The recent mention of the Vineyard Haven playground in the Gazette having excited comment and queries, Paul Owen, son of the late Mr. and Mrs. William Barry Owen of that town, has looked up the records in the county registry and the Tisbury town office, in order to determine exactly the present status of this public property.
There now appears on the new bandstand on the Vineyard Haven playground the following inscription: William Barry Owen, Playground and Recreation Area.
There has been no sign on this playground for many years and the original sign was small, obscurely located, and did not carry as much information. But this new sign makes clear that the town of Tisbury owns no park area, according to the legal interpretation of the term, but a playground.
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.