Rebellion on the 4th of July: A Brief History of the Asbury Park Riots, July 1970

Justin Montana

In the 1960s, social rebellion was a constant. All across the country, African Americans, women, members of the LGBTQ community and marginalized groups, more generally, were fighting for basic human rights. While these battles for justice in the North are mostly connected to places such as Newark and Detroit, urban rebellion occurred in Asbury Park, New Jersey as well. It was at the beginning of the 1970s when Asbury Park became a notable part of the Civil Rights Movement. The “Asbury Park Riots” that took place on July 4, 1970 is a little-known event in U.S. history. While the rebellious actions take place over only four days, the impact of this rebellion has become an important part of Asbury Park’s history.

To better understand how the events of that 1970s summer came to occur, we must go back and examine Asbury Park during World War II. At that point in time, several facilities in both the city itself and the greater Monmouth County area had been converted into military training facilities, and the Signal Corps branch at Fort Monmouth had been recruiting new members as well. This, alongside other opportunities presenting themselves, resulted in a large number of young, educated, and highly skilled African Americans coming to the area at once, many of whom chose to stay after their training was complete. Asbury Park’s population was increasing by the thousands during this era, with a large majority of the new residents being African American. However, problems quickly arose when it came to housing these new residents, as Central New Jersey was strictly segregated at this time through real estate regulations. This meant that African Americans in Asbury Park had to live in very specific locations such as the neighborhood commonly referred to as “West Side.” These areas were sometimes described as “blighted” with much poorer living conditions, as well as fewer jobs and recreational activities for the youth who lived there.

It is on this stage that the incident known as the “Asbury Park Riot” took place on July 4, 1970. The rebellion began with a group of Black youths, after a late-night dance, began throwing rocks and bottles at one another—a fairly common recreational practice at the time. At some point in the night, one of these projectiles reportedly struck a stopped car. While the initial damage was likely accidental, it spurred on the group to start assaulting other vehicles passing by, with more joining them as other late-night events began finishing and more youths flooded out onto the city streets. By the early morning, a rebellion had begun. Subsequently, the Asbury Park police force was called to respond. While there had been no known injuries that night, a fire had been lit within the West Side community. Over the next three days, the rebellion continued, not only becoming more intense than before, but also more coordinated. The initial destruction was seemingly more wanton, vandalizing cars and breaking storefront windows with no regard for who they belonged to. However, by the third day of the rebellion, on July 7, those involved were specifically targeting white businesses. The 7th has additional significance to the events of the rebellion, as it was then that a group of Black leaders from the West Side appeared before Asbury Park’s governing council. At this meeting, the West Side community presented a list of demands that included the completion of urban renewal and increased jobs for both adults and youth of the area. This came to a head on the very next day, the 8th of July, when the council came forward and announced they would only agree to some of the more mundane demands.

The rebellion reached a peak on the night of the 8^th when the police, while in pursuit, began firing upon the group of nearly 100 Black youths. While the officers claim to have fired above the crowd to dissuade them from attacking, nearly 50 people were admitted to the hospital with bullet wounds all of them having been among the fleeing crowd. This mass hospitalization marked the ending of the incident known as the “Asbury Park Riots.” When discussing the reasons behind these events opinions were split, even at the time. On one hand, many white people saw these actions as mindless rioting by the Black community as the letters to the mayor contained in the Joseph F. Mattice Papers located at Duke University Library clearly suggest.

Joseph F. Mattice, mayor at the time of the Asbury Park Riots, was very public in his belief that the fault lay entirely with the African American youths. He also made an effort to blame West Side community leaders. All of the measures he took were active attempts to stamp down on the Black community including issuing a curfew and calling in state troopers to bolster the local police. Many people wrote in to Mayor Mattice, not to inquire as to why the riots were happening, but to demand the destruction of the Black community in retribution. In contrast, there were also those who saw the rioting as a revolt against the systems that failed them. This is especially spurred on by looking at the events of the 8th, where the rebellion only began after it was made clear that the demands of the community were not going to be met. Discussion even extended outside of the state, with event coverage appearing in the New York Times and in the famed African American newspaper Chicago Daily Defender. The Black press specifically called out the failures of both the infrastructure and the police as the main causes of the rioting.

Justin Montana is a graduate student in history in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University