Issues → May/June 2008 → Interact → 10 Things to Do → TRAVEL BONUS: Moose in Maine, Black History Tours, More... →

African Slaves in Portsmouth

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(page 2 of 5)

"Our work extended far beyond the scope of that grant," Mark says. "It became a labor of love for both of us. We would have meetings that would turn into six-hour marathon sessions -- there was so much to put together of what she had discovered over the years." They eventually found an intern to work with them, and when they were done, "We found that we didn' t have a brochure any more. "Out of their work came the trail and the book, which is now in every school in the city as well as on reserve at the Portsmouth Library.

Valerie is a strong-looking woman with kind, cinnamon eyes, light skin the color of coffee and cream, and a cloud of russet hair. It is a breezy warm day, and we are sitting at an outdoor cafe in Portsmouth's Market Square. Across the street, the great soaring steeple of North Church rises above us, and young well-dressed men and women mingle on the brick sidewalk. The air is full of the rich smell of coffee and sweet pastries. It is lunchtime, and everyone has come out to sample the warm air and the good food. A shiny red-black-and-yellow trolley trundles by -- ding-ding! -- and the tourists on board lean this way and that as they survey the historic buildings all around. It is a happy, prosperous scene that shows a Portsmouth transformed. Two centuries before this moment, just steps from where we are sitting, Negroes were publicly flogged. Valerie, the only black person in sight, is likely the only person present in this busy scene who is aware of this wild contrast.

Valerie Cunningham was born and grew up in Portsmouth, where she graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1959. She was the only child of Clarence and Augusta Cunningham, who came to Portsmouth from, respectively, North Carolina and Virginia. Growing up black in the 1940s and 1950s in Portsmouth was different from, say, growing up black in North Carolina, but it was not devoid of pain. "We saw it all on television, the civil-rights struggles that were going on down South," Valerie recalls. The racial obstacles that Valerie encountered in Portsmouth were muted but nonetheless present. "It wasn't as if people went around calling me 'nigger.' It was much more subtle than that," she says now. "And the Ku Klux Klan was active here at that time."

She credits her parents and the small but tightly knit black community for guiding her into the person she is today. Though she has traveled widely -- her husband, from whom she is now divorced, was in the Air Force, and they lived on bases all over the country and in Guam and the Philippines -- Portsmouth is Valerie's choice of where she wants to live. She knows the city intimately, its every layer of history.

"Portsmouth was a nice place to grow up," she concludes. "My mother is a smart woman. She wanted to be sure that I knew that I was black. She is fair-skinned and can pass [for white], but she knew that wasn' t what it was all about. She wanted me to understand what it means to be black, what our heritage is, and who we are."

In high school, Valerie worked at the library every minute of her spare time -- afternoons, weekends, summers. She liked being in a place where it was quiet and information could be discovered. At the time, Dorothy Vaughn was the head librarian. Dorothy Vaughn spearheaded the efforts to preserve Strawbery Banke, the city' s impressive historic district.

But what was the history of the blacks of Portsmouth, the young Valerie began to wonder. Even though blacks have represented only one percent of the population of New Hampshire for more than 200 years, Portsmouth was different. As much as five percent of its population is black, a figure that held true in Colonial times as well. She knew that in her church, a vigorous community of Portsmouth blacks, there was an oral history that was very much alive. But where was this written down? And if it wasn't, why wasn't it?