Was Newport’s Touro Synagogue a stop on the Underground Railroad?

This is one of the many fantasies of the history of the Black–Jewish relationship. The Touro Synagogue in Newport Rhode Island was the “spiritual” home of some of the largest Jewish slave-dealers of all time. According to Jewish scholars quoted in The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, the Touro Synagogue was built by Black slaves “of some skill.”

By the early 1800s, regular services stopped and the synagogue’s doors were closed. There would not be another Jewish congregation there until 1883. The Underground Railroad was at its height between 1810 and 1850—when there was no Jewish occupancy of the Newport synagogue building.

From the 1830s through the 1850s, the building’s Quaker caretaker offered the use of the empty structure to the free Africans living in Newport. The building became an Underground Railroad stop because, as Keith Stokes—who is also co-chair of the Society of Friends of Touro Synagogue—says, “People wouldn’t think of checking on an empty, vacant building. And it was conveniently located in the center of the free black community.”

Quoting from: http://www.projo.com/cgi-bin/include.pl/seasonal/blackhistory/underground/rails.htm

Newport’s commercial importance equaled that of Boston and Philadelphia, and surpassed New York and Charleston (S. C.). By 1750, Newport sent many more ships into international and coastal trade than New York or Boston. Up to 18 vessels from the West Indies arrived in Newport in one day. In fact, Max J. Kohler (in a publication of the American Jewish Historical Society) argues, “The Jewish merchants were not merely the capitalists who furnished the wherewithal for this trade, but their enterprise created the trade itself, introduced new arts and industries involved, and furnished the trade connections through their co-religionists in different foreign ports with which the relations were formed.” Jewish merchants were so prosperous and successful in these endeavors that when they left Newport, the prosperity of that city left with them.