American Irony: Religious Freedom and Slavery in Colonial Newport Sunday, October 9, 3:00 pm, Lecture -Yale Art Gallery

LECTURE American Irony: Religious Freedom and Slavery in Colonial Newport Sunday, October 9, 3:00 pm Newport, Rhode Island, became an early center for religious tolerance in British North America while simultaneously building its wealth and prosperity as a leading participant in the African slave trade. Keith Stokes, Vice President of 1696 Heritage Group, describes the rising tensions between religious, commercial, and government institutions as they hotly debated abolition and freedom for country and their fellow man in the years leading up to the American Revolution. Stokes discusses the Newport African community’s rapid evolution from enslaved to free, including the rise of many of the earliest African benevolent, educational, and religious institutions established in the Western Hemisphere.