Ashby, George (b. Jan. 25,1844; d. Apr. 29, 1946). Farmer and soldier. In August 1864, Burlington-born George Ashby, an African American living in Crosswicks, enlisted as a private in the Forty-fifth United States Colored Infantry. He served in Virginia and Texas until mustered out in November 1865 as first sergeant of the Forty-fifth Colored Infantry’s Company H. In January 1944 a reporter interviewed the old veteran, who predicted an Allied victory in World War II and stated that if he could, he "would enlist all over again.” When Sgt. George Ashby died in Allentown in 1946, he was the last surviving New Jersey Civil War veteran.
Ashby, William (b. Oct. 15,1889; d. May 17, 1991). Social worker. William Ashby, New Jersey’s first African American social worker, was born in Virginia to freeborn blacks who owned their own property, and later moved to Roselle, New Jersey. He earned a degree in social work from Yale University in 1916. Returning to Newark, he worked to improve black life in New Jersey in an era when racial discrimination in employment and housing was rampant. A superb teacher of history who devoted much of his life to the pursuit of social justice and an end to racial discrimination, Ashby authored Tales without Hate, a notable collection of stories detailing black life in New Jersey.
William Ashby, the first black social worker in the state.
Asian Indians. Americans of Asian Indian origin are a growing ethnic group in New Jersey. Although, beginning in the 1960s, many immigrants arrived in New Jersey directly from India and from Kenya, Trinidad, and England, a large percentage of the present population was born in New Jersey.
The earliest recorded emigration from India to the United States began in the nineteenth century, when workers sought construction jobs on the transcontinental railroad and agricultural jobs in California. Indians were granted citizenship, but then had it revoked in 1923 by the U.S. Supreme Court. The ruling in United States v Bhagat Singh Thind (261 US 294) stated: "It may be true that the blond Scandinavians and the brown Hindu have a common ancestor in the dim reaches of antiquity, but the average man knows perfectly well that there are unmistakable and profound differences between them today____[The law] does not employ the word ‘Caucasian’ but the words ‘white’ person…. [The intention of the Founding Fathers was to] confer the privilege of citizenship upon the class of persons [called 'white'].” Between 1924 and 1965, when immigration laws were reformed, few Indians were allowed to enter the United States.
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 169,180 Asian Indians live in New Jersey, accounting for more than 2 percent of the state’s total population and making them one of the largest ethnic minorities. New Jersey’s Asian Indian community constitutes nearly 10 percent of the nation’s total of 1.7 million Asian Indian residents.
Asian Indians reside in all of New Jersey’s communities. Middlesex County, with some 55,000 Asian Indian residents, has one of the largest concentrations, amounting to 7.3 percent of the county’s total population. Other counties with significant Asian Indian populations include Hudson (20,500 residents), Bergen (17,900), Morris (11,000), and Somerset (10,000).
Nearly nine out of ten Asian Indian children belong to two-parent families. Fewer than 2 percent of Asian Indians under the age of sixty-five receive public assistance. Given that 65 percent of Asian Indians have a college degree and that 60 percent of the women are employed, Asian Indian families enjoy one of the highest median family household incomes.
Nearly 80 percent of Asian Indians practice Hinduism, a religion with origins dating to 2500 b.c.e. Among the other religious affiliations of Asian Indians are Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Judaism.
Language, food, and culture play an important unifying role for Asian Indians. Alongside English, which most Asian Indians can read, write, and speak, various regional languages of India, like Hindi and Gujarati, are commonly used in Asian Indian households. Asian Indian food is as varied in taste, ingredients, and preparation as the different regions of India. Many Asian Indians, as practicing Hindus, are vegetarians for religious (and health) reasons.
One of the oldest secular organizations for Asian Indians is the Association of Indians in America, which was founded in 1967 in New Jersey to provide a forum for those united by the common bond of Indian heritage and American commitment. Another organization, founded in 1990, is the Indo-American Cultural Society, which holds the annual Navratri festival in Edison, New Jersey.
