Boardwalk Empire and its Sequel, The Northside, Take Gold in the 2011 Independent Publisher [IPPY] Book Awards Competition

2011 IPPY Awards

May 16, 2011, Medford, NJ—Plexus Publishing, Inc., a small New Jersey regional publisher, and author Nelson Johnson have been named double gold winners in the Independent Publisher [IPPY] Book Awards. The publisher/author team won for both the 2010 tie-in edition of the New York Times bestseller that inspired HBO’s blockbuster series and for The Northside: African Americans and the Creation of Atlantic City.

Boardwalk Empire won gold in the “Mid-Atlantic, Best Regional Non-Fiction” category while The Northside took national gold in the “Multicultural Non-Fiction Adult” category.

“Winning gold medals for two books in different categories is very rare for any one author/publisher team,” said Jim Barnes, IPPY Awards Director. “The nomination process for the IPPYs is very rigorous—Plexus Publishing and Nelson Johnson impressed two sets of judges—they should be very proud of this wonderful achievement.”

John B. Bryans, editor-in-chief and publisher of the Book Publishing Division at Plexus, said, “We are thrilled to receive gold honors for these two great books by Nelson Johnson, and nothing could make me happier than the win for The Northside. It’s a remarkable story of triumph over adversity and the national gold IPPY is sure to help bring it the wide readership it deserves. Congratulations to Nelson Johnson and Plexus CEO Tom Hogan, and kudos to our amazing team of editors and designers who prove time after time what a small independent publisher is capable of.”

Nelson Johnson said, “I’m thrilled to have my work recognized by the publishers. It’s a bit overwhelming. My research and writing on Atlantic City has been an adventure. I’m glad Plexus and I are together for the excitement.”

About the IPPY Awards

For 15 years the Independent Publisher Book Awards have been conducted annually to honor the year’s best independently published titles. The IPPY Awards recognize those who exhibit the courage, innovation, and creativity to bring about change in the world of publishing. Independent spirit and expertise comes from publishers of all sizes and budgets, and books are judged with that in mind. All independent, university, small press, and self-publishers who produce books intended for the North American market are eligible to enter. For more information visit Independent Publisher online.

About the 2011 IPPY-Winning Books, Author, and Publisher

Boardwalk Empire is the true story that inspired the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and Director’s Guild award-winning HBO series of the same name. In the book, Nelson Johnson covers Atlantic City from its birth as a quiet seaside health resort, through the notorious backroom politics and power struggles, to the city’s rebirth as an international entertainment and gambling mecca where anything goes. For more information visit www.boardwalkempire.com.

The Northside, Johnson’s sequel to Boardwalk Empire, tells the story of Atlantic City’s black community, from the arrival of the first African Americans to Absecon Island in the early 19th century through the glory days of the “World’s Playground.” Drawing on dozens of interviews and painstaking archival research, Johnson reveals long-forgotten details about the people on whose backs the gambling mecca was built, and he offers eye-opening profiles of Northside leaders past and present. For more information visit www.thenorthsidebook.com.

Author Nelson Johnson, whose family’s presence in Atlantic County predates the founding of Atlantic City, is a lifelong resident of Hammonton, New Jersey. He practiced law for 30 years and was active in Atlantic City and County politics through much of that period.

Plexus Publishing, Inc., incorporated in 1977, is an independent, family-owned publisher located in historic Medford, in southern New Jersey. Plexus’s regional publishing program encompasses diverse Jersey-centric books in genres that include history, nature and the environment, travel/tourism, and fiction. For more information visit www.plexuspublishing.com.

But he did know this: The chapter on the African American involvement in the creation of the resort – Chapter 3, titled “A Plantation by the Sea” – was destined to be the basis for another book.

“It became apparent if you remove the black experience from Atlantic City’s history, then the town never comes to be,” Johnson said in a phone interview from his chambers in the Atlantic County Civil Courthouse in Atlantic City.

“When you have two generations where 95 percent of the hotel workforce was African American, then how does this town ever develop as a regional, national resort unless you have the black experience?

“Intellectually this really bothered me,” he said. “I knew a single chapter wasn’t going to do it.”

The resulting book, The Northside: African Americans and the Creation of Atlantic City (Plexus Publishing, $24.95), appeared late last year and has sold about 2,500 copies. It is now in its second printing. Boardwalk Empire, published in 2002, has sold close to 100,000 copies, said Plexus publisher John Bryans.

As to Boardwalk Empire, Johnson said he was most gratified not by the HBO series, but by the fact that three colleges – Rutgers, Stockton, and Princeton – are using the book in urban history classes.

“I’m thrilled that these people who really helped me are still alive,” said Johnson, who plans no book tour but says he will never turn down a church, library, or school.

“When you have first-person accounts from people who experienced something, it’s like a piece of gold thread, you can tie together the story.”

Read the rest of By Amy S. Rosenberg’s Shoring up the Boardwalk Empire on the Philadelphia Inquirer website.

The announcement was made yesterday at the meeting of the College’s Board of Trustees.

Nelson Johnson’s family has been in Atlantic County before the founding of Atlantic City itself.  A lifelong resident of Hammonton, he practiced law for 30 years and has been active in Atlantic City and Atlantic County civic matters during that time.  He was an attorney for the Atlantic City Planning Board at the time of the approvals for many of the city’s casinos; Johnson was inspired to make sense of the city’s history and to write an objective account.  The interviews, research and writing involved in his first book spanned nearly 20 years.

Nelson Johnson frequently stopped working on Boardwalk Empire to wrestle with how to handle the thorny subject of race in Atlantic City’s history.  He persisted, and the result was a chapter “A Plantation by the Sea” that inspired the powerful sequel. Plexus Publishing, Inc. has made A Plantation by the Sea- The Northside available for anyone to read online at TheNorthsideBook.com.

