A House in the Hamptons?: Historic Vacation Spots of the Black Elite

Beautiful, prosperous black Americans at their ease in high-summer;
Prince Kunle Omilana and Princess Keisha Omilana

It's an iconic notion, the secure Kennedy compoundat Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, that's recently been in the news. Here, season after season, assured of belonging , different generations perennially return 'home' to a settled environment that's steeped in nostalgia, and cosseted in love.

Not every American is privileged to enjoy such a special place, surely not most African Americans. But some, seemingly born under an auspicious star, apparently have always gathered to share their leisure pursuits with others who were similarly favored.

Even opulent Newport, with its eclectic palaces, called "cottages", had a venerable small collection of black entrepreneurs from Boston and New York, who took up residence during warm weather. Seeking business opportunities among the white elite, soon they constituted an African American aristocracy. The uncontested leader of this group was George T. Downing, son of Thomas Downing, Wall Street's famed oysterman and abolitionist.

He had married Serena Leanora de Grasse on November 24, 1841, so that forty years later, surrounded by a large, accomplished, well dressed, brood, with their spouses, the Downings of New York, Newport and Washington, appeared as solid and handsome as any of the nation's most affluent citizens.

An abolitionist himself, George Downing built Newport's luxury Sea Grit House Hotel in 1854. He was already Newport's leading confectioner and caterer, working for families like the Wetmores and Kings, who were happily supplied with Downing's esteemed boned turkeys and pickled oysters, that so pleased Queen Victoria, she sent had sent his father a gold watch in thanks. Even an arson fire, destroying his five-storey hotel in 1860, didn't deter him.

The most prestigious Downing enterprise was his management of the café and dining room of U.S. House of Representatives at the Capitol. Granting Downing an opportunity to effectively influence policy-makers, as he insisted on serving blacks, after a decade, his concession was taken away. Yet so valued was Downing as a Republican stalwart who could reliably rally black voters, that, in 1903, visiting Newport, before he departed, President Roosevelt made sure to stop to greet George Downing.

August is ebbing away and this week the Obamas have finished turning scenic Martha's Vineyard upside down. Having a quick holiday at this secluded resort, they were only emulating the practice of other well-to-do blacks who have been spending summers here for well over a century.

"The Vineyard has had standing, socially, among African Americans since after the Civil War" says long-term resident Agnes Louard, a dignified retired educator from New York. A member of Oak Bluffs' vaunted "Polar Bears," Mrs. Louard explains authoritatively how blacks, seeking employment among white Methodists, who popularized open-air revivals called camp-meetings, ultimately imitated their employers by seeking Godly communion and innocent fun on 'the Vineyard' during their time off, too.

"At first, like whites, we lived in tents as well, and even after whites built cottages, for years most blacks had only the Shearer Cottage boarding house in which to stay. In the late 1920's Dr. Norman Cotton and his wife Bertha, she came from Boston, and their two daughters, were some of the first of our people to acquire a large house on the water. In those days, apart from Madame C. J. Walker, most 'colored people' didn't have separate vacation homes."

The unique "black-owned vacation house," to which Mrs. Louard referred, was Villa Lewaro,

the county estate of black America's legendary hair-care and cosmetics magnate, at Irvington, New York. Neighbors, including Roosevelt's, Goulds, Astors, and Rockefellers, were aghast to learn that their exclusive and restricted community had been invaded by a "Negress, building a most pretentious house..." The estate's name was devised by family friend, Enrico Caruso using the first two letters of Madame Walker's name, and of her daughter's, A'Leia Walker Robinson.

Designed by New York State's first licensed African American architect, Vertner Woodson Tandy, the Italian Renaissance-style structure derived its distinctive semi-elliptical portico from Mc Kim, Mead & White's nearby Frederick Vanderbilt house:

Frank R. Smith, of Righter & Kolb, who decorated Madame Walker's Harlem townhouse, as well as the elegant Fabbri residence on East 95th Street, specially designed furniture for the great hall and dining room at Villa Lewaro, that was manufactured by cabinetmakers Berkley & Gay.