Assemblage art. Assemblage art is a form of three-dimensional collage in which found objects—everything from old iron chains to movie posters and Cracker Jack prizes—are combined to make sculpture. By the early 1990s, assemblage art in one form or another had become the dominant style among contemporary artists living and working in New Jersey.
As the name implies, assemblage has its roots in French art history, particularly in the collage experiments of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque nearly one hundred years ago. But the most important influence in America was Joseph Cornell (1903-1973), a recluse who lived his entire life with his mother and crippled brother in Ozone Park, Queens, New York, where he made tiny, ornate boxes filled with found objects. Dozens of New Jersey artists of the past two decades owe their original creative impulse to his work.
Similarly, in the 1980s, a group of African American artists in Newark began using assemblage to express their own cultural concerns. Ranging through the abandoned buildings and refuse-strewn lots that dotted the core of the city following its rapid decline in the late 1960s, this group—among them Yolande Skeete, Ujima Kuumba Majied, and Bisa Washington—started assembling African-tinged sculptures out of the remains of a prewar culture that was hardly African at all. The most successful was Willie Cole, a Newark native who enjoyed a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1998, showing scorch marks made on paper with old steam irons found in the streets. Cole dedicated his work to his mother, who worked as a domestic in Newark homes.
Assemblage now has a multigenerational cast. Sculptor Mel Edwards, whose forged iron chains (made from industrial debris) recall slavery, has kept a studio in Plainfield for more than twenty years; Chakaia Booker, who is from Newark, showed a mural of diced and twisted automobile tires at the Whitney Biennial for the first time in 2000.
Assemblies of God. A Pentecostal denomination established in 1914, the Assemblies of God emphasizes believers’ access to such spiritual gifts as speaking in tongues and healing. Pentecostal churches began appearing throughout New Jersey early in the twentieth century, concentrating especially in such rural counties as Cumberland. By 1955, the Assemblies had experienced sufficient growth within the state to create a separate New Jersey district for administrative purposes. Youth programs, overseas missions, and success in reaching Hispanic groups transformed the Assemblies into America’s fastest-growing denomination during the 1980s. By 2000, the Assemblies of God boasted 174 churches in New Jersey, with a membership exceeding 21,000.
Assumption College for Sisters. Founded in 1953 by the Sisters of Christian Charity, this accredited, two-year independent Catholic college in Mendham is unusual in that its mission is the education of women in religious orders at the collegiate level. The origin of this mission can be found in several historical legacies. When Pauline Von Mallinckrodt founded the Sisters of Christian Charity in Paderborn, Germany, in 1849, she expressed her belief that sisters must be educated "spiritually, academically, and culturally” in order to fulfill the goals of their missions. Von Mallinckrodt soon began a normal school for sisters within her convent. Many American congregations maintained similar schools and training programs to prepare sisters for the demands of teaching in parochial schools. Another factor in the founding of the college may be the Sister Formation movement of the 1940s and 1950s, which sought to raise the educational and professional standards of Catholic sisters in a process of renewing the vocation of the religious life. Assumption College for Sisters awards the degrees of associate of arts and associate of religious arts and also a certificate in theological studies. In 2002 the student body of thirty-one included women of many religious orders from around the world. Laypeople are permitted to attend theology and philosophy classes.
