I had my first taste of salsa dancing at a nightclub in Florida. A friend and professional dancer took the lead and spun me around a crowded dance floor, careful to catch me from crashing into other couples as my unreliable feet stumbled to maintain some sense of rhythm.

Editor’s Note: The following is an edited excerpt of an interview done in 2004 by Linsey Lee with Leona Coleman Flu, the daughter of the first black stage manager in the Boston theatre district. A summer resident of Oak Bluffs from childhood on, Mrs. Coleman now lives in Atlanta, Ga. The interview is published in Ms. Lee’s book More Vineyard Voices; it appears here with permission from the author, who heads the Martha’s Vineyard Museum’s oral history center.