Evidence of Another Hamptons!

It's an iconic notion, the secure Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. 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.

Beautiful, prosperous black Americans at their ease in high-summer also sometimes retreat from the heat. But August is ebbing away and President Barack Obama, the First Lady and their daughters, will not be headed north to the sea shore.

How telling that without much comment, President Bush was able to go on holiday continually. Remember the news reports of brush cutting in Crawford? As the obstreperous presidential campaign gathers momentum toward what some expect to be a close election, after three consecutive summer vacations on Martha’s Vineyard, our First Family dare not return. Extensive bookings to house the president’s staff and security have been canceled by the White House travel office; and the 28-acre waterfront estate in Chilmark where the Obamas stayed the last three years has been sold to a noted British architect.

Having a relaxing holiday at this secluded resort, the Obamas were only emulating the practice of others who are well-to-do. Not every American is privileged to enjoy such special places, certainly not with this economy, 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 at places like opulent Newport.

An enclave of eclectic palaces, called "cottages", Newport has long 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 ice cream, turkeys and pickled oysters, the latter so pleasing Queen Victoria, she 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, because 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.

Enjoying a holiday at the more subdued Martha's Vineyard, the Obama's helped maintain a tradition of other affluent 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", long-term resident Agnes Louard, a dignified retired educator from New York has told me. A member of Oak Bluffs' vaunted "Polar Bears," Mrs. Louard explained 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, who 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.", said Abigail McGrath, 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, replete with devoted servants, 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 vacations between the Vineyard and a black settlement as historic as Newport's, on the east end of Long Island.

Susan Taylor, whose tenure at Essence Magazine is considered as monumental as Diana Vreeland's reign at Vogue, lives at charming Sag Harbor. "Today," she says smiling, "blacks, we live everywhere in the Hamptons, but our lineage here is special."

Susan Taylor and young Master Kirk.

Khephra Burns and a friend.

The one-and-only Reggie Van Lee!

It was with this same unapologetic vision that Ms. Taylor joined fellow midtown Manhattan resident, Reggie Van Lee, to create a Hamptons' institution. Together they made Ronald K. Brown's Evidence Dance Company into a cultural exemplar. To do this required funds and to raise money and awareness they staged the company's end-of-summer benefit in the Hamptons. Sometimes hosting 100, sometimes a 1,000, the Evidence Dance Company's On Our Toes in the Hamptons gala has evolved into a must-do celebration for New York's most discerning dance enthusiasists and party goers. Black, white, young, old gay, straight, it attracts some of the area's most aovely people, having a blast while doing good.

Held this year at The Hayground School in Bridgehampton, the 9th annual gala lacked only the Obamas by way of a party experience of perfection. Surely next year will be different?

  Donna Williams with MHA.

Donna Williams with Harriet Michel.

  Noel Hankin with Reggie Canal wearing smart buck shoes.



























D. Ephraim Wise who ably helped in sorting out who was who.







Mr. William Biddle and elegant Ms. Syr Law.