Once a paradise, Idlewild hopes to rise again

IDLEWILD – You'd never know this was once paradise.

There's not much traffic on the crisscrossing dirt roads. The old shacks set back in the woods are mostly empty. There's little noise other than the sound of the wind blowing the leaves.

But this remote area was once alive, crowded, famous around the world not just for what it was, but more for what it meant.

In Jim Crow times, when black people weren't allowed at white vacation spots and couldn't rent most hotel rooms while traveling, when black musicians were barred from the country's top stages, they all came here to a rural part of western Michigan and created their own incredible, improbable world called Idlewild in the middle of the woods.

During its peak after World War II, it drew tens of thousands of people every summer. Hundreds of cottages sprang up. Nightclubs with names like the Flamingo Club and the Paradise Club brought world-class musical greats to perform for audiences who dressed in their best suits and gowns.

"You were hanging out with Della Reese, you would be in a nightclub with Joe Louis and Louis Armstrong," said Mary Trucks, manager of the Idlewild Cultural Center. "For black people, it was their paradise. It was the place to be. Everybody was here."

And then, suddenly, everybody was gone.

By the 1960s, the Civil Rights Act was passed, legal segregation ended, Idlewild's summer residents started vacationing in places they weren't able to before, and the entertainers followed them.

The cottages crumbled, the nightclubs closed, the people moved elsewhere. It became a closed chapter in black history.

But long after its heyday, it has remained home to a few hundred residents and a handful of newcomers who, still dazzled by the memories or inspired by the significance of Idlewild, are trying hard to lift it back up. It's too important a place, they say, to have let it fall this far.

"I understand we were so eager to become part of the nation that we had been disassociated from that we jumped at the opportunity to go places that we had been restricted from," said Patricia Arnell-Turner, who recently moved to Idlewild to resurrect an old country store.

"There were positive things that happened with the signing of the Civil Rights Act, but there were negative things that were not thought out. We should never have abandoned what we already had."

$1 down, $1 per month

Idlewild was started in 1912 by white investors who thought a resort for black vacationers during the Jim Crow era could be a draw.

They bought 2,700 acres around a few small lakes in Lake County, deep in the Lower Peninsula's northwestern woods just east of Lake Michigan, and promoted it as a black vacation resort. They took out ads in big-city newspapers offering lots for $1 down and $1 per month, bragging of the hunting, fishing, boating and horseback riding to be enjoyed here.

Word soon spread among black professionals in New York, Chicago and Detroit of this outdoor getaway, one of the few places in the country where they could vacation and buy land.

They came in droves. By the mid '20s, more than 6,000 people had bought more than 17,000 lots here. W.E.B. Dubois, founder of the NAACP, owned property here. So did Dizzy Gillespie, author Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Fisk University President Lemuel Foster, Madam C.J. Walker, the first black female millionaire in America, and dozens of doctors, lawyers and teachers.

"We were so country, and we started meeting all of these people from all over the country," said 77-year-old Betty Foote, who was born and raised here and still lives in a modest home in the woods. "They were so fabulous. They were like our mentors. We wanted to be just like these people. They dressed great, they had fancy cars, pockets full of money."

The entertainment was astonishing for a little country vacation spot. Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Etta James, Dinah Washington, Billy Eckstine, Jackie Wilson, B.B. King and Sarah Vaughan were among the hundreds of musicians who performed here.

It grew into the biggest, most successful resort in the Midwest, black or white. At its peak in the 1950s and '60s, it drew up to 25,000 vacationers in the summer, and was home to more than 300 black-owned businesses, hundreds of cottages and thousands of residents. There was a post office, a fire department, a roller rink for kids, a public clubhouse.

Then legal segregation ended and with it the reason for there to be an Idlewild. Tourists stopped coming, the bars and motels closed for lack of business, and residents left as work in town dried up. Soon, as with many towns in America, drugs and crime moved in; for a while in the 1970s it even became a hot spot for prostitutes who would famously waylay the hunters passing through the woods every fall.

It became just another poor rural town, with empty houses overrun by greenery and abandoned storefronts standing as embarrassing reminders of how things once were great. The population fell to about 400, about where it is today.

Ron Griffin presides over what's left. He's the Yates Township supervisor, and Idlewild, which isn't a town so much as a plot of land given a name, lies within its borders.

He lists the issues he's struggling to get help with — a fallen bridge that makes a road impassable, a lack of simple services, dirt roads that need paving, no investment at all.

