To keep abreast with the changing times, the Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting Association has altered the way it brings in and hosts the summer programs at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs.
"Things have changed because public taste is changing," said program director Robert Cleasby. "Many of the groups that used to come wouldn't be of interest today. I have been here for many years, long before I became program director in 1991, and I have seen that people's tastes have gone upscale like the Vineyard has gone upscale."
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.
The months-long project to replace the aging roof of the Tabernacle in the Camp Ground of Oak Bluffs came to a close in June.