Chicken Bone Beach Collection

Chicken Bone Beach Collection

The beach from Missouri Avenue to Mississippi Avenue in front of the Atlantic City Convention Hall was where African Americans could enjoy the Atlantic City Beach from the 1930s until the early 1950s. This segregated beach came to be known as Chicken Bone Beach, as families and visitors arrived for a day at the beach with chicken dinners packed in picnic baskets because the nearby Boardwalk restaurants were off-limits to them. African American visitors to Chicken Bone Beach included Sammy Davis, Jr., Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, the Club Harlem showgirls, Jackie Robinson, Lena Horne, and Sugar Ray Robinson. Musicians would hold impromptu concerts on the stretch, while children and adults splashed in the ocean and played on the sand. The Atlantic City Beach Patrol employed an all-black patrol that guarded Chicken Bone Beach at Missouri. The City of Atlantic City designated Chicken Bone Beach as a local historic site on August 6, 1997.