Astronomy and astrophysics. Astronomy in New Jersey has had a remarkable past. Since their founding in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Princeton and Rutgers Universities have led the way in astronomy instruction and research within the state. Early instructional efforts probably dealt only peripherally with astronomy, focusing instead on celestial mechanics and navigation. At Rutgers, astrophysics emerged as an area of active research during the Great Depression. The most significant achievement during this period was the work of Robert Atkinson, who served at Rutgers between 1929 and 1937. Atkinson laid much of the groundwork for our current understanding of energy generation in stellar interiors. His pioneering work on thermonuclear fusion in stellar interiors paved the way for Hans Bethe’s Nobel Prize in physics in 1967. Bethe, in his Nobel lecture, singled out the pioneering work of Atkinson and emphasized its influence on his own research. This question of energy generation in stellar interiors dominated much of the research by the worldwide astronomical community during the middle of the twentieth century. A number of key contributions to this then-burgeoning field were made at Princeton by Martin Schwarzschild during the 1940s and 1950s. His work explained the existence and properties of giant stars and revealed unexpected phenomena that occur during a stellar lifetime. In collaboration with fellow Princeton astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer, he pioneered the design of a fusion reactor that mimicked the astrophysical processes at work in the interior of the Sun. Spitzer, meanwhile, developed and championed the idea of putting a telescope in space, far above the blurring effects of the Earth’s atmosphere. His vision ultimately led to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Following Edwin Hubble’s discovery of the expanding universe in 1929, debate raged in the astronomical community over whether or not the universe was formed in a "big bang,” with most astronomers preferring an alternative "steady state” universe. In 1965 a team of Princeton astronomers, led by Robert H. Dicke and P.J.E. Peebles, published a landmark paper in which they pointed out that if the universe did indeed form as a result of a big bang, then it should now be permeated by microwave radiation left over from this catastrophic event. In a companion paper, Arno Penzias and Robert W. Wilson, working at Bell Labs in Holmdel, reported their detection in 1963 of this relic radiation using a microwave antenna at Crawford Hill. Their discovery was proof that the universe was born at a definite moment (about 15 billion years ago), and provided overwhelming evidence in support of the Big Bang Theory. They were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1978.
New Jersey’s contributions to astronomy have also extended into the domain of instrumentation and technology. In 1969 George Smith and Willard Boyle, also working at Bell Labs, created the first charge-coupled device, or CCD. This device—an electronic memory that can be charged by light—has probably revolutionized astronomical research more than any other single device, with the exception of the telescope itself.
The future of astronomy in the state looks bright. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a monumental effort to map one quarter of the entire sky in exquisite detail using a dedicated 2.5-meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, is based at Princeton. The survey is well under way, and is already producing a steady stream of impressive discoveries. Meanwhile, the astronomy group at
Rutgers has undergone rapid growth since the mid-1990s, an expansion that culminated with Rutgers’s participation in the design and construction of the Southern African Large Telescope. This enormous telescope, boasting a primary mirror with a diameter of 11 meters, is currently under construction at Sutherland, South Africa, and is scheduled to begin scientific operations in 2004. When completed, it will be the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere.
AT&T Corporation. American Telephone and Telegraph originated as the long distance subsidiary of the American Bell Telephone Company. Alexander Graham Bell had formed the Bell Telephone Company in 1877, a year after inventing the telephone. The firm had become American Bell in 1880 and had acquired Western Electric in 1881. In 1885 it established AT&T and opened its first longdistance line, which connected Philadelphia and New York.
Theodore J. Vail, AT&T’s first president, left the company after disagreements with its Boston-based shareholders in 1887. In 1889 AT&T became the parent company of the Bell System. With the assistance of financier J. P. Morgan, Vail returned as head in 1907. After moving the company’s headquarters from Boston to New York, Vail worked to turn its declining fortunes around. The firm opened its first transcontinental line in 1915, and by the time of America’s entry into World War I, it was on its way to becoming a model business operation.
After a period of nationalization during the war, when the firm was placed under the control of the post office, it was returned to the private sector and enjoyed decades of unprecedented growth. Assisting this growth were technological advances from Bell Labs, the firm’s development group, which had facilities in Murray Hill and later Holmdel. Western Electric maintained a large manufacturing facility in Kearny from the 1920s until the mid-1980s, and AT&T itself opened office facilities in Bedminster and Basking Ridge in the 1970s.
