by Keith Stokes | Jan 16, 2015 | Research, Uncategorized
In 1780, a group of African men assembled in Newport, Rhode Island to organize and charter America’s first mutual aid society for Africans known as the Free African Union Society. The Society’s lofty mission included providing funds for indigent families, a burial...
by Keith Stokes | Dec 4, 2014 | Daily Life, Research
For our county’s first 250 years, millions of enslaved Africans lived and worked within the original thirteen colonies and the ever-expanding United States of America. Rhode Island was one of the earliest and most active shipping sites in the American colonies,...
by Keith Stokes | Jul 16, 2014 | Commentary, Research
Many times, when you live and were raised in a historic community like my home in Newport, Rhode Island, you take for granted the significant sites and structures in the place you call home. My family has lived on Vernon Avenue for four generations. We have played...
by Keith Stokes | Jul 8, 2014 | Commentary, Research
In all the years that I have worked researching and interpreting slave cemeteries, the most interesting and baffling discovery I have come across is the matching burial markers in Newport, RI and Dorchester, MA of a young slave girl named Ann. She died in June 1743 at...
by Keith Stokes | Mar 2, 2014 | Daily Life, Religion, Women
Newport, Rhode Island in the mid-18th century embodied two marked ironies. Settled a century earlier on the principles of religious freedom and civil liberties, the fledging colony would attract many of the world’s most persecuted religious minority groups including...
by Keith Stokes | Jan 2, 2014 | Occupations, Research, Uncategorized
The peculiar institution of slavery in Rhode Island had its start and evolution with the sea. The town of Newport, aptly named the “City by the Sea,†would become the fifth most active seaport in all of Thirteen Colonies by the mid-18th century, an era that...
