We Exist Series 4: Cummings Guest House Register Excerpts

Welcome to the fourth in the series of "We Exist" exhibit. In this section we present selected pages from the Cummings Guest House Register. The Cummings family of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, ran a guest house on 110 Portland Ave., Old Orchard Beach, from 1923 until 1993. This section shows the actual register where each guest signed themselves in or were signed in by staff at the Cummings Guest House. The select pages include signatures of family members and the dates and times when these guests attended this prestigious retreat. The register even includes the signatures of family members who attended reunions at the Guest House after they ceased operation. The selected pages provide support for the general theme "African American Leisure".

From the information in the register, it is assumed that most of the guests were middle-class to upper-class African Americans with a significant number of guests coming from either the states of New York and Massachusetts. Albeit, guests came from various parts of the United States. The guests always came as members of a family and identified themselves as such when they signed in. It was rare that you had an individual who would came and stay at the guesthouse by themselves. Some of the most notable guests were:

1. Inez Bellamy Hazel was a computer programmer and systems analyst who worked on Whirlwind, the first electronic computer; she held senior positions at Lincoln Labs, MITRE, the Harvard Computing Center, and MIT.
2. Myrtle Helms Skeete was one of the first African American registered nurses in Long Island. Her husband Dr. Curtis Skeete was one of the first African American medical doctors in the area.
3. Noel Day: first black candidate for Massachusetts House of Representatives.
4. Emanuel Chambers: head waiter at the Baltimore Club for 30 years; made his own investments and became one of Baltimore’s wealthiest African American citizens; founded the Emanuel Chambers Foundation to "advance and promote the physical, mental, moral and social condition of the inhabitants of Baltimore regardless of race, color, or creed."
5. Hon. Constance Baker Motley was the first African-American woman appointed to the federal judiciary, serving as a United States District Judge of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. She was also the first African American woman elected to the New York State Senate, and the first woman elected Manhattan Borough President. She was an assistant attorney to Thurgood Marshall on Brown v. Board of Education, and was a civil rights lawyer for the NAACP during the Civil Rights Movement.

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