Newport, Rhode Island was the center of the American triangle slave trade for over a century, sending more voyages to Africa than any other state. In that time, Newport ships brought over 100,000 enslaved men, women, and children on the horrendous Middle Passage journey from Africa to North America. Today, over 325 years after the first slave voyage to Newport, residents are still grappling with the long shadow of that history. The creation of the Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project is just one step in the journey of lifting that shadow and responding to its consequences.
Beginnings
In January 2016, Ann Chinn of Jacksonville, Florida, Program Director of the National Middle Passage Ceremony and Port Marker Project convened a discussion at Rhode Island Historical Society in Providence to assess interest in creating a Middle Passage Port Marker for Rhode Island. Markers were already installed at several port cities on the East Coast.
After attending the meeting Peter Fay, of the Newport area, approached and surveyed Newport community leaders and institutions seeking support for the creation of a local marker project. Interest came overwhelmingly from the African American community.
Mrs. Victoria Johnson of the Newport NAACP enthusiastically supported the initiative and led many in the African American community to join the new organization. Their goal became creating a permanent memorial to Africans who perished during the Middle Passage and those who survived the voyage and contributed to Newport’s history and culture.
Many in Newport’s older Black community had grown up in the racially segregated city of the mid-1900s, where their community, by necessity, developed its own institutions and a sense of its own history outside the purview of the white institutions. Veterans of the desegregation and civil rights movements in Newport joined the organization.
- Paul Gaines, the first African American mayor of Newport, led a project to recognize Rhode Island’s Black Revolutionary War soldiers for the first time with a monument at the Regiment’s battle site in Portsmouth.
- Charles Roberts, the grandson of the first African American livery service owner in Newport and whose aunt was a founder of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, joined. He subsequently created the Rhode Island Slave History Medallions organization.
- Mrs. Johnson was the first female African American Rhode Island high school principal.
- James Winters was one of only two African Americans on the Newport Police at the time.
- Clinton Gardiner is the grandson of a Civil War soldier in Rhode Island’s Colored 1st Heavy Artillery Regiment and great grandson of the Chief Sachem of the Narragansett people.
- Ernest B. Gibbons III, now 98, is the great-grandson of the pastor of the historic 19th-century Black church of Newport, Mt. Zion AME Church.
While most were African Americans, many whites joined as well. Peter Fay was a public historian; John Pope an accountant; and Eileen Westgate was a teacher, as were Martha Crane Andersen and Elizabeth Folke.
The founders of Newport Middle Passage were diverse, but their motivations were surprisingly uniform. Mrs. Johnson, born in 1940, said the existence of the Newport slave trade “was never taught” when she grew up in Newport, nor in more recent times, when she returned to lead Rogers High School. Jamestown had the highest percentage of African slaves in colonial New England, one-third of its population. Yet, Peter Fay despaired, never in their twelve years of education in Jamestown (2000 -2018) were his children taught about Rhode Island slavery. Charles Roberts, like Victoria Johnson, learned of Black history only from his family. As a child, he proudly shared with his teacher the story of Newport’s famous slave-turned-musical composer and community leader, Newport Gardner. The teacher didn’t believe Roberts, as not even she had heard of the icon who founded the first Black Fraternal Society in America.
The Newport slave trade was, as Reverend Samuel Hopkins wrote in 1787, “The first wheel of commerce in Newport, on which every other movement in business has chiefly depended”. (*) He also recognized that Newport was a cog in the wheel of the vast business of slavery, extending from Europe and America throughout the Atlantic world.
To broaden the understanding of our work and extent of our audience, we entered into relationships with other Middle Passage ports in Rhode Island, through the Warren and Bristol Middle Passage Projects, and in the Atlantic world through acceptance into UNESCO’s Sites of Memory program. In 2019, Newport Middle Passage was awarded recognition as a UNESCO Site of Memory by Ali Moussa lye, Chief of Section of History of Memory for Dialogue at UNESCO.
A final milestone in gaining recognition for our project was obtaining endorsements from national leaders in African American history. After years of developing our project and winning community support, the Newport Middle Passage Memorial Project received a public endorsement by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. the historian, filmmaker, and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, and long-time admirer of the work of the Memorial’s architects Julian Bonder and Maryann Thompson.
Educational Programming
Throughout the years since its founding, Newport Middle Passage has presented lectures, concerts, and exhibits. These events fulfill our mandate not only to build a place of remembrance, but also to share knowledge about the role of the slave trade in the community and to celebrate the contributions to life in Newport by Black residents past and present.
Organizational Development
The Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project was registered as a 501 (c) (3) on January 12, 2017. From the outset the all-volunteer Board developed and followed a series of strategic plans.
