The worn wooden collection box, passed from hand to hand, slowly made its way through the crowded Quaker meeting. Many looked away, while some murmured angrily . . . radicals . . . disturbing the peace! A few people contributed coins, perhaps moved by the plaintive sentiments inscribed on the plain wooden box of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society. Founded in 1836, the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society tirelessly advocated for the rights of African Americans – with limited success. Despite New England’s reputation as a hotbed of abolitionist activity, the efforts of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society were far from welcome in a state whose economic interests were closely interwoven with slavery. Southern plantation owners supplied Rhode Island’s textile industry with raw materials like cotton and indigo. In return, many mills produced low-quality, inexpensive fabrics – generically marketed as “negro cloth” – deemed suitable for clothing enslaved peoples. Rhode Island also had strong social ties to the south. A number of plantation owners summered with their families in luxurious Newport mansions, and intermarriage with Rhode Island residents was not uncommon. For many Rhode Island elites, it was easy to condemn the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society as a radical, fringe organization. The most egregious offense of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society was their call for “immediate, unconditional, and universal” emancipation. At the time, many abolitionists favored “gradualism” or the slow emancipation of slaves over many years. Instead, the Rhode Island organization supported the views of Bostonian William Lloyd Garrison, who, from 1831 until 1865, published The Liberator, a highly controversial newspaper. Due to some states’ laws banning any anti-slavery speech, it was not unheard of for people to even be arrested for possessing an issue of The Liberator. The Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society’s decision to ally themselves with the radical “Garrisonian abolitionists” cost them the support of some other anti-slavery supporters. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, most Quaker meetings banned their members from owning slaves and advocated for gradual emancipation. As the abolitionist community became more divided, however, some Quaker meetings began to expel radical Garrisonian abolitionists from their ranks. In Rhode Island, abolitionist Elizabeth Buffum Chace didn’t wait to be banned from the congregation – when her Quaker meeting refused to take a more radical and active stance against slavery, she stopped attending meetings, turning all of her attention to the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society. Chace became a tireless advocate for immediate emancipation, even harboring fugitive slaves in her own home. She and other women managed most of the day-to-day aspects of running the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society, particularly after a scandal and political conflict weakened the organization’s male leadership. As fellow abolitionist Daniel Mitchell remarked: “I must say that it is mainly by their efforts that the office is sustained…The devotion of these women to the cause of suffering humanity is probably second to none, and none labor more assiduously for its support than does this little band.”
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]]>“I would have been a millionaire today if I had bent to prejudice.” So said George Thomas Downing, prominent African American Rhode Island restaurateur and civil rights champion. From behind the curtains of his lavish Sea Girt Hotel, built on this site in 1854 and destroyed by arson just six years later, Downing fought against racial injustice in a life-long struggle that would eventually ruin his fortunes and cause the demise of his hotel.
George T. Downing was born in New York City, in 1819, into a family of successful restaurateurs. His father, Thomas Downing, helped elevate the city’s street snack, the oyster, into the world of fine dining. His luxurious Wall Street oyster house served pickled oysters and jellied turkeys to Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, and the city’s elite. George owned his own restaurant in New York City before moving to Newport in the 1840s to open an offshoot of his father’s oyster house, catering to big city gentry on holiday.
The oyster house has a long history in African American heritage, particularly in Rhode Island. Emmanuel Manna Bernoon, an emancipated slave, had opened one of the first restaurants in the United States, an oyster and ale house, in 1736 on Towne Street (now Main Street) in Providence. By the 1840s, oysters had become a shared passion for rich and poor. For many black entrepreneurs like Downing, oysters became the foundation on which they built their culinary empire.
Downing’s crowning centerpiece was the Sea Girt Hotel. Catering to a white clientele, the grand five-story building included large stores, a restaurant, accommodation for gentlemen boarders and families, and served as the Downing residence. Martin R. Delany, the African American intellectual, said of Downing’s Newport enterprise: “This fashionable establishment is spoken of as among the best conducted places in the country, the proprietor among the most gentlemanly.”
