Jack E. Robinson Sr., 79, the former president of the Boston NAACP and the owner of the Martha's Vineyard Resort & Racquet Club in Oak Bluffs, died of congestive heart failure Saturday, Dec. 2, 2006 at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Born in Jackson, Miss., Mr. Robinson moved with his parents to Boston. As a student at Roxbury Memorial High School, he won a city scholastic tennis championship. He served in the Army during the Korean War.

Mr. Robinson said he met and became friendly with Martin Luther King Jr. when both were attending Boston University as students. He also was a confidant of former senator Edward Brooke, who in 1966 became the first black man elected to the U.S. Senate.

Mr. Robinson had owned several businesses, including the Converse Construction Co. He helped found the Sportmen's Tennis Club in Dorchester.

He served three terms as president of the Boston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: from 1971 to 1972, from 1985 to 1986, and briefly in 1994 and 1995. In his final term, following complaints from the chapter about the election process, the national organization removed him and replaced him with an interim president.

Despite the primarily Democratic membership of the chapter, Mr. Robinson was a steadfast Republican activist who supported the presidential candidacies of Richard Nixon.

A seasonal resident of Oak Bluffs since the early 1950s, Mr. Robinson hove into Vineyard public view in the late 1980s when he began operating a tennis club at his Island residence. The issue eventually went before the Martha's Vineyard Commission. In 1991, the commission and the Oak Bluffs zoning board of appeals approved the operation of the club.

In late 2003 and again in 2004 Mr. Robinson proposed expanding the inn at the property, but the plan failed to win approval from the commission both times. Mr. Robinson appealed the second decision in Dukes County superior court, and lost the case in October.

He is survived by his wife, Claudette-Niles Robinson of Oak Bluffs; three daughters, Sarah Robinson of Dorchester, Jacqueline Bonner of Washington, D.C., and Claudia Niles of Hyde Park; three sons, Jack E. Robinson 3rd of Connecticut, Timothy Robinson of Washington, D.C. and David Niles of Hyde Park; eight grandchildren and a host of nieces, nephews, other relatives and friends.

Interment will be private.

Memorial donations may be sent to the Development Office, Levine Cardiac Unit Fund, 116 Huntington avenue, 5th Floor, Boston, MA 02116. Arrangements are by the Davis Funeral Home of Roxbury and Mattapan.