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Unveiling Sign for Liberty Square Slave Trade Memorial

Newport Daily News – Aug. 24, 2018

Sign of Remembrance

Newport Mayor Harry Winthrop and Victoria Johnson, chairwoman of the Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Committee, unveiled a sign at the future site of the Newport Slave Trade Memorial in Liberty Square, Farewell and Marlborough streets.

Mayor Harry Winthrop and Victoria Johnson of Newport Middle Passage Project. At left are City Council members Lynne Underwood Ceglie, Susan Taylor and Marco Camacho. At right are Project members Benedict Leca, Patricia Petit and Peter Fay.

At left are City Council members Lynne Underwood Ceglie, Susan Taylor and Marco Camacho. The planned historical monument will honor and memorialize Africans who lost their lives on slave ships as well as the survivors and their descendants. The local project is part of a national effort to research and identify all 48 port sites in the present United States that were ports of entry for Africans during the 300-plus years of the trans-Atlantic human trade. Local communities have been encouraged to hold remembrance ceremonies at each port and place some type of marker. City officials, community leaders, committee members and many others gathered Thursday to commemorate the future site of the Newport Slave Trade Memorial in Liberty Square.

[PETER SILVIA PHOTOS] – (Courtesy of Newport Daily News, Copyright ©2018 GateHouse Media Inc.)

Jeff Weston: Speaker Series, Aug 27

Jonathan Schroeder, Ph.D. provides an overview of John Swanson Jacobs’ autobiographical slave narrative.

Join our free seminar series this summer:

“The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly” with Jeff Weston

Tuesday | August 27th | 6 pm | Newport Art Museum

Register here

Jeff Weston

“The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly” with Jeff Weston

August 27, 2024 6:00 pm

Join Newport Middle Passage for an evening of engaging discussion with local tour guide Jeff Weston for this overview of Newport History, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. This lecture is a part of the Newport Middle Passage Summer Series. Weston will present the complex history of Newport. Jeff is an expert storyteller and founder of Northstar Touring.

Visitors may also examine the Newport Art Museum’s Black History of Newport installation. Victoria Johnson, a lifelong Newporter, advocate, and educator, has documented celebratory mentions of Black Newporters throughout the 20th century. Select newspaper clippings and original scrapbooks are on display for visitors to interact with and learn about our city’s Black History.

Please join us for this illuminating discussion!

Jeff Weston is a Rhode Island “Prodigal Son” who grew up in Bristol, Rhode Island. He went to the University of Connecticut where he was an accounting major and also attained a master’s degree from Fairfield University. As a very successful marketing executive, he retired eight years ago and moved back to Newport to care for his elderly parents.

He volunteered to be a docent at Trinity Church, and it ignited a passion for both history and touring. He graduated from the International Tour Management Institute and after a few stints with local tour organizations, including the Newport Historical Society, founded his own upscale tour company “Rhogue Island Tours”, which specializes in personalized entertaining, irreverent but historically accurate tours. He has researched Rhode Island history thoroughly, pouring over 300 books from many of the local libraries, including the esteemed Redwood Library, to ensure all listeners are getting an accurate yet often provocative narrative. For more information contact Jeff Weston at jeffwestontours@gmail.com.

Jonathan Schreoder: Speaker Series, July 23

Jonathan Schroeder, Ph.D. provides an overview of John Swanson Jacobs’ autobiographical slave narrative.

Join our free seminar series this summer:

“TOWARDS A NEW GRAMMAR OF JUSTICE: JOHN SWANSON JACOBS’ WORLD-ALTERING WORDS“

Tuesday | July 23rd | 6 pm

Register here

Jonathan Schroeder, Ph.D., Rhode Island School of Design

The Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project in collaboration with the Redwood Library and Atheneum, presents Jonathan Schroeder’s overview of John Swanson Jacobs’ remarkable 1855 autobiographical slave narrative, The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots, which was lost until Schroeder found it in 2016.

