Inkwell, once the Jim Crow name for a ‘colored beach’ in Oak Bluffs, MA, is now a beloved commercial and cultural landscape that stretches across the New England island of Martha’s Vineyard and the digital Black Atlantic. We recognize the properties and proprietors that have housed, employed, and fed Inkwell beachgoers since the 1880s are more than just historical and cultural; they are vital to the sustainability of our Vineyard economy and ecology. Yet, we find diverse recollections and records of the island’s Inkwell missing from Historic Resource Surveys, Historic District ordinances, Cultural District policy and Hazard Mitigation Plans–all of which present to the public what is worth saving or seeing. With this project, we aim to make knowledge of African American cultural heritage on Martha’s Vineyard essential for public policymakers, preservation commissioners, town planners, community investors and philanthropists that shape the island’s past and its future.
The Inkwell Atlas project engages diasporic and resident Vineyarders to curate, commemorate and conserve ‘historic places’ of Black reunion and residency on Martha’s Vineyard, historically and currently. Powered by surveying, mapping, crowdsourcing and archiving apps, the web-based heritage documentation project builds on on-island and off-island partnerships built recently by the African American Heritage Trail of Martha’s Vineyard (AAHTMV). These partnerships yielded digital content for passive public engagement with the Trail via our website, social media and a third-party travel/trail app (e.g. Sheriff Meadow Foundation’s). Now, we are building an Atlas that is more robust in content than these platforms allow–one that will safeguard our heritage and help us shape historic preservation.
The Atlas is being designed around the multimedia resources that AAHTMV collects through research and engagement with diverse individuals and institutions on and off the island. Design of the Atlas is currently led by AAHTMV’s Research Partner, Dr. Fallon Aidoo, and development of the atlas will involve numerous collaborators and sponsors–not only archivists, librarians, cartographers and tech creatives, but also community elders, historians, preservationists, and conservationists with a vision for innovative and interactive ways to present and preserve African American history and heritage. The project could use your support–be it financial, intellectual or in-kind.Please join us in putting the island’s expansive and diverse geography of African American history and culture on the map! Currently, you can contribute resources, recommendations, recollections or research via email: lightingthetrail@gmail.com
