The town of Idlewild near Baldwin was started as a resort town for African Americans in the early part of the 1900s. Because of descrimination, many African Americans were limited to where they could vacation. Called the “Black Eden of Michigan”, from 1912 through the mid-1960s, Idlewild was an active year-round community and was visited by well-known entertainers and professionals from throughout the country. The Flimingo Club opened in 1955 was a popular place for many of the top African American entertainers to perform such as  Sarah Vaughan, Jackie Wilson, and the Four Tops. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 opened up more opportunities for African Americans to purchase cottages and vacation in other parts of the state, the popularity of Idlewild declined. By 1968, the Flamingo Club closed.

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The Ladies’ Library Association of Kalamazoo officially incorporated in 1852 and it was the first women’s club organized in Michigan and the third organized in the United States. Its purpose was to promote the cause of equal education for women. The organization built This building in downtown Kalamazoo in 1879, and it is the building first in the nation erected for the use of a women’s club. Yearly subscriptions cost fifty cents and were available to both men and women, however, only women could be members of the organization. In addition to creating Kalamazoo’s first lending library, the LLA activities have included advocating for the right for women to vote, the creation of day nurseries for working mothers, founding Kalamazoo’s first art club, and establishing a community education program for women

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I saw this big stone building with the columns north of downtown Port Huron and I had to stop and get a pic. I saw ” Ladies of the Maccabees ” on the front, and had no idea what that meant, but then again, there are lots of things I know nothing about.

Bina Mae West at age 18, at Capac High, became a teacher and assistant principal. By the time she was 20, she won a seat on the Board of County School Examiners, one of the first women in Michigan to hold elected office. One day she attended a picnic with her aunt that was sponsored by the Maccabees, a fraternal benefit society led by Port Huron native Nathan Boynton. Such societies offered social and self-improvement activities as well as life and disability insurance at a time when neither was common. Benefit societies were a marvelous innovation with a fundamental flaw: They were for men only.

On the spot, she decided she would change that. Her motivation was two of her best pupils, whose mother had died without insurance, and their father had placed the children with well-to-do families to care for the children but the daughter was a domestic servant and the son a stable boy. As West saw it, the youngsters had been torn from their family and denied a formal education because life insurance was unavailable for women.

Over the next 56 years, West devoted herself to her mission. As state organizer for the Ladies of the Maccabees, she built its membership from 319 in 1892 to 5,770 in 1894. The organization, later renamed the Women’s Benefit Association, had 75,224 members in 42 states by 1900. Four years later, it had nearly 150,000 members and 40 employees at its Port Huron headquarters.

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