How Martha’s Vineyard became a Black summertime sanctuary

Guno צְבִי

Guno צְבִי

We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
For generations, forces worked to curtail Black freedom and joy. The Vineyard proved a safe place.


Since the 1800s, Martha’s Vineyard (and the Inkwell) has been a renowned getaway for these Black families. The elite mingle with middle-class families on the island: Former President Barack Obama is rumored to have celebrated his birthday this month in his seven-bedroom mansion on Martha’s Vineyard. The island’s regulars over the years have included Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the late Vernon Jordan; Maya Angelou once described the town of Oak Bluffs, which includes Inkwell Beach, as “a safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

“I don’t have to catch my breath here,” says Skip Finley, an author and former broadcaster whose family has vacationed on the island for five generations. “It’s the freest place I’ve ever been.”

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22627047/marthas-vineyard-black-tourism-oak-bluffs-inkwell
 
But the reality challenges any notions of the island as an exclusive place.


Finley, who for years authored a column about Oak Bluffs, estimates that during the offseason, there are only 700 black people who call Martha’s Vineyard home, and, he says, “most of us are retired.” In the summer, the numbers swell markedly, till, he guesses, 30 to 35 percent of the summertime population is people of color.

On Martha’s Vineyard, “I can be who I want, when I want. Which is not necessarily true of the rest of the country,” says Finley. “When we get on a boat or plane to leave here, we call it ‘going to America.’”
 
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