Matthew A. Henson, who is visiting the Powell family in Oak Bluffs for a few weeks, proclaims with twinkling eyes that he is too young now to go on Arctic explorations. He accompanied Admiral Peary on eight expeditions, was the first man to arrive at the North Pole and to raise the American flag there. He received an honorary degree of master of science from Morgan University in Baltimore ten years ago, and from Howard University in Washington this year. He also received an engraved watch this year from the Explorers Club in New York.
A few summers ago the Vineyard, and particularly Oak Bluffs, was host to one of the most notable figures in the world of exploration, Matthew A. Henson, who watched Comdr. Robert E. Peary stake out his claim to the North Pole. It was not until many years after that world-shaking event of forty years ago that Henson’s true place in the picture won general acceptance and his heroism on the icy journey became widely known.
Mrs. W. O. Pinkham is to speak next Sunday in Edgartown, before the Men’s Club at the Congregational church in the afternoon on Suffrage, and in the evening at the regular church meeting at which she will speak upon “The Relation of Religion to Suffrage.”
Harry T. Burleigh, the composer, who recently returned from a three months’ trip abroad, on which he was accompanied by his son, has arrived to spend the remainder of the summer at Oak Bluffs. He is the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Shearer at their summer home on Vineyard Highlands.
A near-capacity crowd turned out late Sunday afternoon at the Oak Bluffs Tabernacle to cheer an unprecedented event on the Vineyard - the first Freedom Fund rally to support equal rights for Negroes throughout the country. The sponsor of the affair was the Cape Cod branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The site was highly appropriate, for Oak Bluffs and, more specifically, the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association which operates the historic Tabernacle, have long epitomized the goals of equality that the NAACP actively promotes.
Harry Thacker Burleigh, eminent composer, singer, and arranger of Negro spirituals — and who was for more than thirty years a summer resident of the Vineyard — died in Stamford on Sept. 11 at the age of 82. He was one of the great figures in music in his generation.
Frederick Douglas, the colored orator, addressed a very respectable, though not large audience, at the Town Hall, on Saturday evening last, on the Unity of the Races. His arguments in favor of a common origin of mankind were very logical, and doubtless deemed conclusive by the great majority of his hearers. He is a fluent and powerful speaker, and commands uninterrupted attention.
“I never dreamed that boy would be President,” Mrs. Norah Fuller said on Saturday. And probably he didn’t either. She was recalling the time when “President Kennedy slept here” in her Main street, Edgartown, home.
For a few minutes on Sunday afternoon, the Vineyard seemed supremely apathetic to a visit by the President of the United States. But that was because his arrival was unheralded, and when word got out that the cabin cruiser which had tied up at Edgartown carried a boatload of Kennedys - starring Caroline toward the bow - pandemonium broke loose around the harbor.
