By the spring of 1780, the tides of war had begun to change in revolutionary Newport, Rhode Island. Occupied by British troops since 1776, the once booming port city lay in near ruins following the British evacuation of troops in 1779.1 Fearing for their lives, hundreds of Newport residents evacuated the city during the period of British occupation. These residents were often accompanied by the enslaved men, women, and children who lived and labored in their households. The city of Newport, so it seemed, was yet another casualty of the war for American independence from Great Britain.

The American Revolution (1775–1783) turned the lives of Newport residents—White and Black, free and enslaved—upside down. During the war, the Rhode Island legislature passed a law that allowed African and Indigenous (Native American) men to enlist in the Continental (or Patriot) forces. After serving, these men would become free from slavery.2 Such opportunities did not exist for enslaved women or their dependent children. Lacking a legal route to secure their freedom, many of these women self-emancipated and followed the Patriot encampments during the war, supporting themselves working as laundresses and nurses.3

Despite these drastic changes in their daily lives, a small yet resilient group of Black Newport residents coalesced to create an organization whose mission was to advocate for the rights and wellbeing of their newly freed neighbors. Established in the home of Abraham Casey on November 10, 1780, the creation of the Free African Union Society (FAUS) reflected the racial discrimination and ostracism that enslaved and newly freed persons faced in late-1700s Rhode Island.

The Newport Free African Union Society is considered the first all-male, free Black mutual aid society established in America. Similar organizations sprang up in cities like Philadelphia in 1787 and Boston in 1796, though the activities of the Newport branch have received less attention from historians. The primary mission of the FAUS was to provide financial and social support to Black Rhode Islanders at a time when many were separated from slavery by one degree or less. The steady growth of Rhode Island’s free Black population following the passage of a 1784 gradual emancipation bill led many of Newport’s free Black leaders, among them Newport Gardner, Zingo Stevens, and Abraham Casey, to question the social status and dire financial straits that many newly freed Blacks faced after becoming free. While enslaved, the cost of feeding and enslaving these individuals fell upon their enslavers. In freedom, this responsibility rested with the newly freed. Given the poverty they faced, some newly freed persons of color were forced to indenture themselves or their children for set periods of time in order to feed, clothe, and provide shelter for themselves and their children.4

The FAUS and its members worked tirelessly to address issues of racial discrimination and economic disparity through three primary tactics: mutual aid, education, and the celebration of African culture and resistance against anti-Black prejudice. The FAUS’s mutual aid activities included voluntary, community-wide donations and exchanges of goods, money, labor, and resources to benefit all community members. Each member of the FAUS paid dues, and proceeds from these membership fees were to be used to assist members “in times of need or illness.”5 A good example of this was raising money among members to pay for the funeral or burial costs of fellow community members. Occasionally, small monetary loans were made to members in order to get them through tough times—perhaps after the death of a loved one or during times of unemployment or tragedy. Although women were not allowed to participate formally in the FAUS’s institutional operations, many women—including the famed baker and entrepreneur Dutchess Quamino—donated money and goods to support such activities. By 1789, the operations of the FAUS were well known enough among Rhode Island’s free Black population that a Providence branch of the Society was established in 1789.6

The second prong of the FAUS’s organizational model included the work of educating the newly freed and their children. This work fell primarily to Black women in the Newport community. By 1809, a female counterpart to the FAUS was founded—the African Female Benevolent Society. The creation of this separate, female-led organization reflects the patriarchal nature of the free Black community in Newport and elsewhere at the turn of the nineteenth century.7 Many of these women were the female relatives of the FAUS membership. The African Female Benevolent Society focused its activities on feeding, clothing, and educating the children of newly freed and still enslaved persons in Rhode Island. Their focus on the material needs, or the basic necessities of life including food, clothing, shelter, and education, reflects the prolonged discrimination that people of color faced in Rhode Island nearly 30 years after the FAUS’s founding.

The third and final priority of the FAUS included the education of its members in African history and heritage. Many of the organization’s founding members, among them Newport Gardner, were born in Africa and were brought to Rhode Island as slaves.8 Many members also felt a strong connection to their African homeland, and several attempted to return to Africa. In 1825, Newport Gardner returned to Africa with a small group of several others. Gardner died not long after completing the trip.9

In conclusion, the FAUS played a crucial role in supporting the economic and social development of its members. The organization facilitated the establishment of various programs and services, including educational initiatives and financial assistance, which were vital for empowering members of Rhode Island’s free Black community after the American Revolution. The Society also worked to build connections with other abolitionist groups and reformers, contributing to the broader movement for racial equality and justice in pre-Civil War Rhode Island.

  1. The eminent Congregationalist minister and diarist Ezra Stiles estimated that nearly 300 wooden homes and other structures were torn down and used for firewood by British troops. See Christian McBurney, The Rhode Island Campaign: The First French and American Operation in the Revolutionary War (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2018) and Rockwell
    Stensrud, Newport: A Lively Experiment, 1639–1969 (London: D. Giles Limited, 2015). ↩︎
  2. The single most comprehensive study of the lives and experiences of African and Indigenous soldiers of the American Revolution who fought in Rhode Island regiments is Loren Spears and Robert Geake, From Slaves to Soldiers: The First Rhode Island Regiment in the American Revolution (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2016). ↩︎
  3. Historian Jane Lancaster has done the most work on the lives of men and women who self-emancipated during the American Revolution. Her research has found that many evacuated what would become the United States of America and emigrated to the Canadian maritime provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Jane Lancaster, “Eight Clues: The Ordinary and Extraordinary Life of Arthur Bowler in Slavery and Freedom,” Newport History vol. 99 (Fall 2023) ↩︎
  4. Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780–1860 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), esp. pp. 84-118, and Ruth Wallis Herndon and Ella Sekatau, “Pauper Apprenticeship in the Narragansett Country: A Different Name for Slavery in Early New England,” in Slavery/Anti-Slavery in New England:
    Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife     (Boston, MA: Boston University Press, 2005), 56–70. ↩︎
  5. “Free African Union Society and African Benevolent Society Records, 1787–1824,” Ms. 095, Newport Historical Society, https://collections.newporthistory.org/Detail/collections/142, accessed on July 31, 2024.  ↩︎
  6. Rebecca Valentine, “African Union Society Meeting,” EnCompass: A Digital Sourcebook for Rhode Island History (Summer 2020), https://encompass.rihs.org/rhode-island-slavery-and-the-slave-trade/primary-sources/african-free-union-society-meeting/, accessed on July 31, 2024.  ↩︎
  7. James Oliver Horton, “Freedom’s Yoke: Gender Conventions Among Antebellum Free Blacks,” Feminist Studies 12, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 51–76. ↩︎
  8. Edward “Ted” Andrews, “The Crossings of Occramar Marycoo, or Newport Gardner,” in Atlantic Biographies: Individuals and Peoples in the Atlantic World, ed. by Mark M. Meuwese and Jeffrey A. Fortin (Leiden, UK: Brill, 2013), http://works.bepress.com/edward_andrews/13/, accessed on July 31, 2024. ↩︎
  9. Michael Barga, “African Union Society,” Social History Welfare Project,
    https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/religious/african-union-society/, accessed on July 31, 2024. ↩︎