Rhode Island Slave History Medallions’ tour walks through the history of the enslaved people who lived and worked in homes and businesses here. Nearby, the Newport Historical Society’s latest exhibit, “A Name, A Voice, A Life: The Black Newporters of the 17th-19th Centuries,” brings more evidence to these narratives.

“This is another type of historical recognition for Newport. It’s not just a wedding facility, or an entertainment venue. We have a history that began here, first with the enslavement of Africans and Indigenous people, who were here first before colonists or slaves,” says Charles Roberts, executive director and founder of the nonprofit Rhode Island Slave History Medallions. “We’re trying to make the public aware of this history and the contributions of enslaved people.”

The walking tour begins at Bowen’s Wharf, where the enslaved people who survived the brutal voyage from Africa first disembarked. The tour ambles up to Trinity Church courtyard, where historians in Colonial attire discuss stonecutters Pompe Stevens and Cuffe Gibbs. The brothers are buried in God’s Little Acre burying ground, at the northern tip of the city.

The tour continues into the densely developed Historic Hill neighborhood, where the voices of previous generations seem to whisper from the cobbled roads and 17th- to 19th-century buildings. Visitors stop at the Rev. Dr. Samuel Hopkins House (ca. 1710) on Division Street, named for the first pastor to denounce slavery from the pulpit. Across the street at Peter Bours House, Newport Gardner was one of merchant Caleb Gardner’s slaves, according to tour guide Norman Desmarais. Gardner, originally named Occramar Marycoo, was arrived in Newport and was forced into slavery at age 14. He became a leader and activist in the Black community here, and opened his own music school. He bought freedom for himself, his wife and their children, and helped launch the city’s first Black church. With his friend Pompe Stevens, he helped form the country’s first Free African Union Society, a mutual aid organization for African Americans.

Cato Vernon lived in what is now the William Vernon House (ca. 1708) on Clarke Street, owned by the Newport Restoration Foundation and a stop on the tour. He fought as a soldier in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment during the Revolutionary War. But he didn’t receive his military pension, according to tour guide Maria Hunter, and was imprisoned for failing to pay his debts after his enslaver, William Vernon, the famed slave merchant and president of the Eastern Navy Board, refused to help.

At each location on the tour, a bronze medallion with the figure of an angel memorializes the enslaved people who lived and worked there, and honors their legacies, while offering an education into a prominent piece of Newport’s cruel past. Roberts and Rhode Island Slave History Medallions have placed six medallions in Newport and 14 statewide so far, including in Bristol, North Kingstown, and East Greenwich. Seven more are under contract, with more than 35 slated for installation, he said.

“The angel image is significant to Newport history, to have souls carried to heaven on the wings of angels,” Roberts said. “The medallions have a QR code, and you walk up to it and stand in the location where history was made, and you can see the stories right there on your phone.”

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In the Newport Historical Society’s headquarters nearby at the Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House (ca. 1730), a new exhibit showcases a strong Black community from the city’s founding in 1639 to the abolition of slavery in Rhode Island’s Constitution in 1842. Illustrating years of research conducted for the historical society’s extensive “Voices from the NHS Archives” database, the exhibit showcases historic documents, artifacts, and artwork to bring enslaved peoples’ stories to life.

Kaela Bleho, collections and digital access manager and exhibit co-curator, says she and research assistant and exhibit co-curator Zoe Hume originally went looking for names of Black and Indigenous individuals. But they discovered so much personal information in ship logs, personal letters, and religious and medical records during their research that an exhibit was only natural.

“We started to find people showing up in multiple places in the historic record, and through quite a lot of digging, we were able to develop more of an understanding of their life stories and experiences,” Bleho says. “When this database launched in February of this year, we were so excited to share these stories that we thought, “Of course, this should be an exhibit as well.’ This is another way to help people connect with this history.”

They bring together many of these documents with original paintings commissioned by local Black artists and pieces of material culture on loan from other historic organizations to curate the life experience of five Black Newporters. A pair of leather boots represents soldier Hannibal Collins, who served with Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry during the War of 1812; a wooden laying top used in ropemaking represents ropemaker Arthur Tikey; and a mortar and pestle alongside a portrait by Rhode Island artist Eric Telfort represent Trinity Church congregant and healer Mereah Brenton.

Bleho says that through selecting these objects and documents, they hope contemporary visitors will connect with these five stories on an individual level, and try to get to know a person who lived 200 years ago.

“It’s really hard to sum up someone’s life story in one object … so you’re trying to think of something that will give someone here and now a window into the past without reducing someone to the sum of objects they might have owned then,” explains Hume. “It’s kind of like leaving your smartphone on display. You could learn a lot from it, but not everything. So, you’ll see that everyone (in the exhibit) does have something that speaks to some element of their experience, or as much as we know about it.”

In the midst of these visual narratives, the names of 1700 Newporters of African descent written on white notecards hang from wire. They are among thousands of Black and Indigenous people identified by the Newport Historical Society during research, says executive director Rebecca Bertrand. Dozens of people across the city, from Rogers High School students to other nonprofit leaders and city councilors, hand-wrote these names for display, in a community-wide effort.

“One of the things I think is really interesting about this show is that it speaks so much to identity, and there’s a great focus on a person’s name. … In the process, we talked to people about identity and what their name means, where it came from, whether their name resonates with them, and if they like their name. It was an interesting process to talk to adults and children about that,” Bertrand says. “It’s a really powerful show for a lot of different reasons, but because of that connection to identity.”

If You Go

Newport Black History Walking Tours

Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays at 10 a.m., June 22 through Nov. 30. 75 minutes. $10-$20.

Departs from the Pilot House at 13 Bowen’s Wharf, Newport.

newportblackhistorywalkingtours.com

“A Name, A Voice, A Life: The Black Newporters of the 17th-19th Centuries” exhibit

Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Free, open to the public.

At the Newport Historical Society’s Richard I. Burnham Resource Center, 82 Touro St., Newport, 401-846-0813.

newporthistory.org

The push to continue the pace of building two Virginia-class submarines per year is in limbo as Congress works through defense authorization and funding bills that are currently at odds on procurement.

Connecticut lawmakers fear a reduction will have an outsized effect on suppliers around the state and the U.S. who work with Electric Boat in manufacturing subs.

The uncertainty started months ago when the Biden administration’s budget request for the Pentagon proposed procuring one Virginia-class submarine instead of the two-per-year cadence. They have cited budget caps as well as production delays for pulling back for fiscal year 2025.

Despite that request, House and Senate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act — the annual must-pass bill that authorizes federal defense programs — added back the second submarine, enabling $1 billion in incremental funding for it. But the current House defense appropriations bill leaves out funding for a second Virginia-class sub.

Congress confronted a similar push to eliminate a sub in 2013 with former President Barack Obama as well with former President Donald Trump’s budget proposal in 2020. In both instances, lawmakers revived the build rate for Virginia-class despite threats of cuts.

This year, Congress faces major budget constraints when crafting legislation to fund the government this fall as lawmakers continue to negotiate the NDAA and appropriations bills over the coming months.

“This program has had a history of ups and downs going back 10, 20 years and even longer, and that’s why we have a supply chain problem — a lot of people just got out of the business because it was just too unstable,” U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, said in an interview.

The current versions of the NDAA include language for two Virginia-class submarines. And while the bill got overwhelming bipartisan support out of the House Armed Services Committee, including from Courtney, the GOP-led NDAA ultimately included a number of amendments that were nonstarters for most House Democrats.

All five Democratic members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation voted against the House GOP’s version of the NDAA, citing “poison pill” amendments tacked onto the bill. Those included provisions to limit access to abortion and transgender health care as well as block diversity, equality and inclusion programs in the military.

“I applaud Chairman [Mike] Rogers [R-Ala.] and Ranking Member [Adam] Smith [D-Wash.] for reporting a bipartisan bill out of the Armed Services Committee,” U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District, said after the vote last week. “Unfortunately, Republican leadership has refused to take this critical legislation seriously and allowed the adoption of dozens of toxic amendments.”

As the House geared up for passage of the NDAA last week, the White House released a statement of administration policy that it was “disappointed” that the House Armed Services Committee did not go along with its shipbuilding request, adding that it “strongly opposes” the incremental funding for a second Virginia-class sub “which industry is unable to produce on schedule.”

The statement also said it hopes Congress supports submarine industrial base investments to “reduce the backlog in attack submarine production and sustainment” and get to a production rate “needed to support the Navy’s requirement and our commitment to the Australia-United Kingdom-United States security partnership.” As part of AUKUS, Australia has agreed to initially buy three Virginia-class submarines from the U.S., but the first transfer is not expected to happen until the early 2030s.

“This is not the final word by any stretch for either bill, for our NDAA or House appropriations’ bill,” Courtney said.

