Dark Work

A historical study of Rhode Island’s role in the slave economy and of the experiences of enslaved and free black Rhode Islanders.

Historians have written about the slave economy and its vital role in the early American economy, but this book tells the story of one state in particular whose role was outsized: Rhode Island. Like their northern neighbors, Rhode Islanders bought and sold supplies and slaves that sustained plantation throughout the Americas; however, nowhere else was this business as important as it was to Rhode Island.

In Dark Work, Christy Clark-Pujara draws on archival documents and the few first-hand accounts left by enslaved and free black Rhode Islanders to reconstruct their lived experiences. The business of slavery encouraged slaveholding, slowed emancipation, and led to circumscribed black freedom. Enslaved and free black people pushed back against their bondage and the restrictions placed on their freedom. It is convenient, especially for northerners, to think of slavery as a southern institution. The erasure or marginalization of the northern black experience and the centrality of the business of slavery to the northern economy allows for a dangerous fiction—that the North has no history of racism to overcome. But we cannot afford such a delusion if we are to truly reconcile with our past