RIBHS Newsletter for July 2020

Creative Survival

a Publication of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society

July 13, 2020 | Issue 1

RIBHS in the News

Now is the Time to Advance African American History Newport Daily News

RIBHS Receives Grant to Develop Documentary Script - view video at here

Events & Happenings

Providence Preservation Society: Race, Power, and Preservation

July 15 / 5:30 pm

Free / Advance registration required

A new effort to examine race and ethnicity - Providence Journal accepting submissions

A Season of Change

2020 will go down in history as the year that we stood up and said “ENOUGH!” Protests after the death of George Floyd are some of the largest and longest running in our history, and the Black Lives Matter movement has taken center-stage in a number of states, including Rhode Island. In the midst of this we have statues being overturned or demolished, and people demanding that public buildings and schools named after known slave-traders be renamed.

RIBHS has been working hard to move forward the establishment of an African heritage history curriculum in Rhode Island schools K-12. We believe that reconciliation cannot happen without recognition – not only recognizing slavery and emancipation, but the real accomplishments and contributions of African heritage people; contributions that date back to the founding of this country.

We hope you will join us in supporting these efforts as we move forward toward a more inclusive society.

Join Us!

What Does the Fourth of July Mean to the African American?

A Historical Perspective

Frederick Douglass, perhaps one of America’s greatest civil rights leaders, presented a speech in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852 entitled, "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro." The first part of his speech praises what the founding fathers did for this country, but the speech soon expands into a denunciation of the attitude of American society toward African heritage enslavement and equality. In his historic speech, Douglas points out the bitter irony of America celebrating the nation’s birth of freedom and independence, while embracing the enslavement of nearly four million declaring:

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Return to Africa with the HACSA Summit!

Recently, across America there has been a renewed interest in the opportunity for African-Americans to reclