Peaceful Patch of Earth: Blacks in Jamestown, Rhode Island in a Time of Racial Turbulence in America, 1850-1920

In Jamestown, a thriving Black community took root far earlier, in the late 19th century. A Peaceful Patch of Earth explores their remarkable journey in a time marked by racial turbulence in America.

The story unfolds on a rustic island jutting into the vast Atlantic from Narragansett Bay, accessible only by boat and sheltered from the outside world. Through captivating narrative and in-depth research, the book brings to life the island’s pioneering figures such as James Howland, one of Rhode Island’s last survivors of slavery, and the Champlin family members who rose from slavery, established the first Black-owned farm, and were the first island Blacks to vote. The community lived within view of historic Newport; a city that controlled 70% of the American-owned slave trade in the 18th century and where their African ancestors disembarked into bondage. By the 19th century, Jamestown Blacks lived free and cultivated a community that offered refuge to the tide of newly freed survivors of slavery migrating from the South. Together they forged the social, cultural, and economic fabric of a multiracial rural New England.

More than simply a local history, A Peaceful Patch of Earth also documents the rise and response of Black America to the racial oppression and explosive changes shaping the nation before and after the Civil War, from 1850 to 1920. The authors connect Rhode Island to pivotal events in history and underscore its presence and contributions to the national struggle for freedom and civil rights, such as Isaac Rice’s warm embrace of frightened Underground Railroad freedom seekers in Newport and the training of nearly two thousand Black Civil War soldiers on Dutch Island near Jamestown.

Peter Fay is an independent scholar, public historian, and writer with 25 years of uncovering hidden histories in New England archives.

Valerie J. Southern is an independent scholar and co-founder of the Friends of Jamestown Black History.