A Peaceful Patch of Earth: Blacks in Jamestown, Rhode Island, in
a Time of Racial Turbulence in America, 1850–1920
Peter Fay and Valerie J. Southern
Revealing the untold history of a thriving Black community in rural Rhode Island,
A Peaceful Patch of Earth challenges the conventional narrative of an all-white
New England before the Great Migration. On Jamestown Island, this community took
root in the nineteenth century and flourished despite national racial turbulence.
Set on a rustic island in Narragansett Bay—accessible only by boat and sheltered from
the outside world—the story unfolds through vivid narrative and in-depth research. It
brings to life pioneering figures such as James Howland, one of Rhode Island’s last
survivors of slavery, and the Champlin family, who rose from bondage to establish the
island’s first Black-owned farm and became its first Black voters. Within view of
Newport, once the center of the American slave trade, Jamestown’s free Black
residents cultivated a community that welcomed newly freed migrants from the South
and forged the social, cultural, and economic fabric of a multiracial rural New England.
More than a local history, the book traces the rise of Black America and its response to
oppression, both before and after the Civil War. It connects Rhode Island to pivotal
moments in the nation’s struggle for freedom and civil rights—from Isaac Rice’s aid to
Underground Railroad freedom seekers to the training of nearly two thousand Black
Civil War soldiers on nearby Dutch Island.
Peter Fay is a public historian who writes from a Marxist perspective.
Valerie J. Southern is a writer, consultant, and co-founder of the Friends of
Jamestown Black History.
Wednesday, September 9, 2026
Lecture and Book Signing
6:00 pm
Free
Click here to register
