Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African-American Heritage / Edition 1

by Mark J. Sammons, Valerie Cunningham

Overview

Few people think of a rich Black heritage when they think of New England. In the pioneering book Black Portsmouth, Mark J. Sammons and Valerie Cunningham celebrate it, guiding the reader through more than three centuries of New England and Portsmouth social, political, economic, and cultural history as well as scores of personal and site-specific stories. Here, we meet such Africans as the likely negro boys and girls from Gambia, who debarked at Portsmouth from a slave ship in 1758, and Prince Whipple, who fought in the American Revolution. We learn about their descendants, including the performer Richard Potter and John Tate of the People's Baptist Church, who overcame the tragedies and challenges of their ancestors' enslavement and subsequent marginalization to build communities and families, found institutions, and contribute to their city, region, state, and nation in many capacities. Individual entries speak to broader issues—the anti-slavery movement, American religion, and foodways, for example. We also learn about the extant historical sites important to Black Portsmouth—including the surprise revelation of an African burial ground in October 2003—as well as the extraordinary efforts being made to preserve remnants of the city's early Black heritage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781584652892
Publisher:	University of New Hampshire Press
Publication date:	06/01/2004
Series:	Revisiting New England
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

MARK J. SAMMONS is the Executive Director of Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion in Portsmouth, and has served as President and Executive Director of the Newburyport Maritime Society, Director of Research at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, and Coordinator of Public Buildings at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.

VALERIE CUNNINGHAM, award-winning historic preservationist and Portsmouth native, has spent more than thirty years researching and writing about northern New England's Black history. A community activist with seemingly boundless energy, she is the founder of the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail, Inc. and directs the African American Resource Center.

Table of Contents

Preface - The Seaport - Colonists
Portsmouth and the Slave Trade
Sale of Enslaved People
White Fears, Regulation, and Legislation
One Negro Man £200, One Ditto Woman £50: Location, Labor, Value
Skilled Craftspeople
Fortune and James: Invisibility
Hannah, Pomp, Nanne, Violet, Scipio: Agricultural Work
Quamino, Prince, Nero, a Negro Girl, Cato, Peter, John Jack, and Phyllis: The Role of Slavery among the White Colonial Elite
Venus: Decoding Clues
North Church People: Status and Religion
Nero Brewster, Willie Clarkson, Jock Odiorne, Pharaoh Shores: Black Coronations, Internal Status. and Social Control
The Unnamed, Unrecorded Dead: Health, Medicine, Death, Burial
The Cotton and Hunking Families: Family, Women, Marriage
Revolutionary Petitioners: Politics and Freedom
Prince Whipple: Revolution and Freedom
Free Black People in an Era of Slavery
The Long-Range Impacts of the Slave System - Early Americans
3 Very Old Negroes Almost Good for Nothing: The Plight of the Elderly in Freedom
Prince, Cuffee, Dinah, and Rebecca Whipple: A Sample Family Living in Freedom
Siras Bruce and Flora Stoodley Bruce: New Freedom, Limited Options
Pomp and Candace Spring: A Glimpse of Home and Home Life
Dinah GIbson: Making It on Her Own
Richard Potter: Making an Itinerant Living in Entertainment
Black Marines of Portsmouth: Life at Sea and at Home
Esther Whipple Mullinaux: Kinship and Cluster Diffusion - Abolition
Portsmouth's Continued Participation in Slavery
Frederick Douglass, Charles Lenox Remond, William Wells Brown: Black Abolitionist Orators and the Civil War Years in Portsmouth •Most of the Colored People of the City, Both Old and Young: Celebrating Emancipation - Community
People's Baptist Church: Spiritual Life, Religious Community
Deacon Haywood Burton: Community Leader
Gearge M. King, Ralph Reed, Albert Auylor: Social Clubs and Political Action
The Klan in Portsmouth
Louis George Gregory and Louisa Matthews Gregory: Spiritual Leaders for Racial Unity
Elizabeth Virgil: Quiet Pioneer, Witness to a Changing World
Owen Finnigan Cooper, Eugene Reid, John Ramsay, Emerson Reed, Doris Moore, Anna Jones: World War II and the Patriotic Service
Rosary Broxay Cooper: Migration, Career Options, Patriotic Service - Civil Rights
Lost Boundaries, Broken Barriers
Thomas CObbs: Making a Living, Making a Difference
Legislating Destruction: Government Policy and the Black Experience
Working Together, Seeking Understanding: The Seacoast Council on Race and Religion - Living with Diversity - Coffins Under the Street: An Afterword
Appendix: Places Associated with Narratives in This Book
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Kenneth A. Heidelberg

"Rooted in the lives of individuals, Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African American Heritage, is a lively story uncovering the buried history of black life in Portsmouth from 1648 until the present. The reader will meet coopers, tailors, mariners, printers, laundresses, dock workers, teachers, preachers and many more whose skills built a black community within the wider city of Portsmouth. Charles Lenox Redmond, Williams Wells Brown, Frederick Douglass are amount the nationally famous visitors remembered in the city. Other names known mostly in Portsmouth include Fowle, Whipple, Bruce and Spring. All are viewed against the background of the larger national history comprehensively recounted by the authors."
— Kenneth A. Heidelberg, Site Manager, Boston African American National Historic Site

Editorial Reviews

"The book's creation stands as testament to the lives and contributions of blacks to their community, and to the collaboration possible between people of different races."—www.seacoastonline.com

"Rooted in the lives of individuals, Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African American Heritage, is a lively story uncovering the buried history of black life in Portsmouth from 1648 until the present. The reader will meet coopers, tailors, mariners, printers, laundresses, dock workers, teachers, preachers and many more whose skills built a black community within the wider city of Portsmouth. Charles Lenox Redmond, Williams Wells Brown, Frederick Douglass are amount the nationally famous visitors remembered in the city. Other names known mostly in Portsmouth include Fowle, Whipple, Bruce and Spring. All are viewed against the background of the larger national history comprehensively recounted by the authors."—Kenneth A. Heidelberg, Site Manager, Boston African American National Historic Site

From the Publisher