The Vineyard’s Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West once wrote: “There is no life that does not contribute to history.”

One of those lives was led by Robert (Bob) Carter Hayden Jr., who died Jan. 23. His serendipitously popular saying, “know your history” dovetails nicely with this Black History Month.

From 1948 to 1993 Ms. West chronicled the activities of the growing Oak Bluffs black summer community through her columns in the Vineyard Gazette that began as Cottagers’ Corner in 1967 and grew into the Oak Bluffs town column beginning in 1973. Concurrently, from 1974 to 1983, Bob Hayden wrote a weekly column titled Boston’s Black History for the Bay State Banner.

He contributed to the Dictionary of American Negro Biography (1982), the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History (1995) and American National Biography (1999) and authored more than 20 publications on African-American history and culture.

But his most valuable book is African Americans on Martha’s Vineyard & Nantucket — A History of People, Places and Events (Select Publications, Boston, 1999. Typesetting, layout and printing by DaRosa Corporation).

A longtime member of the Vineyard community himself, Bob’s African Americans on Martha’s Vineyard is the Rosetta Stone of the history of black people on the Island. The book tells our stories, beginning in 1907 when we numbered fewer than 40 in the nascent days of the founding of Oak Bluffs, running right up to its publishing in 1999.

Although black people had been members of the Island community since the 1700s, it wasn’t until the 1950s that Martha’s Vineyard — and Oak Bluffs in particular — became a principal resort destination for people of color.

As a writer and historian myself who has often used Bob’s book as source material, I know firsthand how he helps capture the nuances of history in the growth of this community.

As an example, today the town of Oak Bluffs is part of a permanent exhibit in the National Museum of American History and Culture, one of the top tourist destinations in America. And while we widely acknowledge tens of thousand of African American Island visitors each August, Bob’s work reminds us that when Dorothy West began writing Cottagers’ Corner, there were only 12 members of the Cottagers compared with 100-plus today.

By 1999 when his book was published, he listed the names of 72 black doctors who owned homes. For anyone who is black, the two facts alone tell the story of overcoming substantial obstacles and achieving success despite them.

His black history of Martha’s Vineyard is punctuated today by another story — about a black man who became President and decided to acquire a home for his family on the Island too.

Bob Hayden was a passionate storyteller with a lifelong joy of learning. Any serious researcher or historian can benefit from his book, available on Amazon or Goodreads.

Another poignant observation by Dorothy West applies to both the book and our society: “Identity is not inherent,” she wrote. “It is shaped by circumstance and sensitivity and resistance to self-pity.”

The work by Robert C. Hayden and Dorothy West has been invaluable to all of us in this increasingly less insular community. May they rest in peace.

Skip Finley is the former the Gazette Oak Bluffs town columnist and author of Historic Tales of Oak Bluffs.