Authors Thomas Dresser and Richard Lewis Taylor offer us a comprehensive perspective in their just-published book, “Black Homeownership on Martha’s Vineyard: A History.”
Although they offer a plethora of information about specifics here on the Island, Taylor and Dresser place this history of Black homeownership within a larger historical context. For instance, Dresser and Taylor open the book by looking at land ownership through the lens of who had the right and who didn’t.
In colonial America, enslaved Blacks could not own property. They were property. And owning property, in fact, was a prerequisite for white men to be able to vote. This “voting requirement” excluded not just Blacks but women, Native Americans, and, in some colonies, Catholics and Jews.
After the Civil War, the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment guaranteed that Blacks were eligible as well. Here on the Vineyard, Black homeownership began just about this time.
The authors introduce us to several early Black homeowners on the Vineyard, including Phoebe Ballou, who bought a small duplex on Lake Anthony (now Oak Bluffs Harbor) in the 1880s, and later a white cottage on Pacific Avenue that became a homestead for generations. Among her grandchildren was the famous artist Loïs Mailou Jones.
Another early homeowner was the Rev. William Jackson, the Oak Bluffs town crier in the late 1800s. In 1871, he bought a Campground cottage across Lave Avenue. As is the case today, Jackson owned the house, but leased the property from the Methodists. Dresser and Taylor sprinkle interesting little tidbits throughout the book, including that one of Jackson’s friends, Frederick Douglass, was possibly his most famous house guest.
A mere 16 years later, we learn the unsettling history uncovered by Andrew Patch, former board director for Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association. His research centers on the relocation of Black-owned cottages to the margins of the Campground between 1887 and 1914, and the eventual outright exclusion of people of color.
At the turn of the 20th century, Blacks initially came to the Vineyard as nannies, drivers, and cooks for white families summering on the Island. The first wave of Black property ownership evolved from this service class. Soon organizations within the community, including the Open-Door Club, evolved to provide a place for socialization.
Simultaneously, middle-class Blacks came to vacation, and guesthouses catering to them proliferated in Oak Bluffs, including Shearer Cottage, and “served as a social cocoon for Black families and seasonal visitors.”
Charles Shearer was born enslaved. After the Civil War, he worked as a laborer before attending Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Hampton, Va. (now Hampton University). He and his wife Henrietta eventually moved to Boston, where Charles worked in the hospitality business. Learning of the Baptist congregation in the Highlands, the couple visited the Vineyard in 1891, attended religious meetings, and bought a house on Moss Avenue in 1895. But it was actually Henrietta who purchased a larger property in 1903. In order to help support her family’s summers on the Island, Henrietta started a successful laundry business The couple expanded their home, and opened up Shearer Cottage in 1912 as an inn that catered to the growing number of Black vacationers who were unwelcome at white-only lodgings.
The authors cite Lee Van Allen, the couple’s great-granddaughter: “What makes Shearer stand out is that it was a business, contributing to family income and to the community, providing jobs for the Island community, and rooms and meals for tourists and investors.” Shearer Cottage has remained in the family for 130 years. Businesses, and homes, form a legacy of generational wealth, not just in terms of real estate assets. They help ensure cultural assets, so Black community can grow, endure, and thrive.
Taylor and Dresser devote a chapter to an important group of Black female homeowners known as the Cottagers. In 1956, Thelma Garland Smith founded the organization with friends, in response to criticism that African Americans did not care about the Island or contribute to community needs. Rather than take this as an insult, they took it as a call to action. Sixty-five years later, the Cottagers continues to be a prestigious philanthropic group that promotes a sense of cultural pride by fundraising to support charitable, educational, and community service projects that help improve the quality of life in the Martha’s Vineyard community.
Dresser and Taylor expand beyond homes to include the proliferation of Black-owned businesses. They include Amber Wormley’s 1928 service station, which he ran for nearly 20 years until selling it to Nelson deBettencourt in 1946, on up through today’s galleries, restaurants, shops, guesthouses, and salons.
The book is an exposé, both revealing and cathartic. It reveals and celebrates Black families who held legacy property through the generations, and so deepened and strengthened the roots of the Island’s Black community.
“Black Homeownership on Martha’s Vineyard: A History,” by Thomas Dresser and Richard Lewis Taylor. The book is available at Aquilla on the Cliffs and Hatmarcha in Aquinnah; Alley’s in West Tisbury; Cronig’s, Off Main, and Bunch of Grapes in Tisbury; Phillips Hardware, the Campground Museum, and C’est la Vie in Oak Bluffs, and Edgartown Books.
Image on the front cover of the book, from the top, left to right: Black-owned Campground cottages of Reverend Jackson, Helen Peck, and Dorothy West. Bottom: Shearer Cottage guests and employees gathered in 1931. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. stands on the left; Charles Shearer is third from right. Lillian Evanti, world-renowned Black opera singer, leans in on the back row. Courtesy Lee Van Allen, historian of the Shearer family.