On the Senate side, the Senate Armed Services Committee also easily approved its version of the NDAA with bipartisan support. The bill in its current form blows past top-line spending set by the budget caps in the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which was part of a deal to lift the debt ceiling last year.

“This national security support package recognizes the central role Connecticut plays in our nation’s defense efforts,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who sits on the Armed Services Committee. “During the markup, I won $1.13 billion in funding for a second Virginia-class submarine essential to our continued undersea superiority.”

Both NDAA bills from the House and Senate are not final versions, and Congress will need to work through the differences in negotiations, particularly on finding a compromise on the more partisan and controversial parts of the legislation. The NDAA typically passes out of Congress with bipartisan support.

On top of that, Congress will need to keep negotiating appropriations bills. Since the NDAA only authorizes these programs and priorities, the spending legislation approves the money for them in the next fiscal year.

As things stand in the House GOP-led defense spending bill, there is no money for a second Virginia-class submarine that the current NDAA bills are seeking to authorize.

“The reason the bill doesn’t fund a second submarine is very simple,” U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., chairman of the House Appropriations’ defense subcommittee, said at a hearing last week, according to Breaking Defense. “The contractors can’t build it. There are significant problems with the submarine industrial base that cannot be resolved with symbolic money.”

Pressure mounts on U.S. submarine industry

Members of Connecticut’s delegation have raised concerns about the lack of funding and what it would mean if implemented for Electric Boat and the smaller suppliers around the state. They also warned about the potential ramifications to fulfill shipbuilding commitments as part of AUKUS.

Electric Boat locations in Groton and Quonset Point in Rhode Island handle much of the Virginia-class shipbuilding, along with Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.

Courtney earned the nickname “Two-Sub Joe” when he first came to Congress in 2007 by increasing the production cadence from one to two subs per year. As the ranking member of the House Armed Services’ Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, he has been advocating to keep production at the same pace.

A combination of disruptions have put a strain on the U.S. submarine industry and procurement: the pandemic, supply chain issues and a workforce that is aging and retiring. Companies like Electric Boat are hiring to fill those gaps and add to the ranks as production grows over the next decade.

Electric Boat came close to meeting its hiring targets in 2023 with about 5,300 new hires and set a new goal of another 5,000 employees in 2024. If Congress ultimately cuts production, Courtney said, Electric Boat and its workforce can weather the change, especially with other big programs like the Columbia-class submarines.

He argues the burden will fall more on smaller suppliers who will not be covered by other federal funding for the submarine industrial base.

“I get asked a lot from people at home who have been seeing the reporting on the budget and are asking whether or not that means there are going to be layoffs or a halt to the hiring,” Courtney said. “The answer to that is emphatically no.”

“People are feeling pretty good about the fact that they’re really meeting the hiring goals that are there,” he said about Electric Boat’s workforce. But “the supply chain companies who do not have great capital reserves [who] can’t absorb peaks and valleys as well — those are the ones who are clearly going to be impacted by taking a submarine out of the procurement budget.”

Courtney’s position to keep procurement at the same levels runs counter to Pentagon officials’ stance. They have cited both budget constraints and production delays for cutting back with the hopes of letting the industry catch up and get back on schedule.

“Virginia-class, to be clear, was trying to get to a better, more healthy dynamic where we can get to the two submarine a year production rate, and we thought that going a different direction was our best move in that case,” Mike McCord, the comptroller of the U.S. Department of Defense, said at a March hearing, noting subs that are supposed to be delivered this year were months behind.

At a hearing last month, Courtney asked U.S. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro about the supply chain companies that would miss out on the proposed investments in advanced procurement meant to bolster the supplier industrial base and submarine industry.

“Regarding specifically to these vendors, we’re in constant contact with these vendors. The purpose of advanced procurement money, however, isn’t to fully fund all the vendors that are in the supply chain,” Del Toro said at the May hearing. “It’s to fund those vendors that are most critical to the supply chain. I don’t think there’s ever been a confirmation that we can support, you know, full funding of all the vendors across the entire spectrum.”

Del Toro and others within the department said they remain committed to the shipbuilding plan to have 66 attack submarines in the service’s fleet. He said there are currently 50 submarines with nearly a dozen under construction and an additional four under contract. But 19 boats will be decommissioned in the coming years.

“It’s a real difference of opinion,” Courtney said, “about how do we succeed in getting the production pace where everybody wants it.”

Connecticut Mirror is a content partner of States Newsroom. Read the original version here.

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