Film documents popular 1920s Black resort in Michigan, near where Underground Railroad once ran

Paradise

Cass County filmmaker Sally Jo Connor’s new documentary “Paradise” tells the story of a once popular Black resort near the Village of Vandalia. The resort, active from the 1920s until the late 1960s, died out after the Civil Rights movement. (Photos provided by Sally Jo Connor)

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CASS COUNTY, MI — More than 1,500 freedom seekers are said to have used Vandalia’s network of safe houses in the mid-1800s along their journey on the Underground Railroad.

That welcoming history of the small Cass County village, along with its well-represented population of “free Blacks” who migrated to the area, led to the village’s Paradise Lake later becoming a popular resort spot in the 1920s. It was a place “where Black families escaped, unwound and enjoyed one another’s company in a peaceful environment,” said Cathy LaPointe, of the Underground Railroad Society of Cass County.

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