From Segregation to Celebration: How Atlantic City’s Chicken Bone Beach Became a Symbol of Resilience

ATLANTIC CITY — The name was intended to demean.

Henrietta Shelton says the people who gathered on Atlantic City's segregated Missouri Avenue Beach decided instead to make it their own.

“We always managed to change lemon into lemonade,” Shelton said.

Today, the stretch of sand historically known as Chicken Bone Beach is recognized on the New Jersey Black Heritage Trail, while the foundation Shelton helped create carries its history forward through jazz, youth music education and cultural programs.

But understanding why that work matters requires understanding what Chicken Bone Beach actually was.

“Chicken Bone Beach was a beach in Atlantic City, right in front of Caesars, Missouri Avenue,” Shelton, co-founder of the Chicken Bone Beach Historical Foundation, said during an appearance on Off the Press with Scott Cronick on WOND.

During the era of segregation, Shelton said, that was the portion of Atlantic City's beach where Black residents and visitors were directed.

“That's the only beach that they could go to if they were on the Boardwalk,” Shelton said.

Atlantic City Free Public Library historical records say the segregated stretch extended from Missouri to Ohio avenues and was used by African Americans from about 1900 until the early 1950s.

Where the Name Came From

Shelton said Black visitors arriving in Atlantic City faced discrimination that extended beyond the beach.

Vacationers could not be certain which restaurants would serve them.

“When those people was on vacation and came to Atlantic City to go on the beach, they couldn't stop by any restaurant,” Shelton said. “They never knew what restaurant would serve them.”

So families brought food.

“Chicken would last for a very long time in the sun,” Shelton said. “So they would fry chicken very well, and they would bring that and bring food because, again, the restaurants wouldn't accept them.”

Shelton said the nickname apparently arose from chicken bones found after beachgoers left.

“They gave it that derogatory name of Chicken Bone Beach,” Shelton said.

Historical accounts support the connection between picnic baskets filled with chicken dinners and the name eventually associated with the Missouri Avenue beach.

But Shelton said the people who actually spent their summers there refused to allow an insulting nickname to define their experience.

“We accept the derogatory name because to us, it was a family atmosphere,” Shelton said. “It was fun. It was relaxation. It was meeting new people.”

“We loved it so much it wasn't a slander,” she said.

A Beach Filled With Black History

Chicken Bone Beach became much more than a segregated strip of sand.

It became a gathering place.

Shelton recalled enormous crowds and prominent visitors.

“It was as many as 4,000 or 5,000 people that come in,” she said.

Among the famous people Shelton remembers being associated with the beach were Sammy Davis Jr. and Martin Luther King Jr.

Other historical accounts identify visitors including Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Jackie Robinson, Lena Horne and Sugar Ray Robinson. Musicians who performed in Atlantic City's thriving Black entertainment district could sometimes be found socializing on the beach the following day.

For Shelton, however, the significance is as much about the thousands of ordinary families who gathered there as the celebrities.

“Because we were having so much fun and so many people of all colors,” Shelton said, the nickname ultimately came to represent something very different to the community than what those who coined it had intended.

“We always managed to change lemon into lemonade,” she said.

“We're very strong, resilient people,” Shelton said.

Preserving a History Some Didn't Want to Discuss

Decades later, Shelton worried that history could disappear.

The idea for what became the Chicken Bone Beach Historical Foundation came after Shelton and her granddaughter visited Martha's Vineyard and saw efforts to commemorate the Inkwell, another historically Black beach.

Shelton returned to Atlantic City and approached her brother, Gene Wallace.

“I said, ‘Let's do the same thing for Chicken Bone Beach,’” Shelton recalled.

They began with T-shirts.

But Shelton said preserving the history wasn't universally popular.

“A lot of African-American people, even Time Magazine — they're crazy bringing up segregated beach,” Shelton recalled of the reaction. “People don't want to hear about that. So I had a tough time.”

The shirts carried a poem written by Shelton's brother-in-law. Shelton said that once people read it and understood what the organization was trying to accomplish, attitudes changed.

“They loved it and they would buy T-shirts,” she said.

The foundation says it was formally established in the 1990s to preserve the history of the segregated beach while using jazz as a means of bringing people together. Its stated mission is to create pride in Black heritage while educating young people, residents and visitors about African American history and jazz.

Jazz Becomes the Bridge

Shelton chose jazz deliberately.

The foundation developed youth camps and eventually began staging free concerts at Kennedy Plaza.

Shelton describes straight-ahead jazz as an art form built around improvisation — musicians expressing themselves individually while remaining part of the group.

“I want them to learn how to be able to communicate with other people,” Shelton said of the children learning jazz, “but still come back and actually join the whole group and create something beautiful like that.”

She sees a parallel between the music and Chicken Bone Beach itself.

“If you come and look at our crowd, it's very integrated,” Shelton said.

Jazz, she said, historically had an unusual ability to bring audiences together even when much of American society remained segregated.

“Jazz always managed, that type of jazz always managed to have a very diverse group of people come and enjoy the music,” Shelton said.

“It was created here in America,” she added. “It's all over the world now.”

Now Part of New Jersey's Black Heritage Trail

This summer brought another milestone.

On June 25, state and Atlantic City officials joined the Chicken Bone Beach Historical Foundation to unveil a New Jersey Black Heritage Trail marker at Missouri Avenue and the Boardwalk.

It is the first Black Heritage Trail marker installed in Atlantic City and the 16th physical marker installed statewide, according to the city and New Jersey Historical Commission. Chicken Bone Beach is among 77 sites approved for inclusion in the statewide trail.

The Black Heritage Trail was created under legislation signed in 2022 to increase awareness of places and events important to Black history in New Jersey.

Shelton could barely contain her pride when discussing the recognition.

“Chicken Bone Beach has been nominated as number 77th of the Black Heritage Trail at the state of New Jersey,” Shelton said during the interview.

“We just had this huge, beautiful state plaque,” she said. “And we're the first one in Atlantic City to be on that heritage trail for the state of New Jersey.”

“So I'm proud of that also, Jesse.”

The state's records clarify that Chicken Bone Beach is one of 77 approved sites, rather than necessarily the 77th site chronologically. Its marker was the 16th physically installed.

Nearly a century after Black visitors were told where they could and could not enjoy Atlantic City's beach, the place where they gathered is now officially marked as a site worthy of preservation.

For Shelton, that's consistent with what Chicken Bone Beach has represented all along.

“They thought that was going to be derogatory, slander to us,” she said.

Instead, generations later, the name remains — attached not simply to segregation, but to the families, music and community that flourished despite it.

“We always managed to change lemon into lemonade,” Shelton said.