These Black resort towns, from Oak Bluffs to American Beach, are still refuges today
At the height of the Jim Crow era, these destinations offered a sanctuary for Black folks facing daily oppression and segregation.
Last month, Ralph Lauren announced a new collection centered around Oak Bluffs, a historic resort town in Martha’s Vineyard. The destination became popular in the early 20th century for serving as a safe haven for Black people seeking a place of leisure all their own at the height of Jim Crow. It has since become a fixture in American culture—one of many of these types of vacation destinations that became popular in the early 1900s among well-to-do Black families.
(Jim Crow laws created ‘slavery by another name.’)
In Idlewild, Michigan, Black folks would escape to the lake town to swim, take boats out, ride horses, and even catch Aretha Franklin perform at the local Paradise Club. American Beach in Florida played host to icons like musician Ray Charles and heavyweight boxer Joe Louis; Zora Neale Hurston, a prominent writer and anthropologist, also married at the town's resort. Meanwhile, Oak Bluffs offered an idyllic getaway with ice cream parlors and cozy cottages that attracted notable guests like Ethel Waters and Madam C. J. Walker.
Predominantly Black beach towns and resorts have long been overlooked in broader culture, but their very existence represents an important piece of American life, highlighting the ways that Black leisure became a highly politicized act in the first half of the 20th century.
The need for Black leisure spaces
In the early 1900s, a day at the beach was meant to serve as a refuge for Black folks who faced crushing oppression and segregation in their day-to-day lives. However, these recreational spaces angered many during a time of deep racism.
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“Think about the white racial fantasies that [would] be unfolding in their social spaces, where, usually, you would have African Americans working as waiters and servants in a menial capacity and serving [white people’s] pleasure,” says Andrew W. Kahrl, an author and professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia. “Here are African Americans enjoying themselves and not caring about serving [white people’s] needs.”
Many early attempts to create leisure spaces for Black people were left devastated. The family behind King’s Wigwam, a Black country club near Atlanta, was forced to sell their land just four years after opening. This came in 1920 after a white resident in a neighboring county accused a Black guest of rape and incited a mob comprised of KKK members.
In 1924, city officials of Manhattan Beach in California conspired against the Bruce family to steal the land that made up Bruce’s Beach, a resort for Black visitors. The family abandoned its property in 1927, and the city immediately demolished the resort. That same year, Little Bay Beach—a resort in Norfolk, Virginia founded by a local Black businessman named Lem Bright—suffered an arson attack that destroyed a majority of the grounds.
The flourishing of Black resort towns
Still, dedicated beaches, country clubs, and resorts catering to an upwardly mobile Black clientele continued to spring up. “This was a testament to the refusal to accept race subordination,” Kahrl says.
A National Park Service study identified over 450 recreational areas catering to Black people over the course of the Jim Crow era. When these areas were successful and prosperous, they made the American dream feel possible for Black people.
In Idlewild, Michigan, which quickly became known as “Black Eden,” real estate was cheap enough in the aftermath of World War II that middle-class Black families were able to buy second homes. There, they could flee the metropolis of Chicago, which advertised Idlewild as a bucolic getaway.
Black people weren’t just finding relief from the city and its many indignities in places like Idlewild and American Beach in Florida—an area north of Jacksonville that was founded in 1936 by the state’s first Black millionaire, Abraham Lincoln Lewis. “We needed recreation,” says Carol J. Alexander, founding director of the American Beach Museum. “We needed relaxation, especially on the weekends, before we would have to come into another work week of oppression.”
Black people were creating their own communities with their own economic power. It wasn’t just that the resorts themselves were Black-owned, but so were the businesses around them, which also employed African Americans. In Idlewild alone, there were 300 Black-owned businesses serving 25,000 annual visitors.
These destinations weren’t just places for working-class Black folks to enjoy nature; performers were also free from the typical constraints of the Jim Crow era. Resort towns became key stops on what was known as the “Chitlin’ Circuit,” a route of venues friendly to Black acts.
Not only were these resort towns providing a relief from racism, but they were also helping Black people create and express their own culture. Idlewild became so popular in this respect that it was nicknamed “The Summer Apollo of Michigan,” playing host to the likes of Louis Armstrong, James Brown, Duke Ellington, and B.B. King, among many others.
(How pain and passion shaped the genius of Aretha Franklin.)
At some prominent resorts, the absence of white intervention was the sell. American Beach consisted of 216 acres of coastland and was billed as a place where Black people could enjoy “Recreation and Relaxation Without Humiliation,” per their slogan. The beach's founder understood that although many recreational spaces were off limits to Black people, this was the population in most need of a getaway.
While the creation of Black resorts was not necessarily intended as a political act, these spaces naturally pushed back against racism in the Jim Crow era. By insisting on relaxing, swimming, and vacationing, Black people asserted their own equality. For a place like American Beach, this was promised in the name.
“[Lewis] named it American Beach,” Alexander says, “because we are as American as anyone else.”
Black resort towns today
Over the decades, many of these once-prominent resort towns became less necessary and faded away. Kahrl describes some of these places as “endangered” today— the landmarks there, like the Hotel Casa Blanca in Idlewild, are in dire need of rehabilitation. However, some of the destinations remain vibrant and essential.
At Fox Lake Resort in Indiana, the first resort for Black people in the state, many of the homes are still in the hands of the descendants of the original owners today. Sag Harbor, located in the Hamptons, started selling beachfront property to African Americans in the late 1940s, and is still know today as the “Black Hamptons.”
Oak Bluffs, in particular, is as popular now as it’s ever been. The reasons for its continued relevance echo the very reasons it was founded in the first place.
“That’s a testament to the fact that these types of places matter,” Kahrl says, “especially to African Americans at a time when we're seeing not just the persistence, but the increase in racism.”
