William Miller
resident of Ocean City · active 1939
An elderly Black man living in Ocean City in January 1939, and the only Black resident of the town named anywhere in the year's twenty-five council minutes. The minute of 17 January 1939 reads: 'Question of Wm Miller old colored man needing sending to an institution was taken up and Secretary got in touch with Commissioner Spencer Franklin who directed that city get two doctors to examine Miller and call Miss Riggen and have her send necessary papers.' He is not mentioned again.
In the record (2)
1939 · 1939-01-17
The first item of Ocean City business about a named Black resident in 1939 was what to do with an old man the town wanted institutionalised
The minute of 17 January 1939 records, between a fire-truck delegation and a list of building permits: 'Question of Wm Miller old colored man needing sending to an institution was taken up and Secretary got in touch with Commissioner Spencer Franklin who directed that city get two doctors to examine Miller and call Miss Riggen and have her send necessary papers.' Nothing further about William Miller appears in any of the twenty-five 1939 minutes.
Fifteen words of description and a procedure. The town knew his name, knew he was old, knew he was Black, and moved straight to two doctors and the necessary papers - and then the record closes over him. He is the only Black resident of Ocean City named in the whole 1939 minute book, and he is named in order to be removed from it.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1940 · 1940-11-29
Measured negative: for the first year since 1937, no Black person, business or institution appears anywhere in Ocean City's council minutes
All twenty page images of all fifteen 1940 documents were read for any reference to a Black applicant, resident, business or institution. There is none. Charles C. Richards, refused a permit for a Colored Recreation Hall on 22 November 1938, does not appear; nor does any successor application, appeal or sequel. The colored dance hall of South Ocean City does not appear. The Henry Hotel does not appear. The Jackson Mission, which took the last permit of 1939 to raise its building twenty-four feet, does not appear - the only Jackson in the year is a man refused leave to put a windmill east of the Boardwalk, of whom the clerk records nothing but the surname. William Miller, 'an old colored man' the council discussed in 1939, does not appear. By contrast the year records four building hearings, five named election judges, three delegations, an advertising committee of eight and roughly seventy other named people. — 1942 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Confirmed, and its argument is now much better supported. This fact's theTake says the absence 'is not evidence that anyone left; the 1940 census is the instrument for that, not the minute book.' The census has now been read in full, and it settles the point: in the same twelve months in which the council's book named no Black person, federal enumerators walking the same streets wrote down ten Black households on one sheet of the town proper and a dozen sheets of them across the bay. The silence is a property of the record, not of the population.
1937, 1938 and 1939 each put at least one Black name or institution into this book - a hotel on the mayor's own building list, a refused recreation hall, an old man the council had to decide what to do with, a mission raising its roof. 1940 puts none. The absence is not evidence that anyone left; the 1940 census is the instrument for that, not the minute book. What it is evidence of is that the only way a Black resident of Ocean City reached the town's written record was by needing something from it, and in 1940 nobody asked.
The Henry HotelCharles C. Richards
Source · checked 2026-08-11