Free the Beaches: The Story of Ned Coll and the Battle for America's Most Exclusive Shoreline

by Andrew W. Kahrl

Overview

The story of our separate and unequal America in the making, and one man’s fight against it

During the long, hot summers of the late 1960s and 1970s, one man began a campaign to open some of America’s most exclusive beaches to minorities and the urban poor. That man was anti-poverty activist and one‑time presidential candidate Ned Coll of Connecticut, a state that permitted public access to a mere seven miles of its 253‑mile shoreline. Nearly all of the state’s coast was held privately, for the most part by white, wealthy residents.

This book is the first to tell the story of the controversial protester who gathered a band of determined African American mothers and children and challenged the racist, exclusionary tactics of homeowners in a state synonymous with liberalism. Coll’s legacy of remarkable successes—and failures—illuminates how our nation’s fragile coasts have not only become more exclusive in subsequent decades but also have suffered greater environmental destruction and erosion as a result of that private ownership.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300215144
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	03/20/2018
Pages:	376
Sales rank:	463,186
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Andrew W. Kahrl is associate professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia. His first book, The Land Was Ours, received the Liberty Legacy Foundation Award from the Organization of American Historians.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 New England's Sand Curtain 14

2 What Am I Doing Here? 38

3 Rats Cause Riots 68

4 Let's Share Summer 96

5 Gut Liberalism 119

6 Who the Hell Invited That Guy? 148

7 Freedom of Beach 175

8 Saving the Shore 207

9 Go Home, Ned 231

10 Welcome to Greenwich! 263

Epilogue: Nature Bats Last 289

List of Abbreviations 305

Notes 307

Acknowledgments 349

Index 353

Editorial Reviews

“A well-documented—and dispiriting—history of prejudice and inequality. . . . An unsparing exposé.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Engrossing . . . An important addition to the literature on 20th-century racism in the North.”—Library Journal

“The successes and failures of the activists give us plenty of lessons today.”—Connecticut Magazine

“Essential reading for anyone interested in the state’s history of race relations.”—The Sunday Republican

“Kahrl . . . tells this story of popular resistance to inequality with authority and verve.”—The National Book Review

“An important book.”—Tom Condon, CT Mirror

“Essential reading for historians interested in income and racial inequality, land use, and the relationship between law and social movements.”—Law and History Review

“Halfway between novelistic biography and scholarly tome, Free the Beaches is compelling in its form. . . . A gripping story. . . . Kahrl’s tour de force resides in his capacity to elevate this seemingly regional controversy to a conflict of national importance.”—Elsa Devienne, Planning Perspectives

Winner of the Homer D. Babbidge Award, sponsored by the Association for the Study of Connecticut History

Winner of the  2019 Connecticut Book Awards, non-fiction category, sponsored by Connecticut Center for the Book

“This impressively researched, eloquently written, and artfully constructed book is very important reading for anyone interested in understanding the roots of inequality in the northeast and the nation.”—Lily Geismer, author of Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party

"An illuminating and damning account of power and privilege in late twentieth-century America."—Colin Fisher, author of Urban Green: Nature, Recreation, and the Working Class in Industrial Chicago

“This is a life story brimming with humanity and a great antidote to life under global capitalism, in which privatization is all the rage. Andrew Kahrl’s book is sure to have a sorely needed humanizing effect on all its readers.”—Ted Steinberg, author of Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York

“In Free the Beaches, Andrew Kahrl not only tells the remarkable story of activist Ned Coll. He also shows that on the Connecticut shore, white liberalism and racial exclusion went hand in hand.”—Jason Sokol, author of All Eyes Are Upon Us: Race and Politics from Boston to Brooklyn

“What would it mean to broaden our view of the most important fights against segregation from a Montgomery bus to the Connecticut shore? Andrew Kahrl powerfully shows us and it's sobering: the extent Northern white families went to preserve their segregated spaces and the long fight by black and white activists like Ned Coll and Revitalization Corps to open them.”—Jeanne Theoharis, author of A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

From the Publisher

03/01/2018
Following The Land Was Ours, a 2016 monograph of the white takeover of black beaches in the South, Kahrl (history, Univ. of Virginia) completes his history of 20th-century racism as viewed through the lenses of beach access, private ownership, and public policy. This engrossing account captures the experience of Irish Catholic activist Ned Coll and a group of black families who challenged the de facto segregation of beach access policies in order to ensure that children from Connecticut's inner cities would be permitted to enjoy New England beaches. Kahrl illuminates the experience of local families who rode buses to the Connecticut shoreline in defiance of town ordinances restricting their rights to what were ostensibly public beaches, and the vocal and legal challenges by wealthy white residents to their presence. At moments inspiring and at others infuriating, Kahrl's work clearly demonstrates how seemingly benign policies of land use and home rule in the North were just as effective as Jim Crow laws in the South in maintaining segregation. VERDICT An important addition to the literature on 20th-century racism in the North. Scholars and activists alike will find much to anger and impassion them in Kahrl's work.—Bart Everts, Paul Robeson Lib., Rutgers Univ.-Camden

Library Journal

2017-12-24
How a 1960s-era campaign to open beaches to the public exposed Connecticut's deeply entrenched racism.In 1964, inspired by John Kennedy's call for "a citizenry guided by the maxim of self-sacrifice for the public good," 23-year-old Ned Coll quit his job at an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut, and started a local project that he called the Revitalization Corps. In a well-documented—and dispiriting—history of prejudice and inequality, Kahrl (History and African American Studies/Univ. of Virginia; The Land Was Ours: African American Beaches from Jim Crow to the Sunbelt South, 2012) focuses on Coll's career as a brash, indefatigable anti-poverty activist to reveal endemic bigotry in a state renowned for its liberal values. Connecticut's shore—the state's Gold Coast—was dotted with wealthy communities whose residents fiercely protected private use of the beaches. Physical barriers, exorbitant access fees for nonresidents, and bans on street parking near beaches were a few of the strategies deployed to keep Connecticut's poor off the white sands. "In a state where extreme wealth and equally extreme poverty resided in close proximity," writes the author, "beach access restrictions complemented, reinforced, and helped to naturalize the barriers dividing thriving suburbs from dying cities." Along with education and housing reform, Coll focused much energy on beach access, filling buses with children from poor cities and transporting them to private beaches, devising a program like New York's Fresh Air Fund to give children a chance to live with white families for a portion of the summer, and mounting repeated lawsuits. The push for beach access spawned a nationwide movement: between 1964 and 1974, Kahrl discovered, "federal and state courts decided at least twenty-six cases involving disputes over public rights on beaches" in which white communities argued vociferously for their entitlement. Despite many successes, Coll never took on the challenge of "dismantling the structures" and institutions that perpetuate racial inequality, and he became increasingly "unhinged, reckless, and counterproductive" as he lost the public's respect.An unsparing exposé of white supremacy among Northern elites.

Kirkus Review

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