Cottage City Resort 1st Black American Vacation Area Martha's Vineyard Photo

COTTAGE CITY RESORT 1ST BLACK AMERICAN VACATION AREA MARTHA'S VINEYARD PHOTO 1880's. COTTAGE CITY RESORT (NOW CALLED OAKS BLUFF) 1ST BLACK AMERICAN VACATION AREA IN THE UNITED STATES - MARTHA'S VINEYARD, MASSACHUSETTS - PHOTO. Bathing Beach at Cottage City, Massachusetts 1880's. Taken from just offshore, this image provides a view along Sea View Avenue in the heart of the Cottage City (Oak Bluffs) resort development. Within easy walking distance of cottages, the bathing beach was a popular summer destination for African Americans. The Observation tower looks out over the beach, Ocean Park and the promenade that ran along the avenue above the bathhouses. People of African descent first arrived at Martha's Vineyard in the 1600s as enslaved West Africans who worked on the farms of European settlers. After slavery was abolished, the freed blacks came to work in the fishing industries, in turn drawing black residents from the Massachusetts mainland, who came and started businesses to serve the Vineyard's growing population. In the 1800s some black laborers also worked as servants to wealthy white families and in the hotels. Formerly enslaved people, or their descendants, bought property around Baptist Temple Park in the early 20th century, drawn by the religious services held there. Teachers, politicians, lawyers, doctors, artists, musicians and entrepreneurs resided there for decades afterward. Affluent African Americans from New York, Boston, and Washington came to Oak Bluffs, the only Martha's Vineyard town that welcomed black tourists as other towns on the island did not allow black guests to stay in inns and hotels until the 1960s.

Many bought houses in an area they called the Oval or the Highlands. By the 1930s, local black landowners were transforming the town into the country's best-known and most exclusive African American vacation spot. Further down the road is Shearer Cottage, the first inn for African Americans vacationers in Martha's Vineyard and among the first in the nation, to be owned by and cater to black people.

It was built by a Charles Shearer, the son of a slave and a slave owner, when Shearer saw that black visitors were not able to stay at the homes due to segregation. Guests at the inn included the first self- made American millionairess Madame C.

Walker, singers Paul Robeson, Ethel Waters and Lillian Evanti; and composer Harry T. Cottage City now call Oak Bluffs since 1907 is a town located on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Dukes County, Massachusetts, United States. It is one of the island's principal points of arrival for summer tourists, and is noted for its "gingerbread cottages" and other well-preserved mid- to late-nineteenth- century buildings. The town has been a historically important center of African American culture since the eighteenth century.

Oak Bluffs is one of the earliest planned residential communities and largely informed later suburban development in the United States. Oak Bluffs was developed specifically with tourism in mind. DIMENSIONS : 3 7/8" x 4 3/16".

VERY SHARP FOCUS WITH VERY GOOD CONTRAST. PERIOD ID'D ON THE REVERE.

THIS IS NOT A COPY OR A REPRODUCTION.