Our Board members’ variety of expertise, enabled us to manage the organization, including business, architectural design, educational events, celebrations, and communications including the website.
For the one-time project of building the Memorial we adopted the practice of contracting with specialized professionals: architects, engineers, arborists, archeologists, fundraising, and digital consultants. We gratefully acknowledge the faithful, generous support of our operating and program expenses from individual donors and from: BankNewport, Rhode Island Foundation, van Beuren Charitable Foundation, Prince Charitable Trusts, Alletta Morris McBean Charitable Foundation, Rhode Island Humanities, and Rhode Island House of Representatives Legislative Grant.
Board Development
Board membership naturally evolved over the years as new members brought needed knowledge and experience to complement the skills that were already present.
Ruth Taylor, a valuable Newport Middle Passage advisor, led the Board in revising the Bylaws to broaden and strengthen the Committee structure in 2024. Co-founder Mrs. Johnson is Chair of the Board. Fern Lima is Vice-Chair. John Pope is Treasurer. Stephen White is Chair of the Building Committee, Whitney Slade of Governance, Susan Barnes of Fund Development. Evan Smith joined the Board on March 1, 2025, bringing his deep knowledge of Newport and experience in communications. Marion White, internationally renowned architectural project manager, generously volunteered to oversee the construction of the Memorial.
Planning the Newport Middle Passage Memorial
Liberty Square
The founders of Newport Middle Passage have met every month since 2017 at the Newport Public Library, raising funds, planning educational programs, designing a memorial, and building trust and relationships across Newport’s varied communities and institutions.
In June 2017, they persuaded the Newport City Council to allocate a park for the memorial:
“RESOLVED, that the Newport City Council endorses the placing in Liberty Square on Marlborough Street an historical monument to honor and memorialize those who were lost and those who survived the Middle Passage to build the Newport of today and asks the City Administration to support the Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Committee in their planning for the site.”
Newport Middle Passage set out to find an architect skilled in representing historical memory and comfortable with the subject of slavery. Peter Fay and Clinton Gardiner first met with our chosen architects in December 2018. Julian Bonder, Professor of Architecture at Roger Williams University, developed the prize-winning Memorial to The Abolition of the Slave Trade in Nantes, France, in 2012. He and Maryann Thompson agreed to help us develop a design for Liberty Square to preserve the memory of the Middle Passage victims and to promote community discussion and education.
For the next five years, in more than two dozen meetings, demonstrations, and presentations, the Memorial architects heard and incorporated feedback, concerns, and suggestions from stakeholders, institutions, and community members. That open process served a dual purpose: it helped to build support for the Memorial itself, and it allowed the architectural team to refine their design to serve the needs and desires of the local audience.
In 2023, Newport Middle Passage presented the final Liberty Square Memorial design to the City of Newport Open Space and Tree Commission—the first step before seeking City Council approval.
As is often the case, at the last minute, opposition arose to having the Memorial placed at Liberty Square. Despite the City’s 2017 designation of the site for the Memorial, representatives of the Newport Daughters of the American Revolution and of the Newport Artillery Company stood against it. Although the Memorial design honored the existing markers on Liberty Square, particularly the elm tree planted by the DAR in memory of George Washington, their objections proved intractable.
Our intention has always been for the Memorial to be a reconciling place in the city of Newport. Faced with irreconcilable opposition, the Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Board resolved to step back from Liberty Square.
The Mayor and other Council members voiced continued support for the Memorial. Mayor Xay Khamsyvoravong reported that on July 9, 2024 in Executive Session the City Council, on “committed to ensuring that the Memorial finds an appropriate home”. He further asked all relevant City of Newport offices to work with Middle Passage representatives to identify a site.
New Site
Under the leadership of the City Manager Colin Kennedy, the City’s team worked for months in close, cooperative partnership with Mrs. Johnson, Stephen White, and Whitney Slade. After considering ten initial sites, they agreed unanimously on a small site in the highly visited Thames-Harbor area. Because it is owned by the State, City Council had to request its use from RIDOT, which added another step to the now-completed approval process.
(*) Anonymous (known to be Rev. Samuel Hopkins), “Letter to the Editor”, Providence Gazette and Country Journal, October 6 & 13, 1787, p. 1.
We need your donations to spread our message. Please help us build a memorial to commemorate the many thousands lost in the Middle Passage of the slave trade and honor those who survived the Middle Passage, thrived, and helped create Newport.
Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt non-profit corporation (Federal EIN number: 81-4864251).
or
Mail your tax-deductible donation to:
Newport Middle Passage Project
P.O. Box 4706
Middletown, RI 02842