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June 30, 2026 · The BlackEvents Team

America's Historic Black Beach & Resort Towns: The Complete 2026 Guide (American Beach, Highland Beach, Idlewild, Oak Bluffs, SANS)

American Beach FL, Highland Beach MD, Idlewild MI, Oak Bluffs MA, Sag Harbor's SANS NY. The historic Black beach and resort communities that built themselves under Jim Crow — and still hold today.

Under Jim Crow, Black families in America who had the resources for leisure travel had almost nowhere to go. Beach resorts were segregated. Hotels declined Black guests. Restaurants required side doors. Even public parks were partitioned.

So Black families built their own places.

Between the 1880s and the 1950s, at least a half-dozen Black-founded or Black-owned beach and resort communities emerged across America. Some — Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, Sag Harbor's SANS — remain nationally famous. Others — American Beach in Florida, Highland Beach in Maryland, Idlewild in Michigan — are lesser-known but historically consequential. All of them are still standing, still holding culture, and still worth visiting.

Here's the complete guide.

The five most significant historic Black beach + resort communities

1. Highland Beach, Maryland — 1893

America's oldest Black-founded incorporated municipality.

Founded in 1893 by Charles Remond Douglass — Frederick Douglass's son — after he was denied service at a nearby resort. Charles purchased land on the Chesapeake Bay, founded Highland Beach as a Black summer community, and built Twin Oaks for his father Frederick as a summer cottage.

Frederick Douglass died in 1895 before he could vacation at Twin Oaks. But the cottage remained in the family, and Highland Beach grew into one of the East Coast's earliest and most significant Black resort communities.

Location: Anne Arundel County, MD, on the Chesapeake Bay (near Annapolis)

What's there today:

  • Twin Oaks (the Frederick Douglass Museum & Cultural Center) — the summer cottage built for Frederick Douglass in 1895, now a museum
  • The oldest incorporated Black municipality in Maryland (still incorporated today)
  • Chesapeake beach access
  • Ongoing programming at Frederick Douglass Museum

Full Highland Beach deep-dive →

2. Idlewild, Michigan — 1912

America's largest historic Black resort at its 1950s peak.

Founded in 1912. By the 1950s, hosted 25,000 annual vacationers and 300+ Black-owned businesses. Booked Sarah Vaughan, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, and Cab Calloway at the Paradise Club and Flamingo Bar. Owned by W.E.B. Du Bois and Madam C.J. Walker.

Devastated by the 1964 Civil Rights Act's success — when other resorts opened to Black families, Idlewild's structural advantage collapsed. Now in ongoing revival, with the Idlewild Historic & Cultural Center (opened 2019) and annual events like Return of Idlewild and the Juneteenth Festival.

Location: Yates Township, Lake County, MI (rural west-central Michigan)

What's there today:

  • Idlewild Historic & Cultural Center — the community's story-keeping institution
  • Return of Idlewild — annual four-day cultural retreat
  • Idlewild Juneteenth Festival (June 21, 2026)
  • Mid-Michigan Idlewild Summer Soul Festival (July 26, 2026)
  • Lakes for swimming, fishing, and boating

Full Idlewild cluster →

3. American Beach, Florida — 1935

Founded by A.L. Lewis, Florida's first Black millionaire, on Amelia Island.

Abraham Lincoln Lewis, founder of Jacksonville's Afro-American Life Insurance Company (1901) and Florida's first African American millionaire, purchased land on Amelia Island in 1935 specifically to create a beach community where Black families could vacation.

Home to NaNa, a magnificent 60-foot sand dune protected by "Beach Lady" MaVynee Betsch (great-great-granddaughter of A.L. Lewis) through decades of preservation work.

Location: Amelia Island (Fernandina Beach), FL

What's there today:

  • A.L. Lewis Museum at American Beach — 1600 Julia St, Fernandina Beach FL 32034. Open Fri-Sat 10 AM – 2 PM, Sun 1-5 PM.
  • NaNa (the sand dune) — protected, walkable, iconic
  • The American Beach neighborhood — historic Black homes, ongoing preservation
  • Beach access — Atlantic Ocean
  • Annual American Beach Healthy Heart Luncheon (Sunday, March 22, 2026, 2 PM – 4:30 PM)

Full American Beach deep-dive →

4. Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard — late 1800s Black summer community

The East Coast's most famous historic Black summer community.

Not founded as a Black community — Oak Bluffs was a Methodist camp meeting ground first. But by the late 1800s, Black families began summering there, and the community has been an anchor of Black East Coast leisure for over a century.

Home to Dorothy West, the Cottagers (founded 1955), and the Obama family's summer vacations. The MV African American Film Festival (August 7-15, 2026) is now one of the country's most significant Black cinema institutions.

Location: Martha's Vineyard, MA

What's there today:

  • The Cottagers, Inc. and the newly renovated Cottagers Corner (reopened June 24, 2026)
  • Inkwell Beach — the historic Black beach
  • MV African American Film Festival — 24th annual, August 7-15, 2026
  • The full Oak Bluffs Black summer economy

Full MV cluster →

5. Sag Harbor SANS, New York — 1947-1952

The Hamptons Black beach community.