"I can't get the county to plow the roads to get the people in and out," he said. "We had one guy whose wife was critically sick, and we had to get some guys together to plow them out and get an ambulance here. We need roads, we need signage, but the biggest problem we're facing is getting that solid amount of money so we can do something."

Griffin grew up in Detroit, came here to fish and hunt over the years, and moved here permanently 25 years ago. He has been supervisor for two years.

"We're not trying to go back to the '50s and '60s, but back to things we had. Back in the day, all your resources were really coming out of Idlewild. We had gas stations, we had stores, we had bars, we had the whole nine yards. Now we're basically striving like a lot of communities. Our biggest problem here is getting revenue in here to really do something constructive."

He went on — no buses, no restaurants, no mail delivery. And not a lot to do here. "Right now, after 6 o'clock, Idlewild shuts down. After the sun goes down, you're on your own."

One-man revival effort

After this place hit rock-bottom, after nearly everyone had left, one man came and took Idlewild on his back.

John Meeks is the closest thing to Idlewild's mayor. He's head of the Idlewild Chamber of Commerce. He organizes music festivals to draw tourists. And though Idlewild's rebirth so far consists mostly of the dreams of a few true believers, he's a tireless, enthusiastic booster who insists that Idlewild is on the upswing.

"People say Idlewild is dead," the 92-year-old said. "But Idlewild has made tremendous progress. There was a 35-year period when there were no permits issued for new homes. Since Idlewild turned around, we've had a multitude of homes built. Not summer homes, but year-round homes."

Meeks was born in Illinois, did a stint in the army and moved to Detroit, where he eventually owned eight dry cleaners, some of which still stand today, still bearing his name long after he sold them.

One day, a friend took him to Idlewild to party for the weekend. "It was wall-to-wall people," he said, smiling wide. "I saw some of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen in my life. And I said, 'This is the place for John Meeks.' "

He has been here every summer since 1954. "I had so much fun up here that I will never forsake Idlewild," he said. "The best part of my life was spent up here."

Meeks grew so attached he moved here 20 years ago and became a one-man revival effort. He bought a shuttered historic hotel and renovated it. He opened a new public park. And he started a chamber of commerce in a town that had no commerce to speak of.

"Back then there was only one business open in Idlewild and that was Larry's Landscaping," Meeks said. "Everything else was closed."

Now, a cultural museum is open. Tourists are coming in the summer. And people are moving here specifically to help rebuild an important part of history.

"John's an amazing man," said Kevin Turner, one of Idlewild's newest residents. "Since he sold his cleaners in Detroit, he's been spending his own money in doing things here. I mean, he's 92 years old and I've seen him on that tractor behind the chamber ... all day from 8 o'clock in the morning 'til 8 o'clock at night. I know that's what keeps him going. Before he leaves this Earth he wants to see Idlewild come back."

A store is a start

Turner pulled out a stack of blueprints. They showed a sculpted Detroit RiverWalk, two decades before it actually happened. Turner says he's the one who designed the original concept as a Detroit city planner. He spent a career working on multimillion-dollar projects.

Now the 59-year-old is designing the interior of a general store that he and his wife recently bought in the middle of the woods.

Turner had come here as a kid, and brought his wife to show her. "She came and fell in love with it," he said. "She can see beyond what's happened to it."

"It's a way of giving back to the community, a way of giving back to my people," said his wife Arnell-Turner, a retired school principal from New York. "I just think it's somewhat of an honor to be here. It's a historic community and it has a phenomenal history. I don't know any other place you can go as an African American and experience this."

Their store, Road Runners, is a typical rural one-stop, right now the only store in town. They sell cans of soup, bags of chips, beer and pop, coffee and tea, cigarettes and liquor. Party store things. It's small and lies in the woods, off the main roads.

But in Idlewild, where everyone has to drive to nearby towns like Baldwin or Chase to buy anything, it's a small but welcome sign of life. Like the cultural center, like Meeks constantly trying to launch another festival or another event, it's another sign not only that someone believes there can be a future here, but also that this place's past is too important to forget.

"I'm proud to be a part of the re-emergence of Idlewild," Turner said. "The legacy, the history, makes it what it is, especially for African Americans. This was a place they could come and not be intimidated, where they enjoy themselves and enjoy the fruits of their labors. But it's still here. The history is still here and it should be told."

Columnist John Carlisle writes about interesting people and places in Michigan. His stories can be found at freep.com/carlisle. Follow him on Twitter @_johncarlisle. Contact him: jcarlisle@freepress.com