Ralph Lauren: How an Ad Sparked a Debate About Black Elitism

To be Black in Martha’s Vineyard in August is momentous. The first week of the month, folks ferry in for Legacy Week — which honors Historically Black Colleges and Universities — and the African American Film Festival in the historically Black neighborhood of Oak Bluffs. Two blocks away from Inkwell Beach, Oak Bluffs’ waterfront, sits Nashawena Avenue, where Jane C. Edmonds — a civil rights leader and owner of two homes on the street — lives in a 10 bedroom house. In 1966, when she was just 19, her mother hired the island’s only Black realtor to purchase a shanty home that peered over the water for just $3,000. “My mother looked at the property with the water view and instantly said, ‘I’m buying that house,’ and paid for it in cash,” says Edmond. “She said to me, ‘You’ll be glad I did th