Black History Month: honoring the people, places, & stories that shaped coastal communities

Black History Month offers a powerful opportunity to honor the people, places, and stories that have shaped our coastal communities in ways both visible and overlooked. Along the shores of New Jersey and beyond, Black leaders, artists, workers, and families built vibrant cultural landscapes, advanced movements for freedom, and transformed local and national history.

From beaches that fostered joy and resilience during segregation to museums, parks, and cultural centers preserving legacies of artistry, activism, and maritime heritage, these sites remind us that the coast is more than a scenic backdrop — it is a living archive of Black excellence, endurance, and imagination.

Chicken Bone Beach, Atlantic City, NJ
Chicken Bone Beach stands as one of Atlantic City’s most significant cultural landmarks, a stretch of shoreline where Black families, musicians, and entrepreneurs carved out joy and community during an era of enforced segregation.

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From the 1930s through the 1960s, this beach became a vibrant hub of leisure and artistry, drawing legendary performers who would play late‑night sets in nearby clubs before relaxing on the sand by day. It offered safety, belonging, and celebration at a time when Black visitors were excluded from other parts of the city’s famous boardwalk and beaches. The stories held in this shoreline—of resilience, creativity, and collective pride—anchor it as a defining site in the history of the Jersey coast.
 
Its importance during Black History Month is both symbolic and deeply practical. Chicken Bone Beach embodies the ways Black communities shaped coastal culture, tourism, and the arts even while navigating exclusion. Honoring it means recognizing the generations who built Atlantic City’s musical and social legacy, from jazz icons to local families who made the beach a sanctuary. It also invites a broader understanding of coastal history—one that includes the full spectrum of people who shaped it—and reinforces the ongoing work of preserving Black cultural spaces along the shore.

Harriet Tubman Museum, Cape May, NJ
The Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May stands as one of the most powerful coastal landmarks of Black history, rooted in the lived presence and leadership of Harriet Tubman herself. In the early 1850s, Tubman lived and worked in Cape May, earning wages that helped fund her rescue missions along the Underground Railroad. At the time, Cape May’s bustling maritime economy and active abolitionist community made it a critical hub for organizing and resistance.

Through artifacts, oral histories, and storytelling, the museum preserves Tubman’s time in Cape May and illuminates the broader network of free Black residents, church leaders, and allies who supported freedom seekers moving north. Its significance lies in how it reframes the shoreline as a landscape of liberation. Cape May was not only a seaside resort—it was a corridor of freedom. Honoring this site during Black History Month reminds us that coastal communities were central to some of the most courageous acts of resistance in American history.

Bayshore Center at Bivalve, NJ: Black Oyster Farmer Exhibit
At the Bayshore Center at Bivalve, the Black Oyster Farmer exhibit restores a vital chapter of Delaware Bay history by honoring the generations of Black watermen whose labor and expertise shaped the region’s maritime economy. For more than a century, Black oystermen worked the schooners, captained vessels, shucked oysters in the sheds, and sustained the cultural and economic backbone of the bay—often without recognition.

Through photographs, oral histories, and artifacts, the exhibit brings these stories forward, reframing the working waterfront as a place of skill, stewardship, and community. Its importance during Black History Month lies in how it expands our understanding of who built and cared for these shorelines. By centering Black maritime workers, the exhibit challenges historical erasure and highlights the deep connections between labor, ecology, and justice along the Delaware Bayshore.

Shirley Chisholm State Park, Brooklyn, NY
Shirley Chisholm State Park honors the legacy of one of the most influential political figures in American history in the community that shaped her fearless leadership. As the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress — and the first Black candidate and woman to seek a major party’s presidential nomination — Chisholm transformed American politics through her unwavering commitment to representation and justice.

Built on reclaimed land overlooking Jamaica Bay, the park embodies Chisholm’s belief that every community deserves access to beauty, green space, and opportunity. Its significance to Black History Month lies in how it connects political power to place. The park stands as a living tribute to civic transformation, reminding visitors that the coast is not only a site of environmental restoration, but also a landscape where leaders reshaped the nation’s understanding of who belongs in public life.

Count Basie Center for the Arts, Red Bank, NJ
The Count Basie Center for the Performing Arts in Red Bank celebrates the enduring legacy of one of jazz’s most influential bandleaders while serving as a cultural anchor for the community that shaped him. Born just blocks from the theater, William James “Count” Basie carried the rhythms of Red Bank into a global career that transformed American music.

Today, the center honors that legacy by fostering creativity, performance, and arts education—ensuring that Basie’s spirit of swing, innovation, and excellence continues to thrive on the Jersey Shore. Its importance during Black History Month lies in how it connects a local coastal story to a national cultural movement, highlighting the power of Black artistry to shape American identity and sound.

Together, these sites tell a fuller story of our coast—one rooted in creativity, resistance, labor, leadership, and community. Honoring them during Black History Month deepens our understanding of coastal history and affirms that these shorelines have always been places where Black lives, culture, and contributions mattered—and continue to matter today.