To a tourist visiting the Asbury Park beachfront, it really could seem like a paradise. The boutique hotels and luxury high-rises blended among century-old Beaux Arts buildings and legendary music halls. The energy of diverse crowds splashing in the waves and mingling along the restaurant-lined boardwalk.
And therein lies the paradox. With the passing of each day and ribbon-cutting for every redevelopment project, Asbury Park’s history with racial discrimination and civil unrest fades further from collective memory and becomes harder to believe for the unacquainted.
A team of Monmouth University researchers is working to preserve that history through the “Paradoxical Paradise” project, led by Associate Professor of African American History Hettie V. Williams of the Department of History and Anthropology. The group has assembled a growing online library of archival documents and photos, newly compiled GIS maps, oral histories, podcasts and other multimedia, all of which are publicly accessible at paradoxicalparadise.com.
Williams said New Jersey is “the Georgia of the North” in terms of the depth of its history with civil rights issues and observed that Asbury Park offers a unique case study within the state due to past segregation at its beaches and tourist businesses. Although some attention has been given to racial issues through the lens of Asbury Park’s music culture, Williams said little research has sought a broader understanding of the community.
“It hasn’t been studied by a lot of scholars,” Williams said. “The riots haven’t even been studied a great deal, and they were one of the largest in the state, if not the country.”
The website contains several news articles and photos from the time of the city’s 1970 riots, but some of the most unique insights come from the personal records of Joseph F. Mattice, the mayor of that era. With the support of a UCI grant, Williams was able to access archival documents, letters, photos and other resources related to the riots from Mattice’s collection and has been working with students to add excerpts online. The original materials are housed at Duke University.
“They bought them on eBay for about $450,” Williams recalled. “When I learned that I said to myself, those archives should be at Monmouth.”
Williams encourages any community members with historic documents that can add to the project to contact the team. Materials can be stored on campus or scanned and returned to their owners.
COVID-19 Impacts
The chief focus of the work funded by the UCI grant was the pandemic’s impacts on the city’s African American community. Elements of that work include:
- Specialist Professor of Public History Melissa Ziobro led students Gillian Demetriou, Kelly Dender, and Vincent Sauchelli in conducting nine interviews with residents, business owners, nonprofit representatives and others to record their perspectives on the pandemic. Transcripts of these oral histories will be added to the website in the fall.
GIS Program Director Geoffrey Fouad and student Lissette Peña produced interactive maps depicting percentages of Black and white residents by Census tract in Monmouth County who are uninsured and below the poverty level. Both factors could contribute to disparities in infection rates or treatments.- Williams conducted three episodes of the Black and African Diaspora Forum United (BADFU) “This Week in Black History, Society and Culture” podcast series with guests who shared their stories on COVID-19’s impacts in the Black community. The podcasts were produced by student Max Adolph.
Among the standout moments from the podcasts, Williams said, was a discussion with longtime resident and community activist Felicia Simmons on the gaps the pandemic created in educational quality for low-income families who struggled to adjust to virtual schooling.
“The school’s first response was to create ditto packets to give to parents. When they finally got tablets for them, there were no instructions for how to work the technology,” Williams said. “We assume everyone has a cellphone, everyone has a tablet, but that’s not the case if you can’t afford it.”
The team plans to seek additional grants to continue building the website. Among the content currently planned or underway are interactive story maps that show stops in Asbury Park that appeared in “The Green Book” and journal articles based on the information gathered through the project.
The UCI grant also funded the work of Michelle Lippman and Justin Montana, both students in the graduate program in history at Monmouth. Montana worked with Williams to sort through the more than 200 files from the Duke collection add excerpts to the website and authored a blog post on the Asbury Park riots. Lippman assisted with research and authored a blog post on the history of Asbury Park.
For more information on Paradoxical Paradise, email hwilliam@monmouth.edu. Twitter users can also follow @ParadoxicalPar2 for project updates.
Monmouth University student Johanna Vonderhorst recently completed a paper titled “
Through CLONet, university scientists and students have trained and equipped community members to sample Monmouth County’s beach-adjacent lakes for properties such as temperature, salinity, clarity and dissolved oxygen levels, then file their readings into an online database. Since the summer of 2019, citizen scientists have been sampling Deal Lake, Fletcher Lake, Lake Como, Lake Takanassee, Sunset Lake, Sylvan Lake and Wesley Lake. Monmouth students and scientists have supplemented the data by regularly sampling the same bodies, along with Silver Lake, Spring Lake, Sylvan Lake and Wreck Pond.
The UCI has awarded three Faculty Enrichment Grants for projects that will research whether sea level rise has impacted Jersey Shore home values, how engagement in climate activism influences young people’s social views and identities, and the psychological benefits of experiencing nature.
The Urban Coast Institute (UCI) has formed a Faculty Advisory Council to provide it with guidance and new perspectives for enhancing academic and student engagement at Monmouth University. The inaugural council includes 13 members representing a broad spectrum of academic disciplines and departments across campus.
Monmouth University Endowed Associate Professor of Marine Science Jason Adolf contributed the article “What is a harmful algal bloom (HAB) and why do they form?” to the summer issue of ANJEC Report, published by the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions. The piece offers a scientific explanation of the types of phytoplankton that cause HABs and how these organisms can harm wildlife and humans who come in contact with them. 
When Fesselmeyer examined the accuracy of calls for 18,907 MLB games played between 2007 and 2017, he discovered a clear inverted U-pattern. Umpire accuracy was 86.3% when the temperature was below 50 degrees; 86.4% for temperatures between 50 and 60 degrees; 86.6% for temperatures between 70 and 80 degrees; peaked at 86.9% accuracy for temperatures between 80 and 90 degrees; and fell to 86.5% for temperatures between 90 and 95 degrees. Accuracy was lowest, 85.9%, when the temperature was higher than 95 degrees.
Eric V. Hull currently serves as a visiting professor of law at Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law. Professor Hull has published widely on animal law, environmental law, ocean and coastal law, and maritime law topics, with an emphasis on climate change and the impacts of pollution on ocean and coastal systems, human health, and the environment. His scholarship has been published in many of the leading environmental law journals and his work on the management of marine resources in U.S. waters is included in an international text on ocean and coastal governance. His article on ocean acidification was peer-nominated as one of a top environmental and land use law articles and was included in the seminal text on ocean acidification. Professor Hull teaches courses in administrative law, animal law, civil procedure, climate change law and policy, environmental law, environmental and toxic torts, environmental justice, ocean and coastal law, property law, and zoning. He has taught internationally in Costa Rica, France, and Korea. In addition to holding a juris doctor degree, he holds an undergraduate degree in biology, and graduate degrees in marine biology and coastal zone management. He also holds an LL.M. degree in environmental and land use law.