Exhibition Highlights Black Newporters of the 17th-19th Centuries
The Newport Historical Society recently launched the exhibition A Name, A Voice, A Life: The Black Newporters of the 17th-19th Centuries (figure 1). Supported in part through a generous grant by the Decorative Art Trust’s Dean F. Failey Fund, this powerful installation explores the lives and experiences of Black Newporters from the town’s founding in 1639 to 1842, when slavery was officially abolished in the Rhode Island Constitution.
Figure 1. The introductory gallery of A Name, A Voice, A Life, on view at the Newport Historical Society until November 2024. Photo by Peter Julien.
These stories were recovered as part of the ongoing research project Voices from the NHS Archives, an expansive database that contains records for thousands of individuals—including enslaved, manumitted, and free people of African and Indigenous descent, enslavers, and slave traders—who lived and worked in Newport during the era of slavery.
The researchers who helped build the database, Zoe Hume and Kaela Bleho (figure 2), served as co-curators for A Name, A Voice, A Life and partnered with H2 Design Studio to bring their extensive research to life. After delving into the history of slavery in the North, the exhibition explores various elements of Black history in early Newport, including the maintenance of West African heritage and culture, spirituality and religious practice, family life, and the town’s growing Black community.
Figure 2. Exhibition co-curators Zoe Hume and Kaela Bleho. Photo by Madison Van Wylen Photography.
As visitors step from the introductory gallery into the adjoining Seventh Day Baptist Church—a 1730s building maintained by the NHS—the exhibition’s focus shifts away from a broader historic lens to a spotlight on five Black Newporters (figure 3).
Figure 3. The interior of the historical Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House, one of the exhibition spaces for A Name, A Voice, A Life. Photo by Kaela Bleho.
This space features a visualization of the 1,700 names of African-descended people identified through the Voices research project (figure 4). In the months leading up to the exhibit opening, NHS staff and community partners visited schools, community centers, and other nonprofits, sharing their research and engaging the community to write out each of the names by hand. These names are also projected onto the pulpit of the church at the heart of the exhibit space, while a recorded voice recites them aloud in a prayer of remembrance.
Figure 4. Some of the 1,700 names of people of African descent recovered from the NHS archives were hand-written by community members. Photo by Madison Van Wylen Photography.
The exhibit highlights the stories of Arthur Tikey, Obour Collins, Mereah Brenton, Robert Wainwood, and Hannibal Collins, Black Newporters who lived during the late 18th-early 19th centuries. Although the surviving documentary record offers one lens through which to understand their lives, Hume and Bleho have also selected material culture that speaks to their experiences. Tikey’s ropemaking business is illustrated through a laying top, a tool used to twist cord into rope; for Collins, who was a friend and correspondent of celebrated poet Phillis Wheatley, a portable writing desk is on display, equipped with quill and ink. Objects used through the exhibit are from the NHS’ own collection, as well as those generously loaned by the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, the Mystic Seaport Museum, and the Rhode Island Historical Society.
The lives of Collins, Brenton, and Wainwood are further illuminated through contemporary artwork. Local artists Cat Laine (figure 5), Toby Sisson (figure 6), and Eric Telfort (figure 7) used archival research by Hume and Bleho to produce artwork that evokes the likenesses or experiences of these individuals. Their work is a powerful means of connecting the present-day viewer to a person who lived hundreds of years ago, whose experiences in enslavement and freedom we can only imagine.
Figure 5. Artist Cat Laine with her portrait of Obour Collins, titled “Obour’s Anamnesis.” Photo by Madison Van Wylen Photography.
Figure 6. Artist Toby Sisson with her piece “The Spirit of Robert Wainwood Climbs, Sails, and Soars Toward Freedom.” Photo by Madison Van Wylen Photography.
Figure 7. Portrait of Mereah Brenton, titled “The Citizen of 1775,” by Eric Telfort. Photo by Madison Van Wylen Photography.
These are just five lives of the thousands more who were enslaved in Newport; through this exhibition, we remember their agency, empowerment, joy, resiliency, and survival.
A Name, A Voice, A Life: The Black Newporters of the 17th-19th Centuries is on view at the Richard I. Burnham Resource Center, 82 Touro Street, Newport, RI, Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. The exhibit remains on view through November 29, 2024, free of charge.
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Formerly known as the "blog,” the Bulletin features new research and scholarship, travelogues, book reviews, and museum and gallery exhibitions. The Bulletin complements The Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust, our biannual members publication.
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