Veritably black America's 'White House', during an epoch when most African Americas who had ventured abroad or earned advanced university degrees, felt that they knew each other, for over fifty years Villa Lewaro was in a class by itself.

Heir to a portion of the fabled Walker fortune, A'Lelia Ransom Nelson, whose father was the Walker Company's business manager and legal officer, worked and wintered in New York and eventually summered at Oak Bluffs. As faithfully as migrating birds, her daughter, Gill Nelson, the acclaimed writer and son, Stanley Nelson, an award winning film maker, still vacation here.

"We gained some political momentum with the arrival of future congressman, the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.", boasts Mrs. Louard, relating yet more fascinating Vineyard lore. "In the early thirties he bought a house on the hill for his new wife Isabel, a former Cotton Club and Broadway star.

They adoringly called each other Bunny, so their highly hospitable home was named, 'Bunny Cottage'."

As I can attest, Mrs. Powell was justly renowned for her Bloody Mary cocktails, the secret ingredient of which was Clamato juice. Hosting celebrities like Mrs. Powell's movie-star sister, Fredi Washington, or Bill 'Bo Jangles' Robinson, the remarkable tap-dancer, the Powell's prominent presence, boating, fishing, cycling, golfing and gardening, 'just like white folks', helped to quickly attract other blacks to Oak Bluffs.

Novelist Dorothy West was their next door neighbor and Isabel's sometimes deceitful nemesis, a lesbian who once asked an embarrassed homosexual Langston Hughes "to father her child."

Dashing Dr. Binga Dismond, an ardent yachtsman, was a neighbor of the Cottons, both on Harlem's Striver's Row, and at Oak Bluffs. For all their relative ease, in the past, as now, most black men, just as most white men who vacationed on the Vineyard, were merely members of the 'working rich'. Employing cars, planes, trains, helicopters and ferries, usually they could only only join their families on the weekends. By the 1940's however, Dismond and other 'super-rich Negros', such as his Harlem neighbor, Dr. Walter Ivey Delph, and dentist Dr. Chester Redhead began to divide their vacation between the Vineyard and an African American enclave, as historic as Newport's.

In time Earl Graves, the publisher, purchased Dr. Delph's house, and E. T. Williams, a successful developer, also moved between Oak Bluffs and Sag Harbor.

"Sag Harbor, just beyond the Hamptons, offers blacks a community in close proximity to summer houses of America's white leaders. Moreover, our sheltered public beach in the harbor, is superior to all their private and discriminatory ones" insist Dr. Redhead from the terrace of his modernist hillside house at the water's edge.

Mr. Williams and his lovely wife Lyn, who was born and reared in Baltimore, agree. They reside in a compound of several acres, focused on a remolded and extended shingled house from the 1850s, once owned by a black sea captain who hunted sperm-whales for their oily flesh, that was rendered to light lamps.

"Apart from slaves at work on Dutch farms, there were black sailors here early on, whose skill had been learned in Africa. Many were free men by the time of the Revolution and some became prosperous owners of property. It was with this background in mind, that Dr. Dismond formed the Azure Rest development, just after the Second World War. Tandy was his architect; and he designed several modern houses on the water for their friends from Harlem. They've mostly been long-altered and several are now owned by whites."

"Today," says a smiling Susan Taylor, whose tenure at Essence Magazine is considered as monumental as Diana Vreeland's reign at Vogue, " there's far more freedom. Blacks live everywhere in the Hamptons now, anywhere in the country really, if they wish. Only I'm glad I live in Sag Harbor, where one can not only get Colson Whitehead's book or hear him lecture at the library, but one can ask him over because he lives up the block.

Such an old-fashioned, unashamed race-proud sentiment is highly characteristic of the trail-blazing Ms. Taylor. Several years ago, with fellow midtown Manhattan resident, Reggie Van Lee, she made the end-of-summer Hampton's benefit of a small black dance company, into the must-do event, not just for African Americans, but for all discerning Hamptonites! A big blow-out, hosting a thousand, in an enormous semi-public sculpture garden, in years past, Ronald K. Brown's Evidence Dance Company's On Our Toes, in the Hamptons gala was thoughtfully scaled down this season.

