Hilda Wilkinson Brown is noted for the significant impact she had on black art teachers in Washington, D.C. Brown earned her bachelor’s degree in education from Howard University. After studying art at the Cooper Union in New York, she returned to the nation’s capital and taught art history, design, and fine arts at Miner Normal School (later Miner Teacher’s College) from 1923 until 1961. In addition, she lectured extensively throughout the city and introduced classes in the crafts and industrial arts into the curriculum of public schools. Although her primary interest was teaching, her paintings and works on paper depicting life in her neighborhood deserve critical attention. Several of her drawings and prints appeared in W. E. B. DuBois’s monthly children’s magazine, The Brownies Book, and in E. Franklin Frazier’s Negro Family in the United States (New York, 1948).

At the close of each academic year, Brown summered at her family’s home in Oak Bluffs, a town on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts. It was originally the place where the New England Baptist Association had its camps and meetings. Martha’s Vineyard––especially Oak Bluffs––has been a popular retreat for many upper- and middle-class African American families from the East Coast for several generations. 6 In the 1940s, the period when Brown created Oak Bluffs, the nation saw the rise of a significant African American middle class as well a steady pattern of migration by African Americans to the North. For many well-to-do blacks, vacations on Martha’s Vineyard were associated with a shared sense of community. The Inkwell, a formerly segregated beach, is perhaps the setting of Oak Bluffs. The beach continues to be a central site for socializing with friends and engaging in summertime activities. Reflecting Brown’s own experiences in Oak Bluffs, as well as Martha’s Vineyard’s importance in African American history, this drawing clearly alludes to concerns that are central to African Americans, such as spending time with loved ones, and enjoying economic prosperity and social mobility. (ADB)