Peter Fay

For 20 years, Peter Fay has researched Rhode Island history across dozens of archives, participating in public art and historical projects as a public historian and graphic artist at universities, libraries, and public forums across New England. He has authored original articles and booklets and lectured on colonial history, slavery, race, and social class from a Marxist perspective. He uncovered never-before known histories of Black Jamestown Revolutionary War veterans, early mariners, and the first Black farm which became Cedar Cemetery.

He has developed tours of Newport colonial history and authored booklets on Jamestown history, and East African Makonde art and the Newport slave trade to East Africa.

Peter is a co-founder of the Newport Middle Passage Project, the Jamestown Friends of Black History and sits on the Board of the Jamestown Historical Society. He retired from Brown University Division of Facilities Management in 2021 after a 30-year career in software engineering in commercial and educational institutions.