Keith Stokes

Newport County Chamber of Commerce

Keith Stokes is the director of business and economic development for Providence, Rhode Island. At the time of filming, he was the executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce. Stokes is a descendant of Newport’s early African American and Jewish families. He and his wife, Theresa Guzman Stokes, have worked to preserve “God’s Little Acre,” a colonial slave cemetery within the Common Burial Ground in Newport, Rhode Island. A Visual Remembrance: African Slave Markers in Colonial Newport provides additional information about the burial grounds. Keith and Theresa Stokes received the 2006 Tom Roberts Prize for Creative Achievement in the Humanities given by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities.

Stokes’s videos were used in the now retired curriculum unit, A Forgotten History: The Slave Trade and Slavery in New England.