By Tom Norton
Like any story about anyone who faces adversity and struggles, slowly at first, to overcome it; Rose Hammond seems to know that slow and steady wins the race.
If anything could be said about her latest documentary, “In Between the Trees,” a story of the African American community in Idlewild, Michigan and the nearby Woodland Park is that her motto fits this pattern perfectly.
Hammond went from standing on her mother’s front step “with six bags of dirty laundry and a baby” to becoming an author and documentary filmmaker through a slow and steady process that in the course of it, brings to life another story (this time not her own) of a community also with no where else to go.
While America’s story of race is certainly long and complicated, one thread through that story is constant; for more than a century the black community was identified as “the other.” Consequently denied many fundamental rights in American society, the black community also very rarely enjoyed something so many took for granted; the concept of a “vacation” or a “getaway” and the ease with which so many of us plan a vacation.
Hammond originally grew up in the area around White Cloud with its small lakes and simpler life. This allowed her to hear the stories of black Americans traveling to Idlewild as a safe place for a vacation. Eventually that place called Idlewild had grown to become the largest African American resort in the United States. Like a sprinkling of other recreational communities across the country, Idlewild became a place where black people could go to relax and escape not only the Jim Crow south, but also the segregated and outright racist attitudes that existed in many parts of the country, including Michigan. Starting in the 1920s and continuing all the way through the mid 1960s, African Americans from the far away big cities would navigate their way to the small resort and from those decades, Hammond’s book and eventually documentary film would be born.
“Well, blacks couldn’t attend white night clubs then and
we also couldn’t go to any resorts. We had to have our own
resort because it (Idlewild) was the only place you could go
and not be insulted.”
-Rita Collins from “In Between the Trees”
While no one could characterize this time for black Americans as the best of times, the adversity the black community faced also brought out the tight bond that helped so many communities of color endure the racial discrimination of the era. In Idlewild, music from the best musicians in Chicago and Detroit would drift out from the summer nightclubs over the small lake nearby. Residents and visitors of Idlewild spoke of a time of being able to relax without the constant fear that you might be stepping out of some invisible boundary that was a part of daily life once they returned to the cities. It was the recipe that let Idlewild thrive for decades.
For Hammond, her generation grew up after the effects of the civil rights acts and Supreme Court rulings were beginning to be felt in daily life. This meant that education, housing and voting; elements of daily life most people naturally take for granted were no longer just things that black Americans wished for. They were things Hammond’s generation was now doing without a second thought.
But it didn’t change the fact that Hammond was starting over in life and living back in White Cloud. Once back she realized she couldn’t escape the history of the area and her own memories. Other family members would talk of originally traveling to the north from the southern states; of taking back roads all the way to avoid any “trouble.”
“They came here with the hopes that life would be easier, if not better,” Hammond said. “I do remember that my mother wanted that better life for us. She didn’t want us to pick onions or cherries or clean houses every day for a living.”
That lesson from her mother was that education was how you stayed out of the fields and soon Hammond found herself enrolled at Ferris University learning skills that would one day place her on course to tell the story of Idlewild and the tenacity she inherited from her mother would be just as valuable.
As Hammond heard the stories told in the area around White Cloud about the thriving community populated during the summer months by black Americans from cities like Chicago, Detroit, Grand Rapids and Indianapolis she recognized this was a story that needed to be told. Her first effort was the typical goal that most people would set to tell a story; to write a book.
“The ski club was up from Detroit to ski some of the local slopes
and made reservations to stay in a motel. On arrival they (the motel)
discovered they were black and so told them they had no reservations.
The group drove to Idewild where they found lodging at the Morten Motel.
…there are some things that you will never forget.”
– John Meeks from “In Between the Trees.”
“My mother was the one who encouraged me,” recalled Hammond. “I knew nothing about how to publish a book, but she told me to just learn how and start by doing research, so I did.I thought I needed an agent to get a book published and I tried that, but no one would help, so I followed my mother’s advice and just did it myself.”
It was her first time writing a book. By this time she was living and working in Grand Rapids, but Hammond started making weekend trips up to Idlewild where she interviewed residents; drove home, hand-typed a transcription of the interview and then submitted it back to the subject for approval. It was a painstaking process, but she was doing it the only way she knew how and from that process, gradually a diary like book began taking shape.
“…it was just so humiliating. To think that I had my little children…
we already had our bread buttered and now they said they couldn’t
serve us. I just didn’t know what to say (to the children.) We just left
and they never did figure out why because I just didn’t want to tell them.
I guess I was just too close to tears.”
– Rita Collins from “In Between the Trees.”
And it wasn’t long before another idea for telling the Idlewild story came to mind. After years of working on the book, Hammond was living in Wyoming and came across WKTV Community Media. She had an idea of creating a documentary and so with cameras and crew people in tow, Hammond began making the return trips to Idlewild. Like the book she was also working on, it was a slow and painstaking process. It would be several years before both the book and the documentary were completed, but the dream of a book and documentary together pushed her on and a very important goal began to develop.
“In the process of writing the book, I visited several junior high schools and noticed that there are a lot of young black people who don’t know much of their own history,” Hammond said. “I wanted them to learn about black history that is right in their own backyard.”
And to get that word out, Hammond takes every opportunity so that not only young people, but people everywhere can learn that just north of Grand Rapids, there was a place called Idlewild that offered itself as a haven for the black community in times when places like it were too few and far between. Now complete, the documentary film was recently accepted at the Montreal Independent Film Festival and is also featured at multiple showings on WKTV and in the metro Grand Rapids region.
Because of the ups and downs of life, it took Hammond several years to finish both the documentary and the book, but now years after she started, she appears to have honored her late-mother’s original admonition to “just learn how.” From standing on her mother’s step with a baby and about to start over to finishing a project that tells the story of the community she originally grew up in, Rose Hammond appears to have won the race the only way she knew how.
The documentary, “In Between the Trees” is now available on WKTV On Demand by visiting wktv.org/programming/ondemand. More information on the companion book for “In Between the Trees” is now available at Barnes & Noble booksellers, Amazon or this weekend at the Woodland Mall Black History Month event.
