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African Americans now live all over Martha's Vineyard, but Oak Bluffs remains their cultural heart and soul, a community both color blind and color rich. In the end you could be any color of the rainbow, and it would not matter to the environment here: these golden dunes, this salt breeze, these blue skies.

And, of course, the common denominator: the water that envelops the whole island like a sweet embrace. Several people invite me to participate in a baptism of sorts. So at 7:30 one morning I join the Polar Bears, some 30 to 40 folks, mostly black, young and old, who meet at this time every summer day for a tradition that began in the 1940s. They congregate at a stretch of town beach, where a post-swim buffet is already set, full of sweet rolls, egg casseroles, grits, and coffee.

Holding hands, we listen to an invocation by the club leader, followed by an off-key rendition of the Dionne Warwick hit "That's What Friends Are For." Then we wade into the still but chilly water. Some do laps between the two jetties. Others form a circle for water aerobics. Still others stand, waist deep, and carry on about last night's party or yesterday's catch. I trade swimming tips with Ed Redd, a judge in Boston, whose graying dreadlocks are tied back in a ponytail. He and his family bought a house here in 1982. "Sure, you have to have a certain pedigree to be here," he says. "But after that, it's like the water, the great equalizer. You sink or swim on your character."

The morning light bounces off the shimmering water and momentarily blinds me. Entranced, I say a little prayer that the dream of Oak Bluffs never fades.  

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