Award-winning historian, author and civil rights activist Valerie Cunningham was recently honored by the Black Heritage Trail in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a non-profit organization founded in 1994 during their 30th anniversary celebration. Cunningham is a Portsmouth native and has been instrumental in the conservation and education of New England’s Black history. As a founding member of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, Cunningham’s commitment to educating her community, the greater New England area and the broader public has remained persistent.
In 1961, during the early part of her career, Cunningham became secretary of the Portsmouth branch of the NAACP, which was founded with help from her parents in 1958. Since then, she has had an exceptional career as an author and civil rights activist, publishing works detailing Portsmouth’s rich African American history.
Her civil rights efforts go back to her beginnings with the NAACP. On April 23, 1965, Cunningham notably participated in a Civil Rights March with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from Roxbury to the Boston Commons to support the desegregation of schools. Since then, her diligent work regarding Black history has led to her creation of the Black Heritage Trail in Portsmouth.
In 2003, Cunningham represented the descendant community as an appointee to the mayor’s committee to assist in creating the African Burial Ground Memorial at the Black Heritage Trail in Portsmouth. She was also instrumental in establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day in New Hampshire.
As a historian, Cunningham has worked diligently since the late 1950s at the Portsmouth Historical Society to unveil the history surrounding the Black community in Portsmouth. Her published written work has been described by her colleagues as “transformative,” with her years of research in partnership with her research partner, Mark J. Simmons, being compiled into the book “Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African American Heritage,” an in-depth history of the Black community in Portsmouth dating back to the early 20th century. Current Black Heritage Trail President Shari Robinson described the book as an “integral part of our collective history and identity in New Hampshire,” marking Cunningham’s work as timeless and critical to the development of New Hampshire.
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