When Valerie Cunningham started exploring the history of African Americans in Portsmouth more than 30 years ago, people at the time were  “very suspicious” of her motives.

“I come along and say I want to find out more about black history … and they just assumed it was because I wanted to stir up some kind of trouble,” she says.

The end result of her research is quite the opposite of what one would call “trouble.” In fact, the fruits of her labor, the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail and “Black Portsmouth,” a book she co-wrote with Mark. J. Sammons, are celebrated as important works revealing heretofore uncovered swaths of New Hampshire history. This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Black Heritage Trail, made up of 24 stops dotting the city’s landscape, from the former site of the New Hampshire Gazette printing offices to “The Pearl,” formerly the People’s Baptist Church, on Pearl Street.

Cunningham, 68, is the driving force behind the Black Heritage Trail, the only large-scale exhibit in the state devoted to black history. A Portsmouth native, she’s been sorting through old records and collecting personal remembrances in search of the history of African Americans in the Seacoast for more than 30 years. The Trail, built on those efforts, is a permanent monument to the previously hidden history of black people in Portsmouth.

Cunningham says it’s changed the way people look at the history of Portsmouth and the state as a whole. The biggest change is that the lives and contributions of African Americans in the region are more widely recognized.

“I think that … people are not shocked when they learn there is black history in the state,” she says. “And that really was my goal all along.”

Jeff Bolster, a professor at the University of New Hampshire who specializes in African American history, says Cunningham’s work has shone a light on local black history in a “quiet, confident way.”
“I think the Heritage Trail has very effectively demonstrated that people of color have a much longer history in New Hampshire than have people of many other ethnicities that we typically associate with the fabric of the state,” he says.

Cunningham began her research when she was in high school. Her parents were involved in the local branch of the NAACP and the civil rights movement. The family lived in the city’s South End, which, at the time, was targeted for demolition to make way for the “urban renewal” movement then sweeping the country. Cunningham, who describes herself as an avid reader, worked at the Portsmouth Public Library. Her boss was Dorothy Vaughn, whose advocacy in the 1950s for the preservation of the city’s historic buildings led to the creation of Strawbery Banke.

“The controversy and furor and enthusiasm” that resulted from the preservation efforts piqued Cunningham’s interest in Portsmouth’s past, and after reading early histories, like “Brewster’s Rambles,” she started to look into the lives of Portsmouth’s early black residents.

And, contrary to worries of the  establishment, it wasn’t trouble that she stirred up but instead a marginalized, forgotten aspect of local history. Piecing together clues from church records, wills, municipal documents and personal interviews, Cunningham traced the history of black people in Portsmouth, from the earliest officially recorded black family in Portsmouth in 1717 to the work of African Americans at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in World War II. Much of this research was published last year in “Black Portsmouth.”

The early history of New England yielded surprises for Cunningham. For example, New England shipbuilders and merchants were actively involved in the slave trade, a fact that runs contrary to the common portrayal of the Northeast as a haven for abolitionists.

“When I started realizing that there really were New Englanders involved, and people right here in Portsmouth involved in the transport and buying and selling of Africans in the slave trade, I was surprised,” she says. “It’s that early history that we always have learned about the South, that they’re the bad guys … (but) I didn’t realize the extent of (New England’s involvement) until I started putting all the names and dates together.”

In the 10 years since the trail has meshed itself with the city’s historical fabric, there have been other notable discoveries, especially the unearthing of several graves at the corner of Chestnut and Court streets in 2003. The graves are believed to be part of the city’s “Negro Burial Ground,” and city officials are planning a memorial for the area. One thing that Cunningham has not found is evidence of the Underground Railroad in Portsmouth, which she says is disappointing. She’s sure the Underground Railroad came through here; however, though many people have claimed they have a house that was used in the Underground Railroad or had a descendant that participated in it, she’s found no solid proof.

“All we need is a letter of any kind, any kind of clue, but we haven’t found one yet,” she says. “The closest house that has been documented … is in Lee, but … I just feel confident that there was Underground Railroad activity in Portsmouth because there was a sizeable black community here.”

Because the Underground Railroad was a collaborative effort between African Americans and white people, finding local evidence is important to Cunningham because “it’s just such a fine example in our history how the two races did work together.”

As for the “future” of black history in the Seacoast and the state, Cunningham thinks more people are seeing that “it’s not black history sitting over in one compartment. This is American history.”

The Black Heritage Trail will continue to grow beyond Portsmouth, she hopes, and throughout the state as more discoveries are made. Early African American graves were recently discovered in Greenland, she says, and Exeter has a “a rich black history and, unfortunately, a rich history of slavery, too.”

“I guess I see it evolving in terms of space and perhaps becoming more of a statewide trail, (rather) than just localized as we start to connect different towns together,” she says.

That kind of statewide attention is starting to inspire others. D.B. Garvin, editor of Historical New Hampshire, the magazine of the New Hampshire Historical Association, says an article about freed blacks illegally enslaved in the state in the 18th century is scheduled for the magazine’s November issue, and a special issue of the magazine devoted to black history in the state is slated for early 2007.

“We’re only in the planning stages at this point,” she says of the 2007 issue. “But we’re hoping it will cover black history throughout the state. There’s been a lot of attention to Portsmouth black history, but not so much elsewhere in the state.”

Garvin says while there have been plans for a black history-focused issue for almost 10 years, the publication of Cunningham’s book pushed her to look at black history across the state. While Cunningham’s work has told the story of Seacoast-area blacks, Garvin says there are other important stories to tell, like that of New Hampshire’s Harriet E. Wilson, credited as being the first African American woman to publish a novel in the United States.