Sag Harbor Hills (est. 1949), Azurest (est. 1947), and Ninevah (est. 1952) — three Black-planned subdivisions developed post-WWII to give Black families beachfront property in the Hamptons at a time when they couldn't buy anywhere else.

Home to Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, B. Smith, Allan Houston, and Colson Whitehead. Historic District designated on the National Register of Historic Places July 10, 2019.

Location: Sag Harbor, NY (the Hamptons)

What's there today:

  • Ninevah Beach — the community's bay-side beach
  • Hamptons Black Art Council (HBAC) annual summer exhibition at Eastville Heritage House
  • Eastville Community Historical Society — walking tours, preservation
  • The SANS Historic District — mid-century architecture, still community-owned

Full Sag Harbor cluster →

Other historic Black beach communities worth knowing

Beyond the five above, several other communities carry meaningful historic significance:

Chicken Bone Beach — Atlantic City, NJ

The section of Missouri Avenue Beach designated for Black beachgoers during Atlantic City's segregation era (1900s-1950s). Not a founded community in the same sense as American Beach or Highland Beach — but a specific stretch of sand that carried decades of Black cultural weight. Sammy Davis Jr. and Duke Ellington reportedly performed nearby. Historic marker installed.

Bruce's Beach — Manhattan Beach, CA

Willa and Charles Bruce purchased beachfront land in Manhattan Beach in 1912 and built a lodge, café, and beach access specifically for Black families. In 1924, the City of Manhattan Beach used eminent domain to seize the property (with racist intent that was later officially acknowledged). In 2022, Los Angeles County returned the land to the Bruce family descendants — a rare formal reparation.

Freeman Beach / Seabreeze — North Carolina

A Black-owned beach community on Freeman Beach near Kure Beach, NC, active from the 1930s through the 1960s. Substantially destroyed by hurricanes but remembered as a critical Black leisure destination during Jim Crow.

Fox Lake — Angola, Indiana

A Black-owned lake resort community founded in the 1920s in northern Indiana. Still exists, still has property-owning Black families.

Lake Ivanhoe — West Virginia

A Black-owned resort community in West Virginia active mid-century.

Buckroe Beach — Hampton, VA

Historically the Black-accessible beach in the Hampton Roads area, before formal integration.

Sag Beach — Delaware

Rehoboth Beach was formally segregated; the smaller Sag Beach area served the Black community.

The pattern

Five of the most important historic Black beach and resort communities share a specific pattern:

  1. Founded during Jim Crow — between 1893 and 1952
  2. Black-planned, Black-financed, or Black-owned — not "Black-accessible sections of larger white resorts"
  3. Peak growth in the mid-20th century — the 1920s-1950s
  4. Decline after 1964 — the Civil Rights Act's integration of resorts nationwide undercut the community-specific economies
  5. Ongoing revival in the 21st century — preservation, cultural centers, event programming, and new families returning

Each community's specific arc is distinct, but the pattern is remarkably consistent.

What they mean

These communities embody several truths about American history:

  • Black families exercised property ownership at a time when structural barriers made it extraordinarily difficult
  • Black-led development happened at scale — not as isolated efforts but as a network of parallel communities across the country
  • Civil rights simultaneously expanded opportunity and destabilized specifically-Black economies — a paradox that's still being worked out
  • Cultural memory can outlast economic collapse — communities can be preserved and rebuilt on the strength of history
  • The story of Black leisure is under-told — most Americans, Black or white, don't know these communities exist

How to visit responsibly

If you're planning a visit to any of these communities:

  1. Learn the history first. Read the community's specific story before you arrive.
  2. Visit the museums and cultural centers. They are the story-keeping institutions and they need your engagement.
  3. Support Black-owned businesses. Every dollar matters in communities of this scale.
  4. Respect residential character. Most of these are living communities, not open-air museums.
  5. Photograph carefully. Homes and community events include private lives; ask permission.
  6. Donate. Cultural centers, historical societies, and preservation organizations run on donations.
  7. Return. These aren't one-visit destinations. They reward ongoing engagement.

The visit itinerary (if you want to do all five)

A "Historic Black Beaches of America" trip could be organized as:

  • Highland Beach + Chesapeake — a Maryland/DMV weekend
  • American Beach + Amelia Island — a Florida weekend
  • Idlewild + Great Lakes — a Michigan long weekend
  • Oak Bluffs + Vineyard — a New England week
  • SANS + Hamptons — a Long Island weekend

Each visit could stand on its own; done together, they form a genuine tour of American Black cultural history.

For scholars, journalists, and researchers

Each of these communities has:

  • Cultural centers or historical societies with archives
  • Oral history collections from long-time residents
  • Academic scholarship documenting their arc
  • Preservation organizations that welcome researcher engagement

If you're writing, researching, or academically engaging with these communities, start with the story-keeping institutions before you engage the communities directly.

Related

Five communities. A century-and-a-half of Black leisure. Still standing.