License to Operate an "African Dip" Dunk Tank

Seaside Heights, New Jersey: Borough of Seaside Heights, New Jersey, 1941.

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Hardcover. Single partially printed document. 8" x 4½". Printed rectos only. Blank spaces filled in with type and signed by Borough Clerk Mary Tindall and Mayor J. Stanley Tunney. License made out to Fred Pettit, listed in the 1940 census as the proprietor of an amusement park. Several light creases and a couple of paperclip marks, very good. The African Dip was a racist carnival attraction which featured a Black man in a dunk tank, whose job was to heckle customers into throwing balls in order to spring the mechanism that would dump him into the tank. Organizations such as the NAACP attempted to stop the practice without success, but eventually the popularity of the "sport" fell out of fashion as the Civil Rights Movement progressed, replaced by less "racially specific" dunk tanks that still exist today. Scarce.

Item #548762

Status: On Hold

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Item #548762 License to Operate an "African Dip" Dunk Tank