Exploring Dover’s Black History Tour

By all accounts, the idea for a memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment he commanded emerged soon after Shaw, two other officers, and 74 Black soldiers died during the initial attack on a fort that protected Charleston’s harbor.  After local opposition prevented a monument in Beaufort, South Carolina, it fell to Boston’s Joshua Bowen Smith (1813-79), an African American caterer to bring the monument to fruition. This tour takes us to the home,…

Sankofa Scholar & Tour Guide: Nur Shoop Colonial Portsmouth newspapers testify to the local slave trade, runaways, abolitionists, and anti-abolitionist activities, followed by conflicting opinions of the Civil War. In the 20th century, the legacy of that early history was reflected in news about de facto segregation in housing and public places. This tour includes many of those historic landmarks from the early nineteenth through the twentieth centuries.

Sankofa Scholar & Tour Guide: Kevin Wade Mitchel as Jack Staines Seafaring was one of the most significant occupations among both enslaved and free Black men between 1740 and 1865. Black seamen sailed on whalers, warships, and privateers. Some were enslaved and forced to work at sea, but by 1800 most seamen were free to seek adventure and economic opportunity aboard ship. On this tour, you will meet Jack Staines, husband to Ona Judge Staines, the President, and Martha Washington’s…

Sankofa Scholar & Tour Guide: Angela Matthews Institutionalized slavery in Colonial America provided immense wealth and material culture to many European immigrants and their descendants in the Americas, as Portsmouth’s house museums bear witness. This tour brings into focus an economic system dependent upon the international slave trade with its constant supply of kidnapped unpaid African workers and their descendants, who, against the odds, created one of this country’s oldest Black communities.

Tour Guide: David Nelson Harriet E. Wilson was the first African American of any gender to publish a novel on the North American continent. Her novel Our Nig, or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black was published in 1859. Born a free person of color in New Hampshire, Wilson was orphaned when young and bound until the age of 18 as an indentured servant. She struggled to make a living after that, marrying twice; her only son George…

From the Black Power and Black Arts movements of the 20th century to the Black Lives Matter movement of today, artists of color have created public art that provided a communal vision of history, heritage, and hope.   Recently the works of three culturally conscious Black artists – the bronze head of a Black woman by Simone Leigh, four Afrofuturistic females by Wangechi Mutu, and the 20-foot sculpture of a dreadlocked black male rider on a stallion by Kehinde Wiley – have set a…

Performance art has played an important role in narrating the African American story. The Negro spirituals sung by enslaved Africans laid the foundation for today’s gospel, blues, jazz, and rap music. All these musical forms provide artists a chance to express the Black experience. Join us for this spirit-lifting gospel concert by students, alumni, and community members from Howard University, who perform Christ-centered music as a means of healing and empowering communities. As the first college choir of its kind…

Derived from African culture and dance, the art of stepping was created by the enslaved when enslavers refused to let them communicate with drums. Stepping uses the body as an instrument that incorporates slapping the arms, legs, and chest. Made popular by historically Black Greek organizations, today, this art form combines chanting, singing, and dancing. Uproar is a high-energy performance that introduces audiences to the unique lineages of this African American dance and demonstrates how enslaved people on American soil used…

Sand mandalas are colorful, intricate works of art that are destroyed upon completion. As a meditation on impermanence after days or weeks of creating their complex patterns, mandalas are ritualistically destroyed and brushed into an urn and spilled into a body of running water as a symbolic blessing and offering to the universe. Every intricate detail of these mandalas is fixed in the tradition and has many levels of specific symbolic meanings. Drawing inspiration from this Buddhist tradition of building…

Sankofa Scholar & Tour Guide: Sonya Martino During the Spring of 1796, George Washington’s final months in office, Ona Judge, an enslaved woman owned by the First Family, escaped the Executive Mansion in Philadelphia with the aid of that city’s free Black community and made her way to Portsmouth. On this tour, you will hear the true story of Ona’s quest for freedom and the President’s relentless efforts to get her back. See the waterfront where she lands and visit…