Asbury Park South

Stettheimer painted Asbury Park South in 1920, after visiting the segregated New Jersey beach with author and Harlem Renaissance-patron Carl Van Vechten. Asbury Park has a long, checkered history when it comes to segregation, with its beaches forming something of a stage upon which the city’s racist policies played out. Local Black activists fought segregation on the beaches for decades, achieving incremental gains throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Though over time laws were changed, and the city publicly disavowed discrimination on the basis of race in the 1930’s, Black visitors to the beaches continued to face discrimination, mistreatment and violence for decades.