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SYMHC Classics: Paul Cuffe

January 17, 2026·31 min·3 clips

Paul Cuffe stopped paying taxes in 1778, arguing free Black men shouldn't be taxed without voting rights.

Hosts Tracy V. Wilson and Holly Frey present a Saturday Classic episode to honor the birthday of Paul Cuffee, born January 17, 1759. Cuffee was born on Cuttyhunk Island off the Massachusetts coast to Cofie Slocum, a man from present-day Ghana who had been enslaved and later freed by his Quaker owner, and Ruth Moses, a Wampanoag woman. The Slocum children changed their surname to Cuffee, an Anglicization of their father’s given name, after inheriting a farm at his death and encountering debt as teenagers. Paul taught himself to read, write, and navigate at sea during his first voyages, recognizing that maritime work was one of the only industries where people of color could advance to positions of authority. He was captured by the British and imprisoned briefly during the Revolutionary War, then spent the war years running supplies through the British naval blockade. In 1778, Cuffee stopped paying taxes and by 1780 had accumulated over 150 pounds in unpaid tax debt. He and his brother John filed a petition with four other free Black men arguing that they were being taxed without representation, directly challenging the same principle that colonists invoked against Parliament. Although the petition was denied and Cuffee was briefly jailed, it is credited with Massachusetts granting Black men voting rights under the same terms as white men in 1783. Cuffee established a shipping and shipbuilding business with his Wampanoag brother-in-law Michael Wainer and despite early disasters including shipwrecks and pirates, built it into a successful enterprise with Black and Indigenous captains and crews exclusively. By the early 1800s he was likely the wealthiest person of color in the United States, owning farms, ships, a grist mill, and directing philanthropy toward Black education and community institutions. In 1797, when the town of Westport could not agree on an integrated school, Cuffee built one on his own property. He later became a Quaker and was the first Black person to attend the New England Yearly Meeting, serving on the committee that planned the new Westport meeting house.

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A brisk, grounded portrait of Paul Cuffe's seafaring wealth, civic work, and complicated Quaker ties.

This SYMHC Classic presents Paul Cuffe as a figure whose success kept turning outward. He built ships, traded, whaled, captained vessels through pirates and shipwrecks, and became one of the wealthiest people in Westport, Massachusetts, perhaps the wealthiest person of color in…

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