A graceful pageant, a spectacle of vivid color, against a white backdrop, it was staged poolside, at the serenely contemporary private house of Judge and Mrs. Bernard Jackson, at Watermill. But in order to ease access to local permits, it featured a local caterer, as opposed to Norma Jean Darden. Ms. Darden had always before offered such nice baby lamb chops, curried shrimp and other delectable things to nibble on with one's' refreshing drinks, that Noel Hankin gets Moet-Hennessey to supply.

Harriet Cole, of Ebony, from the fashion world, Rene Hunter, accompanied by designer Michael Mc Collom and Steven Robinson,

Susan Taylor and her agreeable husband Khephra Burns, the governor's lovely wife Michelle Patterson and actress Lynn Whitfield, looking absolutely marvelous---everyone, who was anyone, with the obvious exception of the Obamas, was there.

They were supporting fine art, to the extent of momentarily making up a superb living picture of all that's creative about human expression, the best of enlightened patronage: 'art, anointed, by an outpouring of the muses!'.

Alas, unavoidably I was absent, for the first time. So I had to resort to asking a chum, "How was it?" I was delighted for Evidence, and saddened, for myself, by her response.

"There was every kind of beautiful present; you would have loved it. The drinks were great!---in most ways, it was the best time ever!

I'm sure of at least one thing: next year, when I'm there again, and the Obama family are persuaded to attend, it will be perfect!

Follow Michael Henry Adams on Twitter: www.twitter.com/harlemhellion

Comments

[Styln]

Wonderful post and images! I came upon your post while researching my distant cousin Dr. H. Binga Dismond. I was so surprised to see him in his element! I've read a few Jet and Ebony snipets about him written by his ex-wife Gerri Major (She often mentioned his large sleek white yachts). Thank you so much for your passion and in depth information about Harlem and the Black elite. I look forward to reading your books.

[RosieLee]

President Obama may be a break with the tradition of American Presidents with Essex ancestry, but then again he may not. Great Shelford and Stapleford, where his English Dunham ancestors lived, are in a part of Cambridgeshire which is very near the Essex border. So President Obama may well prove to have had Essex ancestors futher back than has so far been researched.

[RosieLee]

I've had a look for films of the Dengie with no luck, but I did find film this advertising the retreat on Osea Island which has some footage of the island itself. As an advertisment, it may not be acceptable material for your blog. but you may be interested to see this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjddkAIO2pQ

[Michael Henry Adams - Huffpost Blogger]

Exquisite, alas, it seems to me that most often, unless one is born there, that such scenic and historic places are prohibitively beyond the reach of the non-rich

[RosieLee]

The charge for a week at the Retreat on Osea is £5000! Unbelievable. So, only for the rich, as you say. There is, however, a stunning little village hidden away near Osea which is every bit as lovely. It has the most wonderful, ancient cottages; a beautiful old church; the best English old English pub you can imagine which has little changed in centuries and is still crammed with artefacts from the village's fishing industry; red sailed barges; gorgeous manor houses and it's set right on the estuary with loveliest coastline and a stunning little harbour. There, bed and breakfast accomodation costs £40-50 per night - which is expensive in American terms, but a lot more reasonable than the Retreat. The price of everything here has gone sky high during the past decade. And substantial numbers of us still have to pay for our own healthcare, despite paying substantial sums in tax and national insurance, because the NHS either makes us pay for our care or makes us wait for so long.

[BlkJDPHD]

Great piece. My mother's parents were among the first Blacks to actually settle in the Hamptons during the early 20th Century. I was born and raised there, one of the few Black townees. It's always nice to see someone writing about the Black presence there, even if the usual story-line is about the Black elite there.

