RIBHS Newsletter November 2020

Creative Survival

a Publication of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society

November 3, 2020 | Issue 2

RIBHS in the News

Providence Examines Role of Black, Indigenous People US News

The state is changing. Will its name follow? The details of a 20-year debate over ’and Providence Plantations’ Newport Daily News

Newport City Council backs African Heritage courses for all schools in state Newport Daily News

Carved in Memory Preservation Magazine

New to Our Collections

Donated to RIBHS by Sandra Mansour, these shackles are from early 19th-Century Sudan. While these may highlight the brutality of slavery, it is important to remember that enslavement is not the whole story of the African Diaspora.

A recent visit to the monument memorializing the Great Swamp Fight of December 19, 1675. This remembrance is supposed to honor both the Native American and Colonial forces in the battle, but tells little of the story of the fight from the Indigenous perspective.

Whose Memory Do We Keep?

In this time where cities and states are considering the removal of the names of streets and buildings because of involvement in slavery and ongoing discrimination, perhaps we should focus more on the near invisibility of recognition of African heritage and Indigenous people. The images show two examples of attempted recognition. The first one fails because it only recognizes the battle (on both sides of the conflict) and not what was basically the massacre of the Indigenous people. the second recognizes the lives of the African heritage people who lived there before the riot destroyed the neighborhood.

The Hardscrabble Riot of October 18, 1824, is remembered by the plaque below. In this riot, about 20 homes of African heritage people were destroyed.

The future of RI politics? A more-diverse General Assembly

by Ed Fitzpatrick - reprint from the Boston Globe

PROVIDENCE — Tuesday’s elections could produce the most diverse General Assembly in Rhode Island history.

When he began tracking the number of elected leaders of color in Rhode Island 25 years ago, Latino activist Tomás Ávila counted just one Latina state legislator and a dozen Black legislators, accounting for 9 percent of the General Assembly, which then had 150 seats.

On Tuesday, the number of legislators of color could jump from 15 to 20, which would represent 18 percent of a General Assembly that now has 113 seats.

Ávila said that would give Black and Latino lawmakers more political power than they’ve ever had in Rhode Island.

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Truth, Reconciliation, & Reparations

On September 22. 2020, Providence Mayor Jorge O. Elorza today joined with community members to launch the Truth Telling phase of the City's commitment to truth, reconciliation, and municipal reparations. This phase will collect and analyze the history and experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color residents within Providence and the state, culminating with the creation of a final comprehensive narrative that will be engaged in the subsequent Reconciliation and Reparations phases.

"In order to plan a truly equitable future for our city, we need to know our history and reconcile our truths," said Mayor Jorge Elorza. "Now more than ever, we need to come together throughout the country to heal and push for real change. Today, we are taking the first step towards healing generations of trauma and injustices suffered by these communities. I want to thank the African American Ambassador Group for their continued leadership in this work."

The City has engaged the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society to lead a team that includes

Rhode Island Historical Society, 1696 Heritage Group, Providence Preservation Society, and Historical Author Gerald Carbone to work with the African American Ambassador Group Truth Telling Committee, comprised of nearly 20 community members from the larger African American Ambassador Group, to collect and analyze historical collections, documents, and artifacts that define the African heritage and Indigenous people history within Providence and Rhode Island. The 120-day engagement will work to affirm the early development of the city and state through the enslavement and genocide of African heritage and Indigenous people; examine the state and municipal laws that discriminated against formerly enslaved African heritage and Indigenous people and their descendants up until the present day; and examine the continued impact of the institution of slavery, Indigenous genocide, racial discrimination, and displacement of Indigenous lands.

Once documents have been compiled and analyzed by the Truth Telling Committee, the group will work to formulate a comprehensive narrative of their findings and develop a series of webinars, online learning exhibits, and walking tours for residents, educators, students, parents, and the general public.

"The process of recovering, documenting, and interpreting the history of African heritage and Indigenous Peoples in Providence will certainly challenge the very notion that our state and nation were founded on the principles of liberty and that all men are created equal," said 1696 Heritage Group Vice President Keith W. Stokes "This Truth-telling exercise will make possible for the City of Providence to lead the nation on how we tell the inclusive history of all people. The Truth Telling that begins today will not only validate our earned African and Indigenous Peoples' history but most importantly, that as Black Lives Matter, so does Black History Matters."

Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations Objectives

"The Rhode Island Black Heritage Society is constituted for the purpose of: Procuring, collecting, and preserving books, pamphlets, letters, manuscripts, prints, photographs, paintings, and any other historical material relating to the history of the Blacks of Rhode Island; encouraging and promoting the study of such history by lectures and otherwise; and publishing and diffusing information as to such history."