Hooray, I awake from yesterday
Alive, but the war is here to stay
So, my love Catherina and me
Decide to take our last walk through the noise to the sea
Not to die, but to be reborn
Away from lands so battered and torn
Forever
Forever
–Jimi Hendrix

In the African worldviews and spiritualities the enslaved carried with them from port cities like Porto Novo, Benin to Newport, RI, water embodies freedom, rebirth, and regeneration. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence we take pause to question definitions of freedom and what freedom means for those who were not included in the vision of freedom and equality defined in the Declaration. How do we define freedom? What are our stories of freedom-making? How do we live our freedom every day?

The artists in the exhibition Forging Freedom: Atlantic Journeys reclaim freedom and freedom-making through their work and create alternative archives to fill in the historical gaps in documenting freedom-making of people of African and Indigenous descent in port cities. Through their reclamation, drawing together works on canvas, paper, textile, sculpture, photography and other mediums, this installation explores the role of water and port cities in Black and Indigenous identities, freedom-making, and spirit from the colonial era through the present as reflected in contemporary art.

As part of the semiquincentennial recognition, the Newport Historical Society, in partnership with the Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project and the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University, will open the Edward W. Kane and Martha J. Wallace Center for Black History to explore this question of freedom and recognize and honor the freedom-making of people of African descent in the city of Newport. Freedom is often envisioned as a single moment in time, such as Juneteenth or the signing of the Declaration of Independence. However, freedom is a process. Freedom-making is continuous—it is the work to move us from dystopia toward a utopia.

Artist Jacob Lawrence said that he did not “look upon the story of the Blacks in America as a separate experience to the American culture, but as part of the American heritage and experience as a whole.” This exhibition, in support of the Center for Black History and its mission, places Black and Dawnland (New England) Indigenous histories, knowledges, and creativity into the story of American heritage and experience. It centers Black and Indigenous voices in this storytelling and shares our histories of freedom-making from our perspectives and through our creativity.

–Akeia de Barros Gomes, PhD