Letters to The Editor
Vacationland Bigotry
As a collector of vintage Maine travel and tourism brochures, I enjoyed your April article "America's Summer Playground." I was struck, however, by your use of the term "refined vacationers" to describe the type of patron sought by (and drawn to) certain summer colonies.
You may be unaware that in the 1930s and early '40s many Maine hotel and resort ads used such code phrases as "refined clientele," "select clientele," and "select patronage" not to woo potential guests on the basis of social class but, rather, to publicize (oh, so discreetly) their practice of discrimination on the basis of religion, i.
