A Message From Our President -

By Keith Stokes, Exec. Director, Newport Chamber of Commerce


The American Slave Trade and Rhode Island share similar origins; Newport, Bristol, and to a lesser degree Providence, were among the most prosperous of colonial American seaports that saw unprecedented growth throughout the 18th century - mostly from the export and trade of rum, spermaceti candles, and slaves.
The first slaves arrived in Rhode Island somewhere around 1652, and the first documented slave ship was the Sea Flower arriving in Newport in 1696. As early as 1708 African slaves outnumbered indentured servants in Rhode Island eight to one. In fact, between 1705 and 1805, Rhode Island merchants sponsored at least 1,000 slaving voyages to West Africa and carried over 100,000 slaves back to America. Most of the slaves would come directly from what is today Ghana, but many others would also hail from Sierra Leone and Guinea. Rhode Island as an English Colony would deal almost exclusively with British slave forts along the West African Gold, Ivory and Grain Coasts. The infamous Cape Coast and Elmira Slave Castles of Ghana would be the last African soil captives would touch before being shipped to the New World.
The African Slave Trade had become such a lucrative market that nearly all Rhode Island merchants would underwrite slave voyages and also enjoy ownership of their own slaves. In fact, the African Slave Trade could be termed the worlds first and most extensive Equal Opportunity Employer. During the Colonial period in Rhode Island we find Quakers, Anglicans, Baptists and Jews all actively occupied within the trade. Nearly all of Rhode Islands founding and leading families of the time were actively involved, most notably Brown, Lopez, De Wolfe, Redwood, Vernon, Wanton and Malbone. By the mid-18th century, Rhode Islands success in the trade and ownership of slaves gave direct rise to Americas first business cartel. The United Spermaceti Candle Making Company was founded in Newport and its founding partners included the Brown brothers of Providence, Aaron Lopez and Jacob Rodriguez Rivera of Newport. The company controlled the American market in the production and distribution of spermaceti candles. The candle factories were located in both Providence and Newport and the laborforce was nearly all slaves. Ironically, the founding partners would later become famous for being the early contributors to Brown University in Providence and Touro Synagogue in Newport, the oldest existing synagogue in North America.
The other lucrative Rhode Island industry of the Colonial Period was rum-making. By 1770, Rhode Island was operating over three dozen rum distilling factories with two dozen operating along the Newport waterfront. Rhode Island would produce over 80% of the English Guinea Rum. The rum was distilled from sugar and molasses harvested by African slaves in the West Indies and transported to Rhode Island. Once the sugar was boiled and distilled into rum, the product was shipped from Rhode Island ports to West Africa in hogshead barrels for trade and sale for further African labor to be shipped back to the West Indies and America. Several Rhode Island merchants not only distilled and sold rum, but also controlled large sugar plantations  men like Abraham Redwood of Newport who inherited from his father a large sugar plantation in Antigua that consisted of over 200 slaves. Redwood would use the profits from his plantation and slave trading activities to underwrite the founding of Redwood Library in Newport, Americas oldest existing library.
What also sets Rhode Island apart from the conventional understanding of the American Slave Trade is the fact that most Africans who would arrive in Rhode Island, particularly in Newport and Bristol, were young children. While many slaves toiled in the plantations of Narragansett, Kingston and Portsmouth, many more would become the skilled artisans in the port towns of Newport, Providence and Bristol. Most West Bay, Rhode Island plantations were largely horse and sheep raising farms with limited weather and soil conditions to support any significant agricultural based economy, unlike the vast sugar, coffee and tobacco plantations of the American South and West Indies. Extensive historical records of the time reveal a Newport and Bristol maritime trade economy that was nearly completely dependent upon the skilled work of Negro, Indian and Mulatto servants (slaves). By bringing an African child to Rhode Island, the Master had five to six years to train that child to become a skilled worker in one of many trades including rope making, coopers, stonemasons, carpenters, furniture makers, shipbuilding, rum making, candle making and silversmiths. For example, in 1769, several Newport slaves are listed as expert Chocolate Grinders that are grinding several thousand pounds of sugar and cocoa into chocolate for shipment to the European markets. This skilled trade priority within the slave economies of New England in general and Rhode Island in particular would create a distinct difference between slavery in Colonial Rhode Island as compared to the American South and West Indies. Today, many of Rhode Islands most historically significant Colonial structures were constructed using largely slave labor. In Newport alone, those existing historic buildings include Touro Synagogue, Redwood Library, Brick Market, and the Old Colony House. The John Brown House in Providence includes at least two builders listed as Negros.
