Juneteenth marks the official opening of the Edward W. Kane and Martha J. Wallace Center for Black History in Newport. Housed in the 17th century-era Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House, the Center pays homage to the lives and experiences of Black Newporters past and present.
Ocean State Media morning host Luis Hernandez spoke with the Center’s director, Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes, about what visitors can expect to see when the doors open on Friday.
Interview highlights
On the visitor experience
Akeia de Barros Gomes: Well, first I’ll say you won’t be walking through the front door. You’ll be walking in through the kitchen. There are two reasons for that. One is we wanted to make sure that the house is accessible, and so we had to have the entry go through the kitchen so that we could have a ramp at the entry. But importantly for me, when we think about Black history in the house, it was a home where several individuals were enslaved, and they, of course, would not have been able to come in the front door. They would have had to come in through the kitchen or the back door. And so we’re kind of level-setting there, right? That’s where everyone has to come in now, and that’s where the story begins.
And so you come in through the kitchen door, and you encounter a space that really focuses on Black history and freedom-making in Newport, everything from craftsmanship to enslavement and manumissions, with that central focus on freedom-making, how people made freedom every day, considering freedom a process rather than an endpoint. And what will be very visible to visitors is the so-called “servant stairs,” where enslaved people had to get to the second floor; not able to use the front stairs.
That’s your entry point, and then you walk into another space that focuses on Newport and the world. It is a space where people will encounter Newport’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, a very dominant role. About 60% of slave ships that left to go to West Africa were registered in Newport, financed by Newport merchants, and that’s a very important thing for people to know. You don’t think about that when you think about Newport.
On why now is the time to open a Center for Black History
de Barros Gomes: There has been a history, particularly in the Northeast, of erasing our association with enslavement, right? Enslavement happened in the South. “We were the good guys. We were the abolitionists.” There was this period of nostalgia over the era of servitude, where it was discussed as a family type of servitude, more benign than what happened in the South; that these were loving relationships between servants and masters – that became the narrative. And then eventually the narrative just disappeared, so that me – growing up in Newport and later in Middletown – did not even know there was a Black history on this island. That’s a context for us in the Center talking about Newport’s relationship with the African diaspora and the fact that as a Black Newporter, I have relatives all over the world. Let’s celebrate that. That is something beautiful that came out of that violence and trauma.
On how the Center for Black History can be a catalyst for change
de Barros Gomes: I was at the Juneteenth celebration for the East Bay Met High School and one of the students created a piece of art that she gave to me. And the reason she was inspired to create that piece of art is because she read our book, Echoes From the Attic. Her teachers were telling me how she just got very excited because she really wants to understand Newport’s Black history. What got her most excited about reading the book is as she was flipping through the pages, she knew the people who were in the book. So people she encounters on the street, people she might be related to, stories that maybe she has heard from family members, she’s seeing them in a book. And it made her think about that perseverance of culture in spite of. And so when I think catalyst, that’s where my mind goes.
I think whether you’re a tourist coming into Newport, whether you are a Black Newporter, whether you are a European-descended Newporter, an Indigenous Newporter, these are our stories that we’re sharing to tell a fuller Newport history. And so the catalyst, I think, will be different for each person.
It’s exciting for the community, the community that’s like, “It’s about time. It’s about time we had a space where we were doing this.”
