Celebrate International Emancipation Day with the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society at God’s Little Acre
The Newport cemetery is the oldest surviving collection of burial markers for enslaved and free people of African descent.
“God’s Little Acre” in the Newport Common Burying Ground. (Photo courtesy of Keith Stokes)
Since 1985, countries around the world have observed Aug. 1 as international Emancipation Day. The date marks the day when slaves throughout the British empire were liberated on Aug. 1, 1834. Though Juneteenth celebrations have largely eclipsed the date in the United States, the holiday bears somber significance in Newport, which served as the most active seaport in British North America in the transatlantic slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Today, “God’s Little Acre” stands in the Newport Common Burying Ground as a testament to the free and enslaved people of African descent who lived and worked in Colonial Newport. Thought to be the oldest and largest surviving collection of burial markers of enslaved and free people of African heritage in the United States, the cemetery dates back to Colonial times and includes about 300 visible burial markers.
On Saturday, Aug. 5, at 11 a.m., the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society will mark that connection with a ceremony honoring the thousands of people of West African heritage who lived, worked, worshipped and died in Colonial Newport. The ceremony will begin with a reflection on the history of Africans in Newport and the formation of “God’s Little Acre.” Many of those who came to Newport on slave ships were taken from the Gold Coast in modern-day Ghana. By 1705, the local African heritage community had established a burial ground to serve as the final resting place for these West Africans and others that came to be known as “God’s Little Acre.”
Following the reflection, storyteller Valerie Tutson will lead an African Libation Ceremony. The ritual involves pouring a liquid as an offering to a spirit, deity or soul of a deceased person. Soil taken from the slave dungeons of Fort William in Anomabo, Ghana, will then be buried near the markers of individuals enslaved from Ghana. Anomabo, home to a former British outpost on the Ghanaian coast, was the center of the British slave trade in West Africa and one of the largest exporters of enslaved Africans to the West Indies and North America. The ceremony will mark the connection with Colonial merchants in Newport, who were the most active traders at Anomabo.
The Rhode Island Black Heritage Society is inviting the public to commemorate international Emancipation Day by participating in the ceremony. Parking is limited, so visitors are advised to park at the Newport Gateway and Visitors Center and walk to the site. “God’s Little Acre” is located in the Newport Common Burying Ground near Farewell Street. A walking tour of the historic burying ground will follow.
A grave marker in “God’s Little Acre.” (Photo courtesy of Keith Stokes)
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