Hidden under scrub oak, among beer bottles, rusty lobster pots and piles of clam shells is a cemetery of forgotten souls. Only a few stones still remain, one which marks the death of young man who died at sea and was buried here along the Lagoon Pond marsh. 

 

Dorothy West, the great African-American writer who turned 90 this summer, was the guest of honor at a spectacular birthday party Friday afternoon inside the Union Chapel. Well over 500 people gathered, including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

 

Miss West, a 50-year resident of Oak Bluffs, is the author of many short stories and two novels, and she is the sole remaining member of the Harlem Renaissance. At Friday’s party, she was thanked for her work by an impressive list of officials.

 

The opinions were as varied as they were emphatic: There have been great opportunities lost in the area of civil rights. Poverty affects 43 per cent of all black children in the United States, the same proportion as it did the year Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Still, African-American people are better off than ever before, and a recent poll showed that most are, in fact, content.

 

Shearer Cottage in Oak Bluffs was the first inn on Martha’s Vineyard, and among the first in the nation, to be owned by and cater to black people. It now has been dedicated to the man for who founded the inn, and is a key stop on the Vineyard’s Heritage Trail.

 

Named for Charles Shearer, the cottage is the culmination of this man’s journey to prosperity.

 

This is the unusual story of the unlikely relationship between the families of Vineyard photographer Peter Simon, his rock ’n’ roll star sister, Carly, and baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson.

 

The tale begins in 1955, when the fleet-footed Mr. Robinson — the first African-American Major League baseball player in history — was leading the Brooklyn Dodgers to their first World Series title. 

 

In the Waterview Farm area of Oak Bluffs is a boulder as tall as a man. Back in the 1790s, the Rev. John Saunders de­livered his sermons here, from atop “Pulpit Rock.” Mr. Saunders, who was African-American, was one of the first people to preach Methodism on Martha’s Vineyard.

 

But for anyone who doesn’t know the story, this is just a rock in an Oak Bluffs subdiyision. In fact, many sites, though significant to the Vineyard’s African-American history, sit un­marked.

 

Today, some Island people want to change that.

 

The West Tisbury school committee voted last night to appoint Robert A. Tankard as interim principal at the West Tisbury School, ending with smiles and expressions of success a search process which began just three weeks ago.

 

“I think you got a good man,” said Pat Gregory, a West Tisbury resident who served on an advisory panel made up of teachers, parents and other com­munity representatives. The school committee vote was unanimous and followed the recommendation of the advisory panel.

 

Life Magazine photographer Gordon Parks gave a talk at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs on Wednesday night. For the Vineyard it was  a first. The 79-year-old black artist not only in photography but in the fields of prose, poetry, movies and music stood before an audience of 150 people and said that he is creatively stronger than ever.

 

At every opportunity, the audience applauded. Included in a program of slides were not only photographs that are known around the world but images from his latest efforts, which will be published soon in a book.

 

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.

 

A man and woman charged recently with sleeping in Ocean Park, a violation of Oak Bluffs law, came before the Dukes county district court judge Herbert E. Tucker, Jr. and were ordered to pay a $25 fine. They told Judge Tucker they needed until 1 p.m. that afternoon to pay.

 

At 1 p.m., the couple did not appear. They had gone home to Fairhaven.