A remembrance gathering will be held in Oak Bluffs this weekend for Julian Bond, the well-known civil rights leader and former chairman of the NAACP who died August 15 at the age of 75. Mr. Bond was a longtime Vineyard visitor.
In celebration of the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, members of the Martha’s Vineyard community gathered last week for an event organized by The Advancement Project.
Passage at St. Augustine spotlights civil rights campaigns in the historic Florida city. Vineyarder Esther Burgess is featured in the film, which will be screened this weekend in West Tisbury.
Vineyarders gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Church to honor the Civil Rights Movement and the memory of Rosa Parks. The guest speaker was Lucy Hackney.
After seeing the northern states for the first time in 1951 during a summer with his aunt and uncle in Buffalo, N.Y., Cong. John Lewis began questioning the quality of life that many around him took for granted.
In 2004 director Shola Lynch’s first film premiered at Sundance. The documentary told the story of Shirley Chis-holm, the first black woman to run for president, and her 1972 campaign. Ms. Lynch was only three years old at the time of the campaign, yet as she grew up she found herself consistently drawn to the time period. The film won a Peabody award.
When Tonya Lewis Lee became a mother 17 years ago she could not find many picture books featuring children of color as everyday kids. So years later she and her husband Spike Lee wrote their own book, Please, Baby, Please, about a mischievous toddler.
Fifty years ago this month Harry Belafonte helped make history. On August 28, 1963, Mr. Belafonte, at Martin Luther King Jr.’s behest, recruited celebrities to speak to the estimated 250,000 Americans assembled on the Washington Mall — an event which, for many, defined a decade, even a century.
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Vineyard Gazette presents a chronicle of selected texts from our archive pertaining to the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr. as they intersected with life on Martha's Vineyard.
The lessons at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High school last Friday were centered on 1960s diner sit-ins and dormitory riots. And the teacher was civil rights pioneer, author and journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault.
At a schoolwide multicultural assembly hosted by the Martha’s Vineyard Youth Leadership Initiative, Ms. Hunter-Gault told stories from her youth and read from her recent book, To the Mountaintop, written for high school-aged students.
