$15 General Admission, $12 Member, $7 child age 14 or younger
Doors Open for admissions 30 min. prior to screening Buy tickets at Film Center or online now
Craig Kingsbury
The Vineyard’s past comes alive in five short films that capture important issues and times in American life using seldom-seen historical images and first-person accounts from Island people. The stories include Civil Rights activities, an early African-American church, the Island’s Deaf Community, the Shearer Summer Theater, and the founding of the MV Hebrew Center. Oral History Curator Linsey Lee will introduce the film clips and follow with Q&A.
There are 6 total clips. Speakers and their topics are:
* 
The Vineyard Fire (Nancy Whiting and others) – Tells of the impetuses behind five women who drove from the Vineyard to Williamston, NC in the 1960s to register voters, deliver supplies, and protest unfair hiring practices. (This will be the premier for this clip. It has never been shown before in public).
* Olive Tomlinson – Olive shares her memories of the Shearer Summer Theater, the all black repertory group that staged remarkable performances of classic and original work during the late 40s and into the early 60s in Oak Bluffs.
* 
Dorothy Brickman – The first girl of Jewish faith born on Martha’s Vineyard, she speaks of the early days as part of the Jewish community in Vineyard Haven and how her family worked together to make Brickman’s store a success.
* 
Dean K. Denniston Sr. – The son of the first African American minister on Martha’s Vineyard speaks with wit and poignancy of his father establishing the Bradley Memorial Church.
* Eric Cottle – Growing up in Chilmark in the early 20th century, fisherman Eric Cottle remembers the last members of the deaf community on the Island.
* We Bootleggers (Craig Kingsbury) – Former farmer, fisherman, and selectman Craig Kingsbury shares his memories of the Prohibition era on the Vineyard including rum-running and bootleggers.
The Martha’s Vineyard Museum began collecting and preserving Vineyard history, past and present, through recorded oral history interviews and related materials in 1993. The collection now contains over 1,400 interviews of Vineyard people conducted over the past forty years. The archive of tapes, transcripts, and photos is housed at the Museum. Reference copies of the master tapes and transcripts are available in the Museum Library for researchers.