[Michael Henry Adams - Huffpost Blogger]

Hampton's history and even Newport's, is far more complex and diverse than most realize. The great number of poor people of color who also live at our most affluent resorts is an astounding paradox! Fortunately, beyond the association with white ancestry worship ascribing status for "fair" skin or
'good hair, Black elites have traditionally been meritocracies, so that any farmhands son or daughter who went to graduate school---even if their family or even they worked as a porter or maid, was nonetheless deemed respectable. Alas, its also included people of little cultivation or distinction who have merely through good fortune, made lots of money. In any event, it's the old-fashioned and largely ignored earmarks and nuance of aristocracy, including discernment and intelligence, that so intrigue me

[RosieLee]

Though America is not as distant as it seems:

Martha's Vineyard sounds like an aristocratic version of the stunning Dengie peninsular, an oyster haven on the east coast of Essex. Dengie is smuggler country, a wild, sparsely populated peninsular with hushed, ancient villages, small, dusty towns and lush islands. There, thatched cottages, thousand year old churches, shingled spires and ancient manor houses squat in silent meditation. Lovely names: Stow Maries, Tolleshunt Knights, Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Messing, Steeple, Osea Island, Ray Island, Creeksea, Purleigh.

In 1630s Purleigh, lived the Reverend Lawrence Washington and his wife, Amphillis Twigdon: great great grandparents of President George Washington. The Washingtons lived a life of stylish ease in that affluent social hub: until the English Civil War ended all of that in 1642. The Washingtons were Catholic Royalists, related to our royal family; Essex, however, was staunchly Puritan.

For a prominent Royalist to hold one of the best livings in Essex was not tolerated. Washington was denounced as: "A common frequenter of ale houses, not only himself sitting daily tippling there, but also encouraging others in that beastly vice, and hath been often drunk, and hath said that the Parliament have more papists belonging to them in their armies than the King...". He was shuffled off to a poor living, the Washingtons lost everything.

So it was that, in 1656, after Lawrence's and Amphillis's deaths, their son, John Washington, having nothing to lose, set sail for Virginia as first mate on the merchant ship: Sea Horse.

[Michael Henry Adams - Huffpost Blogger]

HOW DELIGHTFUL AND REWARDING TO GET AS MUCH, IF NOT MORE, THAN I TRY TO RELATE, THANK YOU ---YOUR COTTAGE SOUNDS CHARMING---ALAS , NOT EVERYONE APPRECIATES MY MANY IMAGES!!!!!?

[RosieLee]

Thank you for your kind words, Michael Henry. My cottage was a group of almhouses for my village for two to three hundred years. A plaque on the front states along the lines: "Builded in 1716 for fower poore widowes of ye parish with moneyes from ye will of FR..." FR was a local Lord of the manor.

The village of Messing is interesting too. it was the home of the Bushe family, ancestors of Presidents George Bush snr and jnr, who are also related to our royal family.

The villages of the Dengie and surrounding Blackwater estuary, due to their religious nonconformity - which, during the Civil War, was often a welcome refuge for Catholics who became Protestant noncomformists to save their lives and estates - were awash with ancestors of America's Founding fathers and American Presidents.

Also, not far from here, is the village of High Laver, in the churchyard of which lies buried the philosopher, John Locke, who, as Wikipedia states: was "widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, classical republicans, and contributors to liberal theory. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. This influence is reflected in the American Declaration of Independence."

[RosieLee]

Thank you for this lovely evocation of Martha's Vineyard, Michael Henry. It's a joy to read your blog and to see your marvellous photographs. Week after week I feel as though you sink onto the couch in the sitting room of my ancient, dusty little cottage in Essex, England, open your story and picture book and transport me 3000 miles across the Atlantic to the America of my childhood dreams. Just the names: 'Hyannis Port', 'Martha's Vineyard' and the 'cottage palaces' of Newport, conjure up the enduring fascination of distant America for us English. I've always wondered what the Vineyard is like; now I know.

[Michael Henry Adams - Huffpost Blogger]

Black Equity Alliance had a stupendous benefit party At Dr. billy Jones' charming place in East Hampton this past Saturday, one weekend to go!!!