Every summer, the same places rise to the top of the group chat. Martha’s Vineyard. Sag Harbor. The Hamptons. Places that have become shorthand for Black leisure, affluence, and ease. But, long before the Vineyard became the destination, Newport, Rhode Island, was already doing the work—quietly, intentionally, and with deep roots for Black Americans that a lot of people never think to trace back.

Newport has always been a city where Black history, wealth, and home life intersected in ways that feel surprisingly modern. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, during the Gilded Age, the city was a hub for industry, shipping, and social life across the Northeast. Wealthy families from New York and other northern cities traveled through and settled in Rhode Island, building grand homes and seasonal residences that still stand today. What’s often left out of that narrative is how present—and influential—Black families were in shaping that world.

That history is something Theresa “Soni” Stokes and Keith Stokes have dedicated their lives to preserving. As leaders of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, the couple focuses on historic preservation, education, and making sure Black Rhode Island stories aren’t treated as footnotes. When I visited Newport last year, they spoke candidly about how often the city’s Black legacy is hiding in plain sight.

“People are shocked when they realize how many prominent Black families lived, worked, and thrived here,” Keith Stokes shared. “Newport wasn’t just a pass-through city. It was home.”

That legacy recently found its way back into the spotlight thanks to HBO’s The Gilded Age. While the series is set in New York, much of it was filmed in Newport, using the city’s preserved mansions and historic streets as a stand-in for 1880s high society. Even more notably, the show’s Black elite family was loosely inspired by real Black figures who lived in and around Newport during that era. Soni and Keith served as historical consultants on the series, helping ensure the representation wasn’t just aesthetically accurate, but culturally grounded.

“We wanted the show to reflect that Black wealth and sophistication didn’t start in the 20th century,” Soni Stokes explained. “It was already here. It’s still here.”

That context matters—especially now. As more affluent Black families look for places where they can rest, invest, and build generational homes, the same handful of destinations tend to dominate the conversation. But Newport offers something different: proximity to major cities, rich architectural history, coastal lifestyle, and a long-standing Black community rooted in preservation rather than trend.

Walking through neighborhoods lined with historic homes, it’s easy to imagine summers that look less like spectacle and more like continuity—returning to the same house, the same streets, the same rhythms year after year. That tradition, so often associated with Martha’s Vineyard, was practiced in places like Newport long before it had a name.

“There’s room here to build something lasting,” Keith said. “Not just a vacation, but a legacy, and that’s what I would encourage young, Black people to consider.”

As August trips to the Vineyard are booked and Zillow searches for coastal homes heat up, Newport deserves to be part of the conversation. Not as an alternative, but as an origin point—a reminder that Black leisure, affluence, and home-making in the North didn’t suddenly appear. They were built, preserved, and passed down in cities like this one.

Before there was Martha’s Vineyard, there was Newport. And its story is still being written.