If Colonial Rhode Island was known as one of Americas most active slave ports, it was equally known as one of the new countrys most liberal communities for the pursuit of religious freedom. As Quakers, Baptists, Congregationalists and Jews all came to Rhode Islands shores in search of religious toleration and expression; these same minority religious groups were all actively involved in trading and owning African slaves. Interestingly, these slave trading and owning families would convey their religious beliefs onto their slaves by encouraging them to assimilate into the religion of the household. By the eve of the American Revolution, we see in Newport hundreds of slaves actively converted into the religion of their masters. Ironically, this religious conversion seems less inspired by the sharing of the belief of one God, but more a means of maintaining order and further assimilating slaves into European culture and work requirements. Several prominent Newport clergy of the time are actively baptizing slave children and encouraging slave adults to follow the teachings of scripture, particularly the requirements for servants to be obedient to their masters.
At that same time a group of free Africans begin to assemble in Newport and in 1780 formed the Free African Union Society. The society would be the first charted African organization in America with the purpose of providing fraternal and social benefits for free Africans and their families. Founding members would also hire white schoolteachers to ensure the proper education of their children.
One of the most interesting aspects of African slavery in Rhode Island is the creative way many Africans maintained their African culture and identity by passing on their naming traditions to children. In Rhode Island there are extensive records of Africans following the West African tradition of naming children after the days of the week they are born. African names that are frequently documented in Colonial Rhode Island include Sambo, Cuffe, Quam, Nubia, Quash, Salamar, Yamma and Mimbo. There are also cases where slaves after freedom revert back to their African names and also convey African names to their freeborn children.
By 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. This gradual emancipation was due in large part to the performance of slave and free, African and Indian members of the Rhode Island First Regiment who had distinguished themselves with great honor during the American Revolution. But there was also a larger public demand for the ending of African servitude by those that challenged the very notion in Rhode Island that the fight for independence from Great Britain could only be truly righteous when Rhode Island ended its involved with African slavery. At the height of this debate, the Newport Mercury newspaper offered the compelling editorial statement in 1769 to its readers demanding, If Newport had the right to enslave Negroes, then Great Britain has the right to enslave the Colonists.
After the American Revolution, Newport ceased to exist as a major American shipping port. By the 1790 Federal Census, many free Newport Africans moved to Hartford, Boston and Providence. Many relocated to the East Side of Providence, below North Main Street in an area that came to be known as Snow Town and later Hardscrabble by the larger white community. Slave trading continued in Rhode Island with Providence and Bristol taking over from Newport the New England dominance in the now Illegal slave trade with the Browns of Providence and DeWolfes of Bristol continuing Rhode Islands slave trading legacy well into the early 19th century.
There is no denying the undisputable fact that Rhode Island owes much of its economic success during the critical settlement and revolution periods to the use of African slave labor and trading. William Ellery, one of the two Rhode Island signers of the Declaration of Independence stated in 1791, An Ethiopian could as soon change his skin as a Newport merchant could be induced to change so lucrative a trade as that in slaves for the slow profit of any manufactory.
What Ellery was conveying then, which must be clearly recognized today, is Rhode Islands early economic existence was integrally tied to African men, women and children slave labor. These slaves would contribute greatly to the building of Rhode Island. Unfortunately, their arrival to these shores as forced immigrants did not offer them the opportunity to be justly compensated for their immense contributions.
Today, any discussions on Rhode Islands extensive legacy in African enslavement and trading is driven by the very conflict over how best to present and celebrate these important events of the past and what consequences do they have in present-day living? The first crucial step is to continue to search for and present the historical facts. It is impossible to understand Rhode Islands complex economic, religious and social history without fully understanding the unique role African and African Americans played in shaping the states history. Second, there must be an on-going public mechanism to present the history in the context of broadening education and understanding. This model has been implemented quite successfully at Colonial Williamsburg, Plimouth Plantations, and the National Museum of the American Indian. Rhode Island has some of the nations most extensive historical records on African slave trade and those records must be compiled and presented in a fashion similar to the above mentioned institutions. This effort will greatly help in presenting an important, but largely unknown chapter in Rhode Island history. The effort will also set the stage for all Rhode Islanders, particularly those of African decent to firmly establish their historical birthright as highly valued contributors to the Ocean State.
By bringing to public light the immense contributions of Africans and later African Americans, some day Rhode Island citizens of African decent will pridefully boast that they, not as descendents of the Mayflower, but as descendents of the Seaflower contributed greatly to the economic, religious and cultural building of our great state and nation.