A group standing outside the Idlewild Club House in September 1938.

A group standing outside the Idlewild Club House in September 1938. 

Idlewild, Michigan was once known as “The Black Eden”—a resort where black writers, business people, physicians and entertainers spent their summers in a racially segregated country. 

In its earliest days, you could run into W.E.B. Du Bois; in its later years, you could catch an Aretha Franklin show. But it wasn’t the only such spot. Even before the Negro Motorist Green-Book came out in 1936, resorts had opened up all over the country catering to black vacationers. Photo from the Robert Sengstacke Collection.