Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1887 — THE COLOR LINE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE COLOR LINE.

It Has Been Drawn at Asbury Park—Portrait of Mr. Bradley. The sun’s rays beat down with scorching ardor on both the black and white population of Asbury Park, and despite Mr. Bradley’s fiat that the board walk, etc., was exclusively intended for the paying visitor, the colored people defy the decree, and appear as usual on board walk, boach, and pavilion, writes a correspondent from the pretty New Jersey resort. Puck, that has so humorously pictured the situation of

the color line in a recent issue, fully explains the dilemma in an amnsing sketch. There, black belle jostles her white neighbor as though to the manner and station born—equal. James A. Bradley, the founder and owner of Asbury Park, of course has a legal and moral right, as long as private ownership of land is recognized, to decide who shall and who shall not occupy bis private property. Mr. Bradley’s offending lies in the charge that be has said that large numbers of colored persons come to the beach every evening; that they monopolize the choioe seats in the pavilion ana crowd guests off the boardwalks; that some of them behave improperly, and that many try to make the walks and beach lodging places. Mr. Bradley’s words are; “The time is coming, indeed, may have arrived, when some decided action mast be taken to show our colored friends that the board-walk and tbe pavilion are private property, to which the owner invites the guests of the (hotel, aud others, whom he does not invite, will be requested in language not to be misunderstood not to interfere with tbe arrangements he has made for the ‘ permanency of the town and the protection of the capital he has invested.” Mr. Bradley manages the property that he has built, and maintains everything at his own expense. He is an acute, shrewd aud active business man, and, as the owner of Asbury Park, he has certainly a right to exclude whom and what he will.