"The Slightest Semblance of Unruliness": Steamboat Excursions, Pleasure Resorts, and the Emergence of Segregation Culture on the Potomac River

Abstract

After he assumed management of the Potomac riverside resort Notley Hall in 1901, Lewis Jefferson, an African American businessman, general contractor, and real estate developer from southwest Washington, DC, set out to rid the resort of its unsavory reputation. For years the resort, a popular destination for black riverboat excursion par ties, been labeled by white Washingtonians for the reported violence and debauchery of its guests and their frequent confrontations with the city's harbor patrol. Over the next several years, Jefferson worked to transform Notley Hall into a family-oriented amusement park. He renamed the resort Washington Park, closed the bar, instituted a code of conduct, and installed a roller coaster, carousel, penny arcade, and fortune-telling tent, among other modern attractions. Jefferson hoped to provide black Washingtonians of all backgrounds and persuasions a recreational space they could be proud of, one without the closed gates and hostile stares they confronted daily both in the city and on the river. I have given you an up-to-date wharf, where before you but an old coal shed, he reminded prospective guests. Now it is modern, thoroughly lighted by electric lights and all of the modern improvements. There is no Jim Crow entrance and you are not subject to the humiliation of a practical quarantine.1 Yet removing the stigma of Razor Beach from the minds of both white racists and black reformers required more than a mere structural face-lift. Although confrontations between black patrons and white police officers at Notley Hall diminished considerably within a few years after Jefferson began running it, the place was still seen as a magnet for the bawdier elements of black Washington. His white competitors spread malicious and libelous stories that the excursion steamer River Queen, which ferried guests to Not ley Hall, had been made, at different times, a cock pit, and a prize ring where drunken