A 1974 lawsuit by MCI led to the breakup of the Bell System by the Department of Justice in 1984. At that time the firm’s assets totaled $155 billion, more than those of Exxon, Mobil, and General Motors combined. Despite increased competition, the firm remains a major provider of long-distance telephone service.
Atlantic Cape Community College. Located on 937 acres in Mays Landing, Atlantic Cape Community College (ACCC) serves Atlantic and Cape May counties, with branch campuses in Atlantic City and Rio Grande. ACCC was founded in 1964 as the second community college established under the New Jersey County College Act. A number of local groups recommended its establishment. In particular, the Citizens Centennial Committee on Adult Education for Atlantic City made a strong push for the establishment of a community college in the area. Two years after the New Jersey County College Act was passed, ACCC opened its doors—with approval from the county freeholders—using facilities rented from Atlantic City High School. In February 1968, the college moved to its present location in Mays Landing. Enrollment in fall 2002 was nearly six thousand students. ACCC offers thirty-seven associate degree programs and twenty-eight noncredit professional certificates and administers casino career, culinary arts, and distance education programs.
Atlantic City. 11.92-square-mile city in Atlantic County. Absecon Island, on which Atlantic City was later founded, was known to the Lenape as Absegami, or "little sea water.” In 1695 the island was purchased by Thomas Budd, a Quaker farmer. Jeremiah Leeds, who arrived in 1783 to build a cabin on the desolate island of sand dunes, mosquitoes, and black snakes, was reportedly the first European to live on it. By 1850 there were still only seven houses on Absecon.
Dr. Jonathan Pitney, a resident of Absecon village, formed a business relationship with Richard Osborne, a civil engineer from Philadelphia, and Samuel Richards, a manufacturer of glass in Wey-mouth, to develop the area by building a sixty-mile railroad from Camden. While Osborne mapped the route of the proposed railway, Pitney and Richards described to investors a vision of a "delectable” spot of summer cottages, healthful air, and restorative surf. In June 1852, thousands of Camden and Atlantic Railroad shares were sold, mainly to businessmen with factories or landholdings in the Absecon vicinity. Osborne is said to have come up with the name "Atlantic City,” and with the idea of calling the streets after oceans and states—names that would later be immortalized in the popular board game Monopoly.
Train service began in 1854, and accommodations for tourists soon sprang up, including the huge United States Hotel and the still larger Surf House. By i860 Atlantic City had a permanent population of about seven hundred, and as many as four thousand tourists could be housed and fed at one time in hotels and rooming houses. Publicity began in earnest. Dr. Lewis Reed, the town’s first resident physician, wrote: "Pneumonia and bronchitis are of infrequent origin here.” The air was said to be rich in ozone, which, boosters claimed, could cure consumption, rheumatism, laryngitis, digestive disorders, and insanity.
The laborers who hammered the tracks and built the first hotels were, for the most part, African Americans, drawn from the South by the promise of work. The first black man to settle in Atlantic City was Billy Bright, who lived on Rhode Island Avenue. Others followed quickly. From 1870 to 1885, 1,220 African Americans made permanent homes in Atlantic City; by 1885, they made up 15 percent of the town’s population. Thirty years later, blacks composed one-quarter of the population.
Atlantic City boomed in the decades after the arrival of the railroad. In i870 a wooden esplanade was built over the beach—the world’s first Boardwalk. Periodically improved and expanded, the Boardwalk became the resort’s main artery. On one side were hotels, eateries, and souvenir shops. Amusement piers jutted out from the walk’s other side. Ap-pelgate’s Pier, the first successful amusement pier, was built in i884 by James Appelgate and later purchased by showman Captain John Lake Young and his business partner, Stewart McShea. By i897 they turned the pier into Young’s Ocean Pier, which boasted a ballroom, rides, and games, and the daily net haul, which yanked strange creatures from the sea. Young presented Sarah Bernhardt, and the pier was known as the "Home of the Cakewalk.” Young’s Million Dollar Pier opened in i906 and became an immediate success. Harry Houdini appeared (and disappeared) there, Bull Moose presidential candidate Teddy Roosevelt gave a speech there in i9i2, and the pier was the site of movies, conventions, and exhibits of every description. The most celebrated of the piers, Steel Pier, opened in i898, and was billed as the "Showplace of the Nation” and gained fame, by the mid-twentieth century, as a place where visitors could see a high-diving horse and Frank Sinatra in one afternoon.
