The Martha's Vineyard NAACP this week called for the immediate dismissal of John Dillon, a Tisbury police patrolman who has been charged with racism by a fellow officer.
In a three-page letter to the Gazette, the NAACP lists a series of alleged offenses by Mr. Dillon, highlighted by an incident in which the officer parodied stereotypical African-American speech when rewriting a computer document authored by Theophilus M. Silvia 3rd, the town's only year-round African-American patrolman.
The dining area of the Portuguese American Club in Oak Bluffs was filled on Monday afternoon for the annual MLK luncheon hosted by the Martha’s Vineyard Chapter of the NAACP.
In a sometimes tense, sometimes emotional debate, Oak Bluffs selectmen heard arguments for and against a request to remove plaques from a Civil War monument.
In the 1920s and ’30s, black families could not buy property in Edgartown. And although Oak Bluffs was a gathering place for black professionals back to the 19th century, their children, home from college, were seldom able to work as clerks in local shops.
When the civil rights movement spread across America in the 1960s, the Vineyard was separate in many ways. The black community here was prosperous and thriving, the regional high school was integrated and race relations were cordial.
For Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, coming to the Island from his home in Jackson, Miss., for a weeklong vacation this month was an easy choice.
As the result of interest shown at a meeting Monday night, the Island now has a chapter of its own of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The parish house of Grace Episcopal Church in Vineyard Haven was jam-packed Monday evening to hear Rev. Henry L. Bird talk about his experiences in Williamston, N. C., where he participated in a civil rights demonstration along with ten other New England ministers last month.
