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Sharon Lee De La Cruz (*This Is Not A Drill* Faculty Fellow)

Resistance at Seabreeze, 2023

Archival Photos, Video

Resistance at Seabreeze is an installation examining (joyful) resistance at Seabreeze, a former Black leisure resort oasis in Wilmington, North Carolina. During Jim Crow, Blacks traveled from inside and outside the state to experience the wooden dance floors, jukeboxes, and ocean breeze. The opening of the artificial Carolina Beach Inlet in 1952 increased beach erosion, and by 1954, Seabreeze suffered significant damage when Hurricane Hazel hit North Carolina. During the late 1960s, when desegregation opened other beaches to African Americans, Seabreeze lost many summer visitors. Older landmarks were blown down or washed away by other hurricanes in the 1990s, symbolizing an area long in decline and making it easier for the local government and others to scapegoat their racist practices on climate catastrophes.

Archival photos are courtesy of the Cape Fear Museum, and the video narrative is sourced from Assata Shakur's autobiography, pages 26-27. Assata Shakur's grandparents, Lulu and Frank Hill, owned Monte Carlo by the Sea at Seabreeze.