The Vineyard, Boston, her native Washington D.C. and the world of history and academia is celebrating the life and mourning the loss of Dr. Adelaide Cromwell (1919-2019). Her academic legacy and her groundbreaking research and publishing on the “negro upper class“ has had a profound impact on understanding the complex world of traditional African American social structure.

Her interest in the black upper class formed the basis of her doctoral research in the 1940s. Many doubted that such a class existed within the black community. She noted in the preamble to her book, The Other Brahmins: Boston’s Upper Class (1750-1950), that until then “interest and research had been focused on the Black poor, deserving and otherwise.”

Professor Cromwell graduated from historic Dunbar High School in D.C. She would go on to graduate from Smith College in 1940, following in the footsteps of her aunt Otelia Cromwell, the very first African American graduate of Smith in the class of 1900.

Adelaide would later become the very first black professor at her alma mater and would return in 2015 to receive an honorary degree from Smith.

In 1985 she retired as professor of sociology and director of the Afro-American Studies Department at Boston University.

In 1982 the Feminist Press would reprint Dorothy West’s The Living Is Easy with an afterword by Adelaide, in which she described West as chronicling the secret city of the black upper class. I strongly believe that Cromwell may have been the person who knew Dorothy West best intellectually, as both lived in and wrote about this complex social strata. West’s father was a very successful entrepreneur who owned a mansion in Brookline and a cottage on the Vineyard at the time of her birth in 1907.

West’s first edition of this book was published in the 1940’s. Can you even imagine the thought that living was easy for black america in the 1940s? For many, Adelaide would remind us, life was harsh and painful, if not pathological at that time.

Dr. Adelaide Cromwell was an intellectual giant, prolific writer, dear friend to West, long time Vineyard resident, cousin to Sen. Edward Brooke and academic adviser to hundreds over the span of her amazing life.

On a personal note I had the privilege to be counseled and receive guidance from her during my undergraduate days at Boston University. Her very early witnessing of the black upper class can be seen in enormous growth and expansion of this class segment, but as we see national figures on income and wealth disparities in our nation we are all reminded that for many, the living is still not easy.

Her son Tony Hill along with her family and the Rev. Dr. Lawrence E. Carter are planning a memorial service in early November at Boston University.

Many are still buzzing about the terrific presentation by Katheleen McGhee Anderson during PechaKucha night a few weeks ago at the the new Vineyard Museum. She gave a seven-minute talk on the history of the American organ. She covered her childhood experiences with music and theater in the schools of her native Detroit. She gave background on an Atlantic city organ that is the largest organ in the United States and concluded with the history of the famed Union Chapel organ now played by the brilliant Bill Peek.

Please add to your summer reading A Travel History of Martha’s Vineyard, the most recent book authored by prolific author Tom Dresser.

Paradise on earth is the Vineyard experience. Enjoy it as life is fleeting!

Send Oak Bluffs news to rtaylor@mvgazette.com.