Black-owned businesses on Martha’s Vineyard span its economic and cultural niches while catering to a general audience. They are inns, art galleries, boutiques and restaurants as well as service providers from real estate to holistic weight loss. But many African American business owners, year-rounders, vacationers and community leaders agree that, given the Island’s history and large African American summer population, there are not nearly enough black-owned businesses based here.
African American History
March 27, 2008
Jim Hickey
It may be hard to tell now, but there was a time when the Bradley Memorial Church was arguably the spiritual and social center of Oak Bluffs.
January 17, 2008
Julia Rappaport
The day outside was cold. A real winter northeaster was blowing in and the gray clouds above promised snow. The door to Vera Shorter’s Vineyard Haven home, however, was open.
She had just indulged in what is quite possibly her only vice she said as she spread a stack of ginger snaps on a plate. She braved the cold so her home would not smell like the cigarettes she cannot seem to give up. She would hate for the smoke to offend the guests who stop in from time to time.
September 6, 2007
Mike Seccombe
You might expect the first black man ever popularly elected as a United States senator would be out there rooting for the election of the first black President. But no. Edward W. Brooke has never thought race — or gender, for that matter — had anything to do with worthiness.
August 9, 2007
Bettye Foster Baker
When we think of the Polar Bears of Martha's Vineyard we think of tradition, acceptance,friendship, and now transition.
August 27, 2004
C.K. Wolfson
With whispers that a hundred more were waiting outside, they filled the hall, charged with the anticipation of hearing the charismatic new voice of the Democratic Party, United States Senatorial candidate from Illinois, Barack Obama, and listening as a panel of luminaries offered their views on Brown vs. Board of Education: Mission Accomplished?
August 29, 2003
Elaine Weintraub
Some 250 people gathered Sunday on a glorious late-summer day to honor Ms. Isabel Powell, the matriarch of the Powell family, and the memory of Cong. Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
January 30, 1998
Marcus McGraw
Hidden under scrub oak, among beer bottles, rusty lobster pots and piles of clam shells is a cemetery of forgotten souls.
September 2, 1997
Yvonne Guzman
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.
September 2, 1997
Yvonne Guzman
The opinions were as varied as they were emphatic: There have been great opportunities lost in the area of civil rights.
September 2, 1997
Ethan Kelley
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.
April 11, 1997
Jason Gay
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.
