Ralph Lauren pays homage to generations of Black Martha’s Vineyard visitors in a new collection

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

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August 1, 2025

Curtis Bunn, Samantha Brown and Michelle Garcia, NBC News

Courtesy Martha’s Vineyard Museum; Polo Ralph Lauren for Oak Bluffs

[…]

After emancipation, newly freed Black people fled north, with some finding agricultural work on Martha’s Vineyard and building homes in Oak Bluffs. During the early 20th century, the neighborhood became a haven for middle-class Black travelers seeking refuge from racial segregation, eventually attracting celebrities like singer Lena Horne, leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Adam Clayton Powell, and upwardly mobile Black American families.

Locations like Inkwell Beach and the Shearer Cottage, though created out of the forces of racism, have become sites steeped in history. The Ralph Lauren campaign launches as “Black August” approaches, with events like HBCU Legacy Week and the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival.

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