‘Widows’ Row’ and the fate of Ocean City’s original Black community

OCEAN CITY, N.J. — Loretta Thompson Harris gets the same question all the time.

“They ask me where I come from,” Harris says. “I say Ocean City. They say, Well no, where are you from? I’ll say Ocean City. They’ll say, No, where were you born? Where did you live before you came to Ocean City? They don’t want to believe I’m from Ocean City.”

Harris, 78, retired from Atlantic City Electric’s real estate division, is, in fact, fourth generation Ocean City, a native of the Westside, the neighborhood that was the home of Ocean City’s original Black community, who first arrived at the iconic beach town in 1884 and prospered.

The neighborhood is loosely defined as between Second and 10th Streets, between Asbury and Bay Avenues.

Ocean City’s Black founders and their descendants opened the first salt water taffy shop, designed and rebuilt the city’s fishing pier after the 1962 storm, and invested in real estate. Harris’ new book, The Westside: Ocean City in True Color, documents this history.

“The city was founded in 1879 and the first person of color came in 1884,” Harris said. “The community has been a part of the city since its founding.”

Like the white Methodist founders, Harris’ ancestors came to Ocean City for religious reasons at the height of the camp meeting movement that had spread across the country, Harris said.

In Ocean City, they established the St. James AME Church at Seventh and Haven.

Between 1893 and 1911, four African American churches — Macedonia, Union Tabernacle Baptist Church, St. James, and Shiloh — opened in Ocean City within the few blocks comprising the Westside. All four are still there.

“He was a very religious person,” Harris said, of her great-grandfather, John Brooks Thompson, who arrived in Ocean City in 1900. “As I tracked the other founders, they all followed a similar path. They came by way of Salem and Cumberland Counties.”

“Based on my research, I believe he came for religious purposes.”

It is a part of Ocean City’s history, meticulously and lavishly documented in The Westside, the first of three planned volumes on the history of Ocean City’s Black community.

Harris is also planning a more personal memoir, she said.

» READ MORE: Black in Stone Harbor: Documentary tells story of 'Miracle on 81st Street'

Like a recent documentary about Stone Harbor’s Black community, Harris’ book is a recognition of the rich Black history of so many of towns on the Jersey Shore, including Stone Harbor, which in 2023 was 99.5% white.

“That long history had never been documented,” Harris said. “I just kept thinking, this needs to be done. I had accumulated so much information.”

The next volume will have four chapters: businesses and trades, racism, the beach, and the military.

“They were all affected by the racism,” said Harris, who recalls being chased by lifeguards if she and her friends strayed from what was considered Ocean City’s Black beach, between 5th and 6th Streets. “I didn’t want racism to overtake the story of the Westside, so I tried to confine it to one chapter, so that I acknowledge it and I addressed it.”

» READ MORE: Why Chef Herbie Allwood and Pamela Womble are closing one of Ocean City’s only Black-owned restaurants.

The book is filled with photos, records, family trees, charts, old newspaper clippings, and the thrilling history of a Black community that at its height, 1950, was 9% of Ocean City’s year-round population. Harris has documented more than 200 businesses that once were in this small section of town, all Black-owned.

John Sheppard Trower, a deeply religious caterer and financier from Philadelphia’s Germantown section, arrived in Ocean City in 1896, the year he made his first real estate purchase. Harris says his descendants still own property in Ocean City. Trower owned 14 properties in Ocean City, including a summer cottage at Second and West Avenues, and one in Sea Isle City.

Another early entrepreneur, the Rev. Samuel Comfort, began purchasing property in Ocean City while still a resident of Philadelphia. Comfort ultimately owned seven properties in Ocean City, including the Hotel Comfort at Second and Bay Streets, where in 1914, he hosted Booker T. Washington.

“The Right Rev. Comfort hosted parties for visitors and local elite who dined on oysters, clams, ice cream, confectioneries and homemade ginger beer,” Harris writes.

Ocean City’s first Black residents were Jacob, Mary, and Lewis Still, who moved from Burlington County and purchased a home in the 900 block of West Avenue, Harris says.

Jacob’s uncle was Philadelphia-based abolitionist William Still, who coordinated the Underground Railroad in the Philadelphia area and may have brought Harriet Tubman to Cape May, where a museum has been dedicated to her legacy.

In 1893, Jacob Still opened Still’s, a confectionery store in the Brower Building at Eighth and the Boardwalk in 1893, advertising “The best Milk Shakes on the Island, and the finest Salt Water Taffy,” which Harris says is the earliest taffy shop in Ocean City.

“The fate of Jacob’s taffy recipe is unknown,” she writes. “Oral history cannot decide whether the recipe was sold on Jacob’s deathbed or stolen.”

By 1950, there were 543 Black people in a town of 6,040.

In 1970, there were 815 recorded as the town grew to 10,575. In 2020, the population had shrunk to 288, as the year-round population was recorded at 11,065.

» READ MORE: In Cape May, the Harriet Tubman Museum is a long-awaited recognition of a rich Black and abolitionist history in the seaside resort.

“I’m just sorry it’s dwindling away,” she said. “That’s a constant refrain. Every time we have another funeral, we know that it won’t be long before you won’t be able to find anybody there. They can’t come in. They can’t pay a million for a house, not too many of them anyway. I’m trying to save what I can if it’s only the memories.”

Alvin Thompson, Harris’ uncle, was the first Black person on the beach patrol. Harris recalled the entrenched racism she encountered as a child on the Ocean City beach.

“I never saw a sign designated the Black beach,” she said. “It was enforced by the lifeguards. If we went across the jetty to the beach to the north, they would send us back. If we went back again, they’d threaten us with expulsion for the day.

“We were kids,” she said. “I don’t think we fully understood the implications of the whole thing. The white bathers would yell at us. We would laugh and run back over.”

Harris still owns her parents’ home on Haven Avenue, and her sister and cousin still live there. She lives in Marmora, on the Mainland. Her father owned a construction company that rebuilt the fishing pier and laid the foundation for the resort’s first high-rise, the Port-O-Call hotel.

Her cousin William Griffin, 80, is “the last of the Griffins. There are some Henrys left, the oldest one well into her 80s.”

“My sister is still living in what’s called the Lomax house, over 100 years old. It belonged to our grandparents.”

Her parents’ home is across from what was known as Widows’ Row, she said.

“It was a term of endearment,” Harris said. “I think in 1950, eight out of 11 houses were occupied by widows. The men in the community did what they could to help the women.”

The Westside has maintained its historic character, she said.

“It’s not like any other neighborhood in Ocean City,” she said. “So many of the old homes in Ocean City are being torn down. Unless you’re in the historic district, you have a good chance of your house being torn down and replaced by the big houses.

“On the Westside, I think we still have some of the oldest housing stock on the island,” she said. “Those houses were built around 1910.”