Ocean City Lyceum

In the record (2)

1. 1900

   Black hotel workers organise the Ocean City Lyceum — the earliest documented Black institution in the town.

   "A literary society was organized last Thursday night by the young men of Ocean City," The Colored American of Washington reported on 21 July 1900. "Great care was exercised in the selection of officers as it is the purpose of the Association to make it unparalleled. The meeting was called to order by Mr. J. L. Honeywell, acting chairman." Officers: Robert Greene president, Alonza Mitchell vice-president, Bernard Hartgrove financial secretary, C. H. Stokes treasurer, Geo. H. Smith chaplain, C. H. Chestnut sergeant-at-arms. "Meetings will be held every Monday evening at the Ocean City chapel." The Lyceum then met all season and argued: on 4 August "much appreciation was shown the paper read by Mr. Thomas Clayton ... Mr. Clayton chose as his subject 'Industrial Education for the Negro,'" followed by "a long and pointed discussion"; on 11 August Walker White read; and "a special meeting of the Ocean City Lyceum was called Friday evening to discuss the Negro problem." Alongside it ran a Cordova Social Club (a smoker given by Cyrus St. Clair, addressed by Prof. Howells, principal of the high school at Snow Hill) and an Imperial Yachting Club. This is the first Black organisation, and the first Black chapel, this campaign has documented at Ocean City — in a corpus where the county paper's own Ocean City column names no Black residents at all. — 1900 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [reviewed]: Adds what the Lyceum did after its founding meeting, and where. It met EVERY MONDAY EVENING AT THE OCEAN CITY CHAPEL. On 4 August Thomas Clayton read a paper on 'Industrial Education for the Negro', discussed by Stokes, Honeywell, White, Cyrus St. Clair, Greene and Lewis; on 11 August Walker White read before it, with Prof. Howells, principal of the school at Snow Hill, in the audience, and the Atlantic Quartette made its first appearance on the same programme; on 18 August 'a special meeting of the Ocean City Lyceum was called Friday evening to discuss the Negro problem. The subject was handled in a very lively manner and became a target for a high political boom' - Stokes, Honeywell, White, St. Clair and Greene speaking; and on 25 August the closing meeting was announced with special music engaged and 'some literary features'. Four debates in six weeks, three of them on race and education, held by hotel waiters in a chapel. The meeting place is the finding that matters most: an 'Ocean City chapel' standing in 1900 is the first fixed Black building the campaign can place in the town with a documented use, and the obvious candidate for it is the 'new colored church in Ocean City' reported in September 1895 and never mentioned again.

   The summer waiters of the Atlantic and Congress Hall founded a debating society, met every Monday night, and argued Booker T. Washington's programme on the beach in 1900.

   James L. HoneywellRobert W. GreeneCyrus St. Clair

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

2. 1901

   The weekly Black correspondence from Ocean City stops: The Colored American runs a complete 1901 and never mentions the Maryland town.

   Through the summer of 1900 The Colored American of Washington ran a signed weekly Ocean City, Maryland column written by Black hotel workers living in the town - it named the Atlantic's twenty-six-man dining room, Congress Hall's nine-year head waiter, Cyrus St. Clair's butcher shop on Baltimore Street and the full slate of officers of the Ocean City Lyceum, and it is the only source in this campaign that gives Black residents of Ocean City names, jobs and organisations. In 1901 it stops. This pass read every one of the paper's 823 digitised pages for 1901 - fifty-one issues, 5 January to 28 December, a complete year with only 21 December missing - and there is no Ocean City, Maryland item of any kind: no column, no correspondent, no advertisement, no personal note. The paper's seaside coverage that summer went instead to Atlantic City, Ocean City N.J., Asbury Park, Narragansett, Lawnside and Buckroe Beach; its one "Ocean City Special", of 9 March, is explicitly New Jersey. The absence is a fact about the record, not proof that the Lyceum dissolved or the waiters went elsewhere - but it is measured rather than assumed, and it means the richest documented stretch of Black Ocean City has a hole in the middle of it.

   Source · checked 2026-08-11