History lives all around us, but too often we are unaware of the full story of our own past. This essential resource can teach us to see. --Professor John Ernest*


More than a local history book...chronicling three centuries of a northern African-American community's development from slavery, to freedom, and through the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
This is a model of how to interpret documents...to look at fragments of evidence and discover lost lives, to make connections between the past and present.

More than a black "history" book...it is an American "story" book. The Resource Book is in use by public schools, libraries, historic houses and historical societies, museums, community action groups, religious organizations, and individuals who simply want to learn what their history books left out about the African-American experience in the North.

Written and Researched in Portsmouth, NH

The Black Heritage Resource Book was written by Mark Sammons, then Director of Research at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, now Director of the Newburyport Maritime Society in Massachusetts.

Primary researcher was Valerie Cunningham, Director of the African-American Resource Center, a native of Portsmouth and founder of the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail.

Consultants included University of New Hampshire Professors Jeffrey Bolster, author of Black Jacks: African-American Seamen in the Age of Sail; John Ernest*, Director of African-American Studies; and David Watters, holder of the James H. Hayes and Claire Short Hayes Chair in the Humanities.

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THE RESOURCE BOOK
The Complete Trail Book ($45 +$4 s/h)
Revised with new format 1998, 377 pp., 8.5x11, maps, notes, bibliography, names index, topical index, spiral bound.

THE BROCHURE ($2.00 +.55 postage)
A brochure describing the PBHT Self-guided Walking Tour© also is available

All proceeds go to the PBHT Site Markers Fund.
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