Massachusetts -- Island Resort Lures Black Vacationers

OAK BLUFFS, Mass. - Corley Wilson sank back into the antique rocking chair inside the Winifred House on Pequot Avenue and inhaled the aroma of scrambled eggs, bacon, grits and biscuits.

It was late Saturday morning on Labor Day weekend and she was famished.

She eyed the other people waiting for a taste of the popular restaurant's Southern-style breakfast - black women dressed in neon-colored bikini tops and denim cutoffs and black men in walking shorts and T-shirts.

There were photographs of black faces all around the room and a tape of Natalie Cole singing "Unforgettable" with her late father, Nat King Cole, was playing in the background.

The other patrons were talking about their plans for the day - perhaps a stop by the "inkwell" where many blacks swim and hang out, and later a bike ride, shopping, dinner at a black-owned lobster restaurant and dancing at the Atlantic Connection - the Massachusetts island's hippest disco.

She liked what she saw. Black people mingling in a black-owned eating place, not far from the beach where most of the black people swim in a town that has a reputation for being one of the country's top island resorts for blacks.

"It feels like home," said Wilson, a businesswoman from New York City who spent the holiday weekend in Oak Bluffs with a girlfriend.

"There's this feeling of friendliness and togetherness with the blacks here that I didn't expect to find."

Indeed, the feeling of being surrounded by their own is what has made Oak Bluffs, one of Martha's Vineyard's three main towns, a popular getaway for middle class and affluent blacks.

Generations of black professionals, politicians and entertainers have flocked to the town to escape the rat race and dodge the limelight.

Now the pace has escalated, with blacks such as filmmaker Spike Lee building a house in Oak Bluffs.

But most visitors are not famous. Massachusetts students LaGina Bickham, 25, , and Marcia Parker, 26, have found their niche in Oak Bluffs.

The Tufts University dental students see the town as a place where they can break away from their studies and forge lasting friendships with other blacks their age.

But even more than escape, Oak Bluffs has given blacks from across the United States, including the West Coast, a sense of acceptance they rarely find in resort areas.

In Oak Bluffs, blacks can walk into the swank boutiques without being stared at. They can go into a dance club and hear the kind of music they hear in their own neighborhoods. Most of all, they like knowing there is a place for them to enjoy the simple pleasures that have been enjoyed by whites for so long.

"There's a feeling of community here," said Judyie Al-Balali, an artist from New York City who spent her childhood summers in Oak Bluffs and now brings her own children each year. "I feel like I belong here, like it's a part of the black experience."

Blacks on Martha's Vineyard are not exclusive to Oak Bluffs. But because that's where the first blacks settled, it is where most go when they look for property and when they are on vacation.

Town officials say that of the 12,000 people who live year-round in Oak Bluffs, 3.4 percent are black, more than in Vineyard Haven and Edgartown, the island's two other major towns. The percentage of blacks grows substantially higher during the summer when the town's overall population swells to 100,000.

But some blacks say Oak Bluffs isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

Some have complained that the police routinely watch over blacks gathered in large crowds, while white crowds are left alone.

Others say they have been discriminated against and harassed by their white neighbors and by white town officials, particularly when they tried to open businesses.

Of the hundreds of businesses in Oak Bluffs, fewer than a dozen are owned by blacks.

Doris Stewart, a United Airlines flight attendant, looked at property all over the island to turn into an inn before she settled on an house in Vineyard Haven.

While she was refurbishing the house, she said, she was harassed by two white neighbors.

"They told me that I should open something up in Oak Bluffs, where all the other blacks are," Stewart said. "It was pretty clear that they didn't want a black person running a business in the neighborhood."

However, most of the blacks who live in or visit Oak Bluffs are not interested in owning businesses in town. They would rather enjoy the town and what it has to offer. For the young blacks that means swimming and dancing at the beach.

Although the "inkwell" beach started out as a place to beat the heat, many blacks say the beach has evolved into a social institution - a landmark when giving directions and a place where blacks go to plan their days on the island.

Carl Brodmax, 30, of Stamford, Conn., who has spent the past seven summers in Oak Bluffs at the house his family owns, said he checks in at the inkwell as soon as he arrives.

"If it's going on, the inkwell is where you'll find out about it," he said. "It's the one beach I've been to where I don't feel like the exception."

Long before blacks started vacationing in Oak Bluffs, they were living there year-round, said Adelaide Cromwell, a former professor and director of Afro-American studies at Boston University.

Through her research, Cromwell found that blacks have lived on the island, and primarily in Oak Bluffs, since the 18th century, first as slaves then as servants. Many of them settled there soon after slavery was made illegal.

By the end of World War II, blacks from around New England had heard about the good living in Oak Bluffs and had moved there permanently. Others were beginning to use the town as a summer retreat.

Now, nearly 50 years later, Oak Bluffs is one of the top vacation spots for blacks in the U.S.. As she waited in the Winifred House restaurant, Corey Wilson reflected on its attraction.

"If I walk down the street I see black people," Wilson said. "If I go into a restaurant I see black people, and that makes me feel good. The blacks here get along and enjoy being together and that's something we need to hold on to."