African Americans converge on Martha’s Vineyard each summer in search of Black joy

VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. — It was early in August when my husband and I had just arrived on Martha’s Vineyard and ventured out by bicycle to try to get a feel for the island.

We hadn’t gotten far when I got a text message: “Girl! We just passed you on your bike ... !”

I hardly ever bump into Leslie Tyler, a spokesperson for the Kimmel Center, when we’re in Philadelphia, but I had managed to do so within a few hours of my arrival on the triangular-shaped island just south of Cape Cod. Later, she and her husband, the Rev. Mark Tyler, pastor of the historic Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church, stopped by where my husband and I were staying to chat. We were Vineyard newbies and listened intently as he explained how random encounters like the one we had just experienced are part of the island’s appeal.

“It is the ultimate networking place,” the pastor said. “A stroll down Inkwell Beach could all of sudden net you a new contract for your consulting business or something else. ... You bump into people and everybody there is in a generous mood. Everybody there has some kind of hookup. It’s the ultimate place where those things happen.”

He added, “The saddest thing for me in the summer is the ferry ride off of the island.”

Black families have long flocked to the island’s famed Inkwell Beach — so named because of the skin color of the sunbathers. Travelers prohibited from staying in hotels and eating in restaurants in the Jim Crow South found they could relax and be themselves in Oak Bluffs.

Over the years, Martha’s Vineyard became known as a hub for African American intellectual and cultural life, playing host to gatherings by The Links, Jack and Jill, and other elite social clubs. And that’s not to mention the Washington power brokers who migrate to the island each summer. Over the years, the Vineyard’s regular visitors have included such African American political figures as former President Barack Obama (who bought a house in Edgartown in 2019) and the late Vernon Jordan, who was an adviser to former President Bill Clinton.

During our visit, Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama caused a stir when they made a surprise appearance at the 20th annual Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, which took place during my visit.

“The Vineyard is our happy place,” explained Stephanie Tavares-Rance, the festival’s cofounder. “It’s a place where people who look like me can be themselves and chill and just exist. The ancestors are in the air. It’s a great homecoming.”

The Vineyard is a place where generations of African American families gather, she added. “It’s a place where you see old college friends or fraternity and sorority friends or old work friends. You’re going to run into someone that you knew from back in the day. I think once you get off of the plane or the boat or however you get to the Vineyard you just automatically exhale. You feel like you’re home.”

I just wish someone had told me to pack my trusty Howard University T-shirt. Everywhere I looked it seemed as if vacationers were representing, as they say, in their Black Greek insignia or historically Black college gear. The vibe felt upbeat and collegial, almost like that of a college homecoming.

That sense of home has deep roots. Local historians trace the presence of African Americans on the island to the 17th century, when formerly enslaved people began streaming north in search of freedom and jobs. In later years, it was not uncommon to find Black crewmen who worked on whaling vessels in the region.

“The story of Black folks on the Vineyard is many-layered,” explained Allessandra Bradley-Burns, who lives near the Inkwell. “Black folks first started coming to the Vineyard after we were tossed off of whaling ships that were coming around the Cape. The Wampanoag people of Martha’s Vineyard actually took us onto the islands. They rescued us starting back in the 1600s, 1700s.”

In more recent years, Bradley-Burns said, the island became a refuge from a different kind of strife.

“Then in the ’60s, when things were really heating up racially in Boston, it became a safe haven for mixed-race families,” added Bradley-Burns, who owns a house in Oak Bluffs with her wife, Melissa. “I was born into one of those families. My mom is white, my dad is Black, and this was a place where they could come and be together without judgment.”

Families would return each summer, sometimes renting out the same houses. Others owned their summer homes.

“Those children who started coming here when we were very young, we went on to become our ancestors’ wildest dreams,” Bradley-Burns recalled. “We became doctors and lawyers and professors and started running businesses and leading industries and continued to vacation in a place that had always felt safe and warm and loving and free and started bringing our people with us.”

That feeling of warmth and safety permeates the island.

“I tell folks all the time — especially those with children — ‘Nowhere else on earth will you see free Black boys like you see them on Martha’s Vineyard with their shoulders back, heads up, heads uncovered, no hoods, no caps,’” Bradley-Burns said. “They know, ‘I get to be here and it’s completely safe for me to be here.’ I walk down to the court several times a week just to see free Black boys and have that experience.”

We found ourselves doing the same thing, sitting on a bench in Niantic Park in Oak Bluffs and watching boys play basketball. I haven’t done that in the longest time in Philly, because of all the gun violence.

I rose early most mornings to take yoga on the beach and watch the “polar bears,” a group of mostly Black women who have been exercising in the ocean since 1946. Their mantra is “I am the source of my joy and infinite possibilities.”

For such a small island, there was an awful lot to do. Although I attended a film festival lecture by former Attorney General Eric Holder, I tried not to get caught up in running from event to event. So I ended up skipping gatherings such as the film festival’s white party at the Cardboard Box and instead focused on what islanders call “porch life” at our rental in Vineyard Haven.

Bradley-Burns is about that porch life, too. She described it as “this warm, welcoming way that says: ‘Come here. Come join me. Here’s a smile. Here’s warmth. Here’s joy.’

“That’s why we named our house the Black Joy House,” she said. “Because this is a place where there’s truly so much Black joy.”