Ronald J. Stephens. Idlewild

Ronald J. Stephens has published a comprehensive and definitive history of the African American resort in Michigan: Idlewild. By employing community-based research methods, including extensive oral interviews and community activism, Stephens has compiled a detailed archive of the resort. And rather than viewing Idlewild in isolation, Stephens situates it in relation to the major midwestern cities where its clients came from, particularly Chicago and Detroit. Perhaps most impressively Stephens covers a long chronological time span, telling the story of Idlewild from the 1920s to the present and offering solutions for its revitalization. By taking this approach he is able to examine intraracial conflict, particularly along class lines, and avoid an overly romantic vision of a lost world of segregated recreation. Elite African Americans founded Idlewild during the New Negro era as an exclusive resort for African Americans seeking escape from rampant discrimination. Prominent African Americans, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Louis Armstrong, visited the resort during the 1920s. Some bought plots of land to build cabins, and returned to the resort each summer with their families. An annual Chautauqua provided edifying lectures and entertainment to visitors. Stephens argues that these black elites viewed the resort as a utopia in its early days. By the end of the 1920s middle-class Garveyites also frequented Idlewild, using the resort to fashion communal ties and plan activism in their home cities. Idlewild continued to prosper during the Great Depression, hosting an increasingly diverse and lively community. Joining the black elite were policy kings and tricksters such as Prince Joveddah De Rajah, an African American posing as an Indian “prince.” This relative prosperity continued during the war years when wages from wartime jobs or military service helped fuel Idlewild's economy. But the heyday of Idlewild was the postwar decades, when a thriving nightclub scene attracted national names in entertainment. This flourishing business made the 1950s and 1960s Idlewild's most prosperous, and glamorous, years. Phil Giles, an entrepreneur and showman from Detroit, and the promoter Arthur Edward Braggs were responsible for bringing major acts to the resort, which attracted thousands of guests. Braggs's “Idlewild revues” also traveled the country and, notes Stephens, encountered civil rights demonstrations and racial strife (p. 150).

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