Where We Rested

by bam

A cited, high-school-and-up course on the Black resort and beach communities that Americans built and ran as businesses: Highland Beach in Maryland, Idlewild in Michigan, American Beach in Florida, Oak Bluffs and the Inkwell on Martha's Vineyard, and Bruce's Beach in California. It teaches them as property, business and government rather than as scenery: who bought the land and from whom, who platted and sold the lots, what the hotels and clubs actually were, where the capital came from, who governed, and what the season had to earn. It runs on one rule, stated in the first lesson and never relaxed: a positive is never used to soften a negative. These places existed because the rest of the coast was closed, and both things were happening at the same time, often to the same people. It closes on Bruce's Beach, condemned by a city ordinance in 1924 and returned to the Bruce family's heirs on July 20, 2022, and on what actually happened to that land afterwards, which is more complicated than the headline. Prerequisite: The Green Book: How to Read a Route (green-book-how-to-read-a-route).