Meet Jack Stains, a “Black Jack” in Historic Old Portsmouth: A Living History Tour

Traditionally the drum was the heartbeat and soul of African communities, thus holding deep historic and symbolic significance. The drums herald political and social events and ceremonies of birth, death, and marriage. They spark courtships, home-coming and going, and accompany religious rites and rituals that call up ancestral spirits while creating an atmosphere that promotes healing and social resilience. This commemorative event, live streaming from the Portsmouth African Burying Ground, pays homage to the ancestors buried there. The healing beat…

Performance plays a key role in narrating the African story in America. The Negro spirituals sung by enslaved Africans laid the foundation for today’s gospel, blues, jazz, and rap music. All of these musical forms provide artists the chance to express the Black experience. Returning to Portsmouth, The Howard Gospel Choir, a group of students, alumni, and community members from Howard University, will lift our spirits as we celebrate, heal, and empower our communities. As the first college choir of its…

Tour Guides: Rekha Mahadevan, Laramie Wilson, or Dariya Steele Local newspapers carried merchants’ ads for ships returning to the port of Portsmouth laden with cargo from trade ports on the West Coast of Africa, the West Indies, and the middle Atlantic coastal cities of Colonial America. Visit local wharves and auction sites related to the Atlantic Slave Trade, where a captive could be exchanged for “cash or good lumber” to serve in the master’s house or work on the docks…

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist and heroic orator for liberty, delivered one of his most famous speeches in which he asked, “What to the slave is your Fourth of July?” In addressing an Independence Day observance in Rochester, New York, his speech was a blistering indictment of an American idealism that ignored and accepted the inhuman treatment of enslaved African Americans as part of the country’s identity and economy. Ironically, even though Douglass’ words spoke directly to…

Sankofa Tour Guide: Erika Varga, Lillian Buckley, Wanda Dorlean, or Meghan Dunn This tour describes how African residents of a northern port town used their own traditions of resilience and mutual aid to establish one of Maine's earliest African American communities. You will hear stories of Black people living here during colonial slavery times through the modern era, a history often ignored and rarely identified with the heritage of northern New England. Meeting place: Wallingford Square downtown Kittery.

Sankofa Tour Guide: Daniel Comly Despite a horde of obstacles, Black men and women, both enslaved and free, met, established relationships, married, and built families. Learn about these obstacles and how they were overcome. True stories about these families will describe how members of the African community claimed their place as Americans.

Sankofa Tour Guide: Valerie Fagin Can you imagine the hustle and bustle of a prosperous colonial seaport town? This tour invites you to discover the world of early Portsmouth from the perspective of African American women. In spite of enslavement and hardship, these women fought for freedom, defied a sitting president, and educated generations of children to follow. Hear their stories about love and faith and struggle, as you walk past the homes of the families who enslaved them.

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…

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, NH. 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…