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By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger
It was April 20, 1900, when Mrs. Albert D. McCabe organized a whist card party at her Ocean Grove home to be attended by society women of Ocean Grove and Asbury Park as a fund raiser for the Monmouth Memorial Hospital of Long Branch. The women belonged to the hospital auxiliary.
But they ran into difficulty when the Camp Meeting Association learned of the event. It seems that the rules “forever prohibited” card playing and dancing in the Grove.
Mrs. McCabe was presented with an official letter from CMA Vice President A.E. Ballard and one from Chief of Police John Patterson. In it she was threatened with forfeiture of her land lease if she proceeded with the party.
According to the New York Times report, Mrs. McCabe returned to her house where the women had assembled and announced that “the preachers have prohibited the game.”
She suggested that the group go to Asbury Park where “Puritanism did not prevent card playing for charity.” So her group formed a line and marched to Asbury’s Winckler’s Hall.
The women were furious over the situation, but their defiance probably had a big impact on the men who viewed the situation as “a case which required heroic action”
—Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger
This song dates back to 1929: First recorded by Ethel Waters. “Am I Blue?” Here she is: