The Power of Place: Martha’s Vineyard and the Growth of the Black Elite

Panelists: Gretchen Sorin, Author Driving While Black; African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights. Joanne Dowdell, Senior Vice President Global Government Affairs at News Corp Loren Van Allen, A Member of the Shearer Family, owners of Shearer Cottage Moderator: Bithiah Carter, President & CEO, New England Blacks in Philanthropy For Black Americans traveling in the era of segregation presented serious dangers from hotels and restaurants that refused to accommodate them to hostile “sundown towns,” where posted signs warned people of color that they were banned after nightfall. Out of necessity, Black travelers would flock to towns like Oak Bluffs where they would be welcomed. The first inhabitants of Oak Bluffs were the Wampanoag people. People of African descent first arrived in the 1600s as enslaved West Africans who worked on the farms of European settlers. The Oak Bluffs harbor drew freed slaves, laborers and sailors in the 18th century, Then, in the 1930s and 1940s, as African Americans in urban centers like New York, Washington, D.C. and Boston began to establish themselves as part of the middle and upper-middle class, they flocked to the East Coast shoreline in summer to take in the beach and the bonfires. For this conversation, panelists will share the history and personal stories of the growth of the Black Elite on the Vineyard and how this upwardly mobile Black community recast the borders of white spaces. First aired live on Zoom on March 7, 2021.