Tuesdays in the Newsroom, the Gazette’s off-season speaker series, returns on Feb. 20 with a short film and panel discussion in honor of Black History Month.

The event will explore what drew African-American families to Martha’s Vineyard, through the eyes of three residents who grew up spending their summers in Oak Bluffs in the 1950s and 1960s.

The program will begin at 5:30 p.m. with a short film shot last summer by a French production company that focuses on the Vineyard as a popular destination for African Americans.

Skip Finley, Olive Tomlinson and Gretchen Tucker Underwood will talk about how their families came to the Vineyard and what it was like in the post-World War II era for them and their parents. Oak Bluffs is one of nine places featured in an exhibit called Places of Pride at the new Museum of African American History in Washington.

Mr. Finley, a longtime broadcast executive who now works for the Gazette, started coming to the Vineyard with his family in the 1950s. His father, Ewell W. Finley, founded the nation’s largest black-owned engineering firm and worked on the National Seashore Project with Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Ms. Tomlinson, who retired to Oak Bluffs from New York, is the daughter of Olive (Cutie) Bowles, a key member of the Shearer Summer Theater, a bold production company that staged plays for five years in the 1940s and fifties.

Ms. Underwood, a member of the Dukes County Commission, is part of the second generation of her family to come to the Vineyard. Her father, the late Judge Herbert Tucker Jr., started coming to the Island as a child and later retired as district court judge in Edgartown.

Doors open at 5:15 p.m. for a short reception, followed by the program. Admission is free to Gazette subscribers, and $10 for nonsubscribers at the door. Advance registration is required, at newsroom.bpt.me.