The degree will be conferred at Stockton’s spring Commencement ceremonies in May. Mr. Johnson will also deliver the speech prior to college seniors receiving their degrees.

Nelson Johnson

Historian Nelson C. Johnson, author of “Boardwalk Empire,” has a new book called “The Northside: African Americans and the Creation of Atlantic City”, which is a well-received history about the predominately black neighborhoods of Atlantic City. He spoke with Star-Ledger columnist Mark Di Ionno this past week about why the National Museum of African American History and Culture is important to all Americans.

Q: Lonnie Bunch, the founding director of the museum, wants exhibits that shows African-American history in keeping with the overall American experience, from the founding of the nation until today. Do you agree with that approach?

A: Yes. Without free, forced labor, the infrastructure, population and economy of colonial America would have developed at a crawl. If the slave experience were removed from our nation’s history … would the critical mass required to contemplate separation from England have existed? I think not. … Without free labor, the 13 colonies would have been very different.

Q: The history of the African-American middle class in the decades before the civil rights movement is somewhat of a lost story, overshadowed by the more dramatic events of the late 1950s and 1960s. Why is this era important?

A: This era is important because it was an age of “uplift,” critical to moving past the slave experience. The children and grandchildren of freed slaves had a sense of purpose to their lives like few people in our history. From circa 1880 through 1960, by and large, African-Americans had a “civic mind,” which understood the connectedness of their existence and a “sense of urgency” that propelled their advancement through education.

via Plexus Publishing, Inc. News – Q and A with Nelson Johnson.

Education, business and government leaders attended the event, held at the All Wars Memorial Building. The event was a chance to listen to the individuals who contributed to the creation of “The Northside, African Americans and the Creation of Atlantic City.”

Author Nelson Johnson, book cover artist Tyrone L. Hart and Ralph Hunter of the African American Heritage Museum of Southern New Jersey in Newtonville each spoke Thursday, sharing their gratitude and respective stories about the Northside. Also addressing the audience was Braxton Plummer, executive director of the Boys and Girls Club of Atlantic City, and John Emge, executive director of United Way of Atlantic County.

Both organizations are receiving a portion of the sales from “The Northside” because Johnson, a Superior Court judge, cannot collect the royalties from the book.

via Christopher Ramirez at pressofAtlanticCity.com: Atlantic County News:.

Ralph Hunter

Ralph Hunter, and other people dedicated to preserving history and making it accessible to others played a big role in Nelson Johnson’s work.

Nelson Johnson is the author of two books on Atlantic City history – “Boardwalk Empire” and “The Northside” – the latter published last year to detail the history of the town’s black community.

Johnson calls Hunter “the rare combination of entertaining storyteller and serious historical curator.”

The author especially credits Hunter for preserving and even rescuing countless “documents, artifacts and photos” – including boxes of the papers of C. Morris Cain, a minister in the city’s black Northside neighborhood. Cain became a central figure in Johnson’s book after Hunter shared that collection with the author. By the Johnson’s telling, those precious papers were headed for a trash dump until Hunter stepped in and “saved (them) from destruction.”

So, Johnson adds, “I am deeply indebted to him. … My work as a historian would not be possible without people like Ralph Hunter.”

via History – and lots of his stories via pressofAtlanticCity.com: Arts & Entertainment

Not the type of relief a writer feels when meeting a deadline, nor the relief one feels when an exhaustive process is finally finished. For Johnson, author of the acclaimed “Boardwalk Empire,” it was as though he had beaten death. Not his own, but the mortal timeline of some of his books’ key contributors.

“All of the key people that helped me with Boardwalk Empire are dead,” Johnson said before launching into a list of the deceased. “So, when Sid Trusty died, I said, ‘Oh no, not again.’”

Trusty, a native of the Northside and unofficial historian of the city’s black community, convinced Johnson to write the book, insisting that the story had to be told, and told accurately.

Johnson said he wrote the book for people such as Trusty, to give them what they deserved.

He had originally tried to summarize the Atlantic City black community’s history in “Plantation by the Sea,” a chapter of his bestselling book-turned-television-series “Boardwalk Empire.”

Read the rest of Michael Clark’s article in the Atlantic City News.

Jacqueline McBride of Egg Harbor Township and Atlantic City native Turiya S. A. Raheem were recognized for upholding King’s principles who envisioned a colorblind society and strove to end racial segregation and discrimination through civil disobedience and nonviolence based on the teachings of Gandhi.

The awards ceremony on Friday featured a keynote address from Nelson Johnson, Atlantic County historian, and author of “Boardwalk Empire” and “The Northside: African Americans and the Creation of Atlantic City.”

The Hammonton resident’s latest book details the extraordinary impact of African-Americans on the city’s history from the early 19th century to its heyday.

“The Northside” was recently selected by Library Journal as a Black History Month sneak peek and “Boardwalk Empire” was adapted into a successful HBO series.

In addition, “The Northside: African Americans and the Creation of Atlantic City” recently joined five other nonfiction titles and four fiction books in a listing of Notable African American Titles released this week by the influential Publishers Weeky.

For more information visit the United Way of Atlantic County

“Black people built Atlantic City,” Johnson writes in “(The) Northside.”

“In the early days, 1854 to 1890, starting with the construction of railroad, black people provided the muscle and sweat” for laying ties and tracks, leveling dirt into streets and hammering boards into housing and hotels.

“Between 1880 and 1930, approximately 95 percent of the hotel workforce was African-American,” he writes. Simply put, without them “the town we know today never comes to be.”

Read the rest of Mark Di Ionno’s review of The Northside at NJ.com.