For more than 100 years the island of Martha's Vineyard (seven miles off the southeast coast of Massachusetts) has been an important summertime haven for Black Bostonians. In the late 1800s Blacks first came to the island to work for whites and some earned enough money to gain small summer vacation homes for themselves. Shearer Cottage was opened in Oak Bluffs at the turn of the century - the island's first establishment that allowed Blacks to rent. Since the 1950s the island has attracted Blacks each summer from the entire East Coast and Washington, D.C. Several generations of families, both famous and ordinary, as summer vacationers and year-round residents have turned the once-poor village of Oak Bluffs into a Black mecca for educational, cultural, civic and social tradition for Blacks of all backgrounds. The Martha's Vineyard NAACP, The Cottagers (a Black women's civic and charitable group), and the annual Oak Bluffs Labor Day weekend tennis tournament has become institutions in this important colony for Black Bostonians.