The Sea Girt served the community until an arsonist burned it down ten days before Christmas in 1860. While the culprit was never caught, many believed that the fires were lit in retaliation for Downing’s staunch advocacy of civil rights. A “race man” like his father and grandfather before him, Downing was keenly interested in the treatment of African Americans. As one of America’s earliest civil rights activists, Downing led the campaign for the desegregation of Newport schools and was instrumental in getting the first African American into the Diplomatic Corps.
His political concerns led him to Washington, where he made alliances with white abolitionists and other African American activists. In 1865, he became the manager of the Members’ Dining Room for the U.S. House of Representatives, a position he held for twelve years. There, he was able to wield his influence through political ties and friendships, such as the one he shared with Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. During his time in Washington, he worked for the passage of public accommodation laws in the capital city.
Downing died in 1903, a “galvanizing and enduring symbol of African American entrepreneurship and culinary excellence.”
]]>“In Memory of Duchess Quamino, A free black of distinguished excellence: Intelligent, Industrious, Affectionate, Honest, and of Exemplary Piety, Who deceased June 4, 1804, aged 65.”
Quamino’s weather-worn marker, along with nearly 300 others, comprise a section of Newport’s Common Burial Ground known as “God’s Little Acre,” one of the oldest and largest colonial African burial grounds in the United States. Dating from the late 1600s, “God’s Little Acre” offers insight into the lives of enslaved and free Africans such as Quamino through the commemorative words and images etched into stone.
Although described as a “free black” on her marker, Quamino was enslaved in the home of William Channing until she bought her freedom. Quamino also lived in her master’s house, which was customary in urban seaports where slaves worked in trades and crafts rather than on plantations. Many of the slaves brought to Newport were young children who worked alongside their masters to learn skills like rum making, rope braiding, stone carving, candle making, and chocolate grinding. Quamino used her culinary skills to run a catering business out of her master’s house. Her entrepreneurial success allowed her to purchase her freedom and earned her the title “Pastry Queen of Rhode Island.”
Quamino’s inscription praises her “Exemplary Piety” and includes a hymnal verse: “Blessed thy slumbers in this house of clay, And bright thy rising to eternal day.” With these words, William Ellery Channing, the founder of the Unitarian Church and the author of the epitaph, recognized Quamino’s involvement in the religious community of Newport. Quamino’s husband John was also a devout Christian. After gaining his freedom, he studied alongside a minister at Princeton in preparation for missionary work in Africa, but their plans dissolved when John was killed aboard a privateer ship during the American Revolution.
Like many slaves in colonial Newport, the Quaminos experienced the wave of Christian revival known as the Great Awakening during which Protestant America sought to convert the African population. In Newport, some slaves were provided religious education, converted to their master’s religion, and worshipped with the family in the home and at church. The burial ground reflects the breadth of religious diversity present in the city through carvings of angels, Biblical verses, and acknowledgements of those who lived with virtue and piousness.
The markers also tell about the origins of the deceased through the traditions of names. The prevalence of Anglicized or phonetically spelled versions of names from the African Gold Coast revealed the homeland of many Newport slaves to be Ghana. Upholding the naming tradition of the Akan people, the Africans often had names that identified the day of the week and order in which they were born. The name “Quamino” is given to boys born on a Saturday. In Duchess’ case, “Quamino” was her married name after her husband.
Walking through “God’s Little Acre,” the leaning, faded colonial stones are joined by the new markers of their descendants, a tribute to the resilience and preservation of African heritage in Rhode Island.
In November 2025, Duchess Quamino played a prominent role in “Life After Life,” a live performance developed through research and performed by 50 community members in Newport Common Burying Ground in November 2025. Actress Rebekah Acquah embodied Duchess, a transformative experience that gave her profound insight into Duchess’s character: “[This play] allowed me to honor not just [who the characters] were in the books, but also who the person was. It gave me the ability to give life to the dead.” As Rebekah noted, Duchess sparked opportunities for generations to come through her entrepreneurship, determination, and drive: “[Duchess] purchased her freedom and her children’s freedom and then bought a home next to the people who enslaved her. That’s a boss…If it wasn’t for someone like Duchess Quamino and so many others, I wouldn’t have been free to express [myself], to be sitting in this room right now.” You can see Rebekah portray Duchess in the Image Gallery below, and can learn more about “Life After Life” here: centeraquidneck.com/life-after-life-about
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