Martha's Vineyard Basketball by Bayne Bijan C.;

Author:Bayne, Bijan C.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

The Black Vacation Haven

I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

There has been a black presence on the Vineyard at least since the days of Rebecca Amos, a woman from Guinea, West Africa, who was left land in the will of a Wampanoag named Elisha Amos when he died in 1763. Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783. By the nineteenth century, a good number of wealthy Bostonians who vacationed on the Island brought with them their household staffs. Those workers included colored seamstresses, hairdressers, and chauffeurs. The Island’s black vacation tradition largely stems from the earliest opportunities for the Boston servants to buy their guest cottages from their employers or former employers. In time, they invited family or friends to spend part of the summer at those cottages, primarily in Oak Bluffs. When their children became educators and executives, with long summer breaks, they also summered in Oak Bluffs, some of them either building expansions to the original cottages or building new homes.

Charles Shearer was from Lynchburg, Virginia, and graduated from Hampton Institute in 1880. He married Henrietta Merchant, whose heritage was black, white, and Native American. She was also a Hampton alum. Charles taught at Hampton and other schools until the late 1800s, when the couple moved to Everett, Massachusetts. Working in Boston, Charles became a very successful headwaiter at Young’s Hotel and the Parker House (the latter where Boston cream pie was invented and Ho Chi Minh waited tables when he was a student).

Charles Shearer sometimes visited Oak Bluffs to attend religious revivals. In 1903, the Shearers purchased their home near the Baptist Temple Park, very near where my Bayne antecedents would buy a cottage forty years later in what is known in Oak Bluffs as The Highlands. The Shearers opened a twelve-room guest house they called The Shearer Cottages. Over the years, Adam Clayton Powell, Paul Robeson, Ethel Waters, and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Boston University Ph.D., stayed at the Shearer Cottages.

The Shearers were not only a popular inn with blacks who were unwelcome (except as servants) in resorts such as Newport, Rhode Island, Saratoga, New York, Myrtle Beach, and Hilton Head, but they also featured cultural events that appealed to their guest demographic. Elizabeth Pope White established the Shearer Summer Theatre during the 1940s. A Pope descendant, Brighton High School star guard Lee-Lee Pope was one of the fastest guards I ever saw play in the Vineyard summer league. Another Pope, Lincoln, was the only black cop on the Island back in the 1970s. In 1972, Shearer descendant Benny Ashburn Jr., managed the young musical group The Commodores. The group, led by Lionel Richie, first gained exposure by performing in Island night spots and played at a 1972 Shearer family wedding at the Cottages. The bride was JoAnn Walker. One day, maybe

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