In a letter to Rev. Henry L. Bird, the text of which follows, Mrs. Robert W.
Civil rights
November 22, 1963
Vineyard Gazette
The Rev. Henry L. Bird was released from jail in Williamston, N.
November 22, 1963
Vineyard Gazette
Dr. Robert W. Nevin is on his way this morning to Williamston, N. C., as a participant in the civil rights demonstration in which, last week, the Rev. Henry L.
November 29, 1963
Vineyard Gazette
Williamston. Town (Pop. 3,966) co, seat of martin Co., n.e. N. C., on the Roanoke and ESE of Rocky Mount; inc. 1779.
1997
September 2, 1997
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.
1992
February 21, 1992
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.
1964
May 1, 1964
“Mainly we’re taking food and morale,” Mrs. Stanley Murphy of Chilmark remarked on Tuesday, on the eve of the departure of five Vineyard women - Mrs. David E. Lilienthal Jr., Mrs. Henry C. Smith, Mrs. Nancy Hodgson, Mrs. Milton Mazer, and Mrs. Murphy - for Williamston, N. C., that southern community in which the segregated black population has become allied with the Vineyard in a freedom movement.
1963
December 13, 1963
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.
November 29, 1963
Williamston. Town (Pop. 3,966) co, seat of martin Co., n.e. N. C., on the Roanoke and ESE of Rocky Mount; inc. 1779. It is a tobacco market and has fisheries, a peanut processing factory, and lumber mills.
November 22, 1963
Dr. Robert W. Nevin is on his way this morning to Williamston, N. C., as a participant in the civil rights demonstration in which, last week, the Rev. Henry L. Bird, rector of the Episcopal Parish on Martha’s Vineyard, was arrested and jailed in that southern town. His departure from Boston by automobile, with four others, may have been seen on television by Islanders who have long been his patients, his friends, and his admirers.