The grand hotels overlooked the piers. The most famous dated from i900 and earlier: the Dennis, the Traymore, the Marlborough-Blenheim, the Shelburne, the Brighton, the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall, and the Chelsea. Newer hotels included the Ritz-Carlton, the President, the Ambassador, and the Claridge. Each in its heyday buzzed with excitement and featured ballroom dancing, dining, and lavish furnishings.
In the era between the world wars, the city was given to spectacular events and stunts: weddings under the sea, marathon dance contests, women riding high-diving horses, men buried alive, elephants bathing in the ocean. In 1920, businessmen looking to extend the post summer season and scratch out another week of profits hit upon the idea of the Atlantic City Fall Frolic, which grew to include a Bathing Revue, Rolling Chair Parade, Night Spectacle, and an Inter-City Beauty competition. The latter evolved into the Miss America Pageant. The city boasted the world’s largest electrical sign, the largest tube of toothpaste, the largest typewriter, and the first building to be built without roof pillars or posts. The Atlantic City Auditorium, formerly Convention Hall and now known as Boardwalk Hall, opened on May 31,1929, and houses the world’s largest pipe organ.
The resort became a show business center. John Philip Sousa roused Boardwalk listeners, Abbott and Costello performed on the Steel Pier, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis first teamed up at the 500 Club, and Sammy Davis sang at the Club Harlem. New York City shows, including all the early Ziegfeld Follies, premiered in Atlantic City. The authorities tolerated illegal gambling, which flourished in back rooms.
After World War II, however, the city’s fortunes began to fade. More and more tourists flew to Florida and other destinations. By 1970 the Atlantic City tourist was likely to be poor or elderly, or both. In the 1970s the city’s poverty rate was New Jersey’s highest. The population had declined, while crime rates had increased. Legal gambling was seen as a way to revitalize the city. A referendum calling for legalization of casino gambling was placed on the state ballot in 1974. It was defeated. In 1976 a similar referendum passed. On Saturday, May 27,1978, when the first casino opened, the Atlantic City Press ran a banner headline: "Queen of Resorts Reigns Again.”
Atlantic City skyline, c. 1950.
While the casinos initially failed to prove a quick fix, the influx of funds from the Casino Redevelopment Association has provided sectional revitalization and has created new neighborhoods in what were once blighted areas. The city’s success has caused other states around the nation to consider casino gambling as a tool for urban renewal. In 2002 the city saw the start of $2 billion in planned casino and commercial development. In 2000, the city’s total population of 40,517 was 44 percent black, 27 percent white, 10 percent Asian, and 25 percent Hispanic (Hispan-ics may be of any race). The median household income was $26,969. For complete census figures, see chart, 129.
Atlantic City and Shore Railroad. Opened in 1906, the Atlantic City and Shore Railroad (AC & S) operated a high-speed trolley line between Atlantic City, Somers Point, and Ocean City, and leased the railroad-owned Atlantic Avenue trolley line, which extended the length of Absecon Island from the inlet to Longport. The company did well financially in the early years, but later the Depression and competition from automobiles, buses, and jitneys adversely affected it. In 1945, the leases ended; the railroad sold its property to the new Atlantic City Transportation Company, as did the AC & S, which was dissolved. Trolley service to Ocean City ended in 1948 and on Atlantic Avenue in 1955. New Jersey Transit took over the successor bus lines in 1985.