Jonathan D. S. Schroeder is a historian of literature, medicine, and emotion, and a lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2016, in Australia, he rediscovered John Swanson Jacobs’s long-lost autobiographical slave narrative, The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery; republished by The University of Chicago Press in 2024 and profiled in the New York Times, NPR, and elsewhere, his edition features the first full-length biography of Harriet Jacobs’s globe-spanning brother, No Longer Yours: The Lives of John Swanson Jacobs. Schroeder is also the co-editor of Ahab Unbound: Melville and the Material Turn.

Harrison Room, Redwood Library and Atheneum, 50 Bellevue Ave, Newport | Free

NMPPMP Receives THRIVE Award

Recipients of THRIVE award.

Newport Middle Passage Project was awarded a $,5000 grant from the state of Rhode Island, administered through the R.I. Humanities THRIVE program, given to organizations that “support and strengthen Rhode Island’s many diverse, dynamic communities.”

Victoria Johnson, co-chair of the Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project, accepted the award for the organization.

The awards were presented at the Rhode Island State House on May 23, 2024. Secretary of State Gregg Amore and Speaker of the House Joe Shekarchi made remarks.

RI Humanities Executive Director Elizabeth Francis noted, “Through the THRIVE program, we are thrilled to award these inaugural general operating support grants to small organizations that preserve and activate our many cultures, heritages, places, and stories in rural and urban communities across the state.”

Black Regiment Commemoration 2023

“The Backstory of the Black Regiment: Soldiers’ Ties to Community and Kin”

Lecture by Peter Fay, Patriots Park Commemoration by NAACP

Patriots Park, Portsmouth, RI,

August 27, 2023, 3 pm

Philo Phillips of North Kingstown was 27 when his owner sold him into the state’s Black Regiment during the Revolutionary War. Now a soldier, he marched and fought for his life and freedom. However, like many soldiers, he was not alone. His wife accompanied him throughout the war as a “camp follower”, furnishing food, laundry, and nursing. She also earned income as a washerwoman for other soldiers. A year later, she learned her husband was captured by the British troops during a skirmish and was held captive in Newport. Six months later he escaped back to the regiment where his wife remained. At the end of the war, after five long years of service, Philo Phillips was honorably discharged.

After the war, he was impoverished, and his wife was blind. He sought and found help from the Black community, and years later the Providence Gazette commemorated the death of this “respectable man of color” at age 75.

Soldiers’ lives depended on their comrades in battle. But Mr. Fay will uncover the stories of women and others whose support was crucial to the Black Regiment’s success during the privations of war and its aftermath.

For Info, contact info@newportmiddlepassage.org

https://goo.gl/maps/f9cPtsQ8sErDmhoF8
Patriot’s Park, Portsmouth, RI

Middle Passage Summer Events 2023


The Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project announces its summer activities for the public.

Thursday, June 29, 6:30 pm

Cambridge Taylor & Newport’s Slave Revolt

presented by Michael Simpson
Newport Public Library, 300 Spring St., Newport, RI

Michael J. Simpson

Thursday, July 27, 6:30 pm

Before Brooklyn: The Unsung Heroes Who Helped Break Baseball’s Color Barrier

presented by Ted Reinstein

Redwood Library & Atheneum, 50 Bellevue Ave., Newport, RI

Ted Reinstein

Monday, August 28, 6:30 pm

The Sound of Freedom

presented by Dr. Michael Browner

Newport Historical Society, 82 Touro St., Newport, RI

Dr. Michael Browner

Middle Passage Summer Events 2022

The Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project announces its summer activities for the public.

June 18
12 pm
Liberty Sq, Farewell & Marlborough St.		Liberty Square Design Presentation
Julian Bonder & Maryann Thompson, Architects
Collaboration with Sankofa Community Connection
June 21 & 23
2 – 4 pm
Florence Gray Senior Citizen Ctr
1 York St.		Newport Middle Passage Information Session
Snacks, Drinks, Door Prize                               
June 25
12 pm
Liberty Sq, Farewell & Marlborough St.		Liberty Square Design Presentation
Julian Bonder & Maryann Thompson, Architects
June 27 & 28
4 – 6 pm
Newport Public Library
300 Spring St.		Newport Middle Passage Information Session
July 6 & 7
10 am – 12 pm
Newport Historical
82 Touro St		Newport Middle Passage Information Session
August 11
4 pm
Mumford Manor
39 Farewell St.		Quilt Artist – Veronica Mays
August 26
6 pm
Zoom – see newportmiddlepassage.org		Heritage Journey from Fauquier, VA to Newport RI
Victoria Johnson

