren were interested in the motel business, Harris wants their legacy and the story of the Elfra Court Motel to be enshrined in history. The historic marker is the first step, his book will be the next.