1696 Heritage Group

05/02/2024

Just in time for Juneteenth and summer, the historic sign at the God's Little Acre section of the Common Burying Ground has been restored. God’s Little Acre is the oldest and largest existing African heritage burying ground in the United States, with the most extensive collection of 18th-century stones representing enslaved and free African people in early America.

04/30/2024

Lincoln University is celebrating its 170th anniversary as the nation’s first degree-granting Historically Black College and University. Reverend Mahlon Van Horne was part of the first graduating class and would become a Rhode Island and national religious and civil rights leader. Today, Van Horne is a little-known historical figure in Rhode Island, despite becoming the first person of color to be elected to a school board (1872), Rhode Island General Assembly (1885), and appointed by President McKinley as General Counsul to the Danish West Indies during the Spanish American War. Fortunately, his life and many heirlooms are displayed at the Gilded Age Newport in Color exhibit at the Rosecliff Mansion. The exhibit runs until June 30, 2024 at https://www.newportmansions.org/events/gilded-age-newport-in-color/

04/18/2024

The Gilded Age Newport in Color exhibit interprets the origins of Black sports and recreational activities, which dominated the Rhode Island landscape during the era when African heritage people were active inhabitants of a new type of urban setting—the resort community.
The Marathon Club, organized in Rhode Island in 1905, was part of a broader strategy within the African heritage community to improve Rhode Island’s young men and women socially, culturally, and physically through early baseball, track, tennis, football, and cheerleading teams comprised of African heritage and Indigenous young people, mainly from Providence and Newport.
Despite the Jim Crow laws of the American South and the Jim Crow traditions actively prevalent throughout the North, African-heritage people came together to advance their economic and political rights through social interchange and recreational gatherings. Please visit the exhibit now showing at the Rosecliff Mansion.
https://www.newportmansions.org/events/gilded-age-newport-in-color/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwiYOxBhC5ARIsAIvdH50b8ZSBYWhXTHqV56SQ34zq6IdnmBZ2ytfim857WAYwBFXS2JrzvhwaAqYFEALw_wcB

04/16/2024

Newport's African heritage social and political identity dates back to the formation of the Free African Union Society on November 10, 1780. This organization not only set African enslavement on a course toward extinction in America but also created a new and large population of Free Africans well before the end of the Civil War. One hundred years later, during the Gilded Age, Newport became a hotbed of political advancement for all African Americans. The lecture will include images of historic people, documents, and narratives of the day.

Rhode Island Black Heritage Society scholars will interpret the evolution of Black Civil Rights from the early beginnings of the 18th century Free African Societies to the formation of Colored Women Clubs of the Gilded Age.

04/02/2024

On April 3, 1865, my great grandfather, Richard Gill Forrester, became the first to place the Union Flag on the former Confederate Capitol at Richmond, Virginia. His story and many of his family heirlooms from Harlem and Newport are on display at the Gilded Age Newport in Color exhibit at the Rosecliff Mansion. For more information at https://www.newportmansions.org/events/gilded-age-newport-in-color/

03/11/2024

Trolly Bus is traveling down historic Bellevue Avenue promoting the Gilded Age in Newport Exhibit starting March 15, 2024. More at
https://www.newportmansions.org/events/gilded-age-newport-in-color/