Rhode Island Mariners of Color

Wednesday, September 8, 2021, at 6:00 PM EDT (Tickets available here)

Online event sponsored Seaman’s Church Institute and NMPPMP

For centuries, Rhode Island sent its young men to sea. As agriculture and slavery slowly declined, hundreds left the rural towns, many of them formerly enslaved African American and Indigenous men. They sought out opportunities in shipping and whaling as cooks, first mates, oarsmen, and boatsteerers. They crossed the bay, the Atlantic, and the world in pursuit of a livelihood that had eluded them at home. What they found were South Sea islands, arctic icescapes, wondrous sea creatures, warring tribes, hardship, and occasionally, opportunities for stunning achievement.

Peter Fay is a public historian and board member of the Jamestown Historical Society. He researches, writes, and lectures about Rhode Island history. He also is currently helping develop a public memorial to recognize the role of Newport in the history of the slave trade.

Whaling Bark Jacob A. Howland, North Sea

The Colonization of Black Female Bodies – Akeia de Barros Gomes

In this third online event of the Newport Middle Passage Summer 2021 Series, the Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project presents Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes in an online event for the general public in collaboration with the Redwood Library and Atheneum of Newport on Wed., July 21, 2021, at 6 pm.

In this presentation, Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes will discuss how the dynamics underlying the gendered/raced/sexual relationships created under colonialism manifest themselves today. She will also explore how the perspectives of different eras of Black feminism, human rights, and sexual health add to the conversation. 

Reserve your place online here:

Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes is the Senior Curator of Maritime Social Histories at Mystic Seaport Museum and is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. She is responsible for working on curatorial projects of race, Indigenous histories, ethnicity, and diversity in New England’s Maritime activities. She leads a multi-disciplinary team to examine Mystic Seaport Museum’s and other regional collections to develop contemporary re-imaginings of people’s actions in the past and present and translating that into content relevant to today’s social environment. Akeia received her BA in anthropology/archaeology at Salve Regina University and her MA and PhD in anthropology/archaeology at the University of Connecticut.

African American Poets Live

Wed., July 7 at 6 PM online here

Next in the NMPPMP Summer 2021 Series will be two exceptional women who are engaged in creating and writing outstanding poetry on Wed., July 7 at 6 PM. Presented in partnership with the Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project, poets Afia Ansong and Jacqueline Johnson will share their poetry and discuss their creative process. Through their work, they help us to question and explore themes of identity, transition, and belonging. The event is hosted online by the Redwood Library and Athenaeum.

Afia Ansong

Afia Ansong is a Ghanain American scholar and artist who writes poetry and teaches contemporary and traditional West African dance, she writes about the challenges of the African immigrant identity in the United States, exploring themes of transition, citizenship, and identity.

She is a 2015 and 2018 recipient of the Bronx Recognizes its Own Award Her work can be seen or is forthcoming in FOLIO, TAB, The Seventh Wave, PUBLIC POOL, Vinyl, Main Review, joINT, Frontier, and others.

Jacqueline Johnson

Jacqueline Johnson is a multi-disciplinary artist creating poetry, fiction, and fiber arts, and is the winner of the Third Annual White Pine Press Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in: “Show Us Your Papers,” on Main Street Rag Press, 2020, “Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era,” Routledge 2020, “About Place Journal”, the “Langston Hughes Review,” and The Slow Down, American Public Media, October 16, 2019. She is currently writing a novel, The Privilege of Memory, and How to Stop a Hurricane, a collection of short stories. She is a graduate of New York University and the City University of New York. A native of Philadelphia, PA., she resides in Brooklyn, New York.

The Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project is a local nonprofit organization whose goal is to bring to light the full rich scope of Aquidneck Island’s history. We plan to place a memorial in Liberty Square to commemorate the lives of Africans brought to our shores through the Middle Passage and to honor their descendants who have contributed much to the growth of our city, our state, and our country.