View "Stories from Stone: Africans in Colonial Rhode Island,"
a short documentary about God's Little Acre by filmaker Elizabeth Delude Dix.
(Requires Windows Media Player)
Newport, Rhode Island played a leading role during the Colonial Period in the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. By 1776, several thousand African slaves lived, work and eventually died in this New England seaport. At the peak of the Colonial Period they comprised nearly one third of the total town population with one in three Newport families owning at least one slave.
Settled under the principles of Religious Toleration,
many of Newport's slave owners would freely covert their slaves into their
religion. In God's Little Acre we find slaves and free Africans that worship
as Quakers, Congregationalists, Baptists, Anglicans and Jews. Click
here to see an example of an African servant and his descriptive burial
marker professing his faith.
At the eve of the American Revolution, Newport became one of America's leading sea and slave ports. By 1774 there were several dozen rum distilleries active on Newport's waterfront.
These distilleries would produce rum distilled from the molasses and sugar harvested by African slave labor of the West Indies. Newport would become one of early America's most important rum-making and shipping ports. Many Newport Africans would arrive from West Indian Islands including Barbados, Antiqua and Jamaica.
"The Sugar they raised was excellent; nobody tasted blood in it."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
19th Century American Philosopher
One exotic commodity that would arrive in 18th century Newport and become the symbol of prosperity and hospitality was the pineapple. Like sugarcane it was harvested by African slaves; the pineapple would be brought back to Newport and become a featured symbol of the safe and prosperous return of ships from the West Indies. Today, the very symbol of Newport's hospitality and tourism industry is also a stark reminder that one man's symbol of hospitality is another man's symbol of oppression and enslavement.
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 Potter Overmantle -Courtesy of the Newport Historical Society |
"Africa's
Children In America" New England in general & Newport in particular, would provide an unique environment for African Servants. Rather than the need for adult, manual laborers as in the American South and West Indies, African children open to assimilation & apprentice training were a prized commodity in Newport’s slave economy. Click here to see an example of a burial marker of an African slave girl in Colonial Newport. |
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"Let this iniquity be viewed in its true magnitude, and in the shocking light in which it has been set... let the wretched case of the poor blacks be considered with proper pity and benevolence, together with the probably dreadful consequence to this land of retaining them in bondage, and all objection against liberating them would vanish. " Rev. Samuel Hopkins, "A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of the Africans," Newport 1776 |
 Map of the 18th Century TransAtlantic Slave Trade Route (click on map to view larger image) |
The Gradual Emancipation of African Slaves
In 1784, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed the Negro Emancipation Act, decreeing that all children of slaves born after March 1, 1784 remain as slaves as children, but would be free after attaining the age of twenty-one for boys and eighteen for girls. All slaves born before 1784 would remain slaves for life. In the 1790 federal census there were still over 260 slaves in Newport households.
Free African American Families
By the 1790 federal census Newport also boasted a sizable free African American community, many being former slaves within the Colonial seaport. Click here to view a list of the seventy-two Free Persons of Color heads of households, totaling 247 persons of African descent in Newport in 1790.
It is remarkable that the government of Colonial Rhode Island felt the need to legislate social and personal behavior between African, Indian and Mulatto Servants and the White citizenry. Clearly there were many incidences where slaves had access to alcohol and interracial socialization within the colony at a level that would cause the passage of such a forceful policy. Of historical note, only free persons of color would forfeit their property and personal freedom for transgressing this law.
(From the Stokes Family Collection)
