Rev. A. E. Martin
proprietor, Tindley Villa, South Berlin, Md. · active 1938
Proprietor of a boarding house at South Berlin, Maryland, advertised through the summer of 1938 in the Baltimore Afro-American as 'TINDLEY VIL[LA] - SO. BERLIN, MARYLAND - 10 Minutes of Ocean City', offering special rates to ministers, teachers, fishing parties and week-end parties, and fried chicken and sea food daily. The advertisement is the first the campaign has ever found in which a place to stay near Ocean City addresses Black customers in its own words.
In the record (1)
1938 · 1938-06-11
A Black boarding house advertised itself all summer in the Afro-American as ten minutes from Ocean City - the first such advertisement the campaign has ever found
Through the summer of 1938 the same small display advertisement ran in the vacation columns of the Baltimore Afro-American, beside the Majestic Hotel of Baltimore and the Mountain View Inn at Crozet, Virginia: 'TINDLEY VIL[LA] - SO. BERLIN, MARYLAND - 10 Minutes of Ocean City - Special Rates: Ministers, Teachers, Fishing and Week-End Parties - Fried Chicken - Sea Food Daily - REV. A. E. MARTIN, Prop.' It appears in at least eleven issues between 11 June and 23 August 1938. For a thread whose whole charge is that Black Ocean City was recorded by other people or not at all, this is the first time in the campaign's record that a place to stay near Ocean City speaks for itself, in the Black press, in its own words, to its own customers. And what it says is precise about who those customers were: ministers, teachers, fishing parties and week-enders - the Black professional and church-going class of Baltimore and the Eastern Shore, offered special rates and fried chicken ten minutes short of a beach they could not stay on.
The address is the argument. Not Ocean City - South Berlin, ten minutes away, which in 1938 is exactly the distance between a Black holiday and a white resort.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-11