DL Open Thread: Saturday, July 30, 2022

But the history of a radical and diverse TV show clashes with the story of amusement parks in America. The 1875 Civil Rights Act included a line mandating equal access to public accommodations, but the supreme court wound up undermining the latitude to enforce that law.

This meant that at the 1904 World’s Fair, which was held in St Louis in conjunction with a disastrous summer Olympics, put Black and brown bodies on display. A group of African pygmies branded savages were showcased in a hollow that had a walkway over the top so white visitors could point down and laugh. A year later one of the men in the exhibition, Otis Benga, was relegated to a Bronx Zoo display cage.

Amusement parks as we know them today, says Victoria Wolcott, a University of Buffalo history professor whose 2012 book Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters takes in the dark arc of public leisure space in the US, “emerged at the nadir of race relations”, as the country was segueing out of reconstruction into segregation. The parks were often marketed with dog whistles like “clean” or “safe”, and they stationed sentinels at their gates to enforce the whites-only policy. If a Black family did happen on to the grounds in these early days, they could expect to be beaten bloody for their mistake.

At Coney Island, park operators made games out of brutality. The park, like many in the US in the early 20th century, had an attraction called the African Dodger, in which white ticket holders would attempt to hit baseballs at the heads of actual Black people – a number of whom suffered broken noses, teeth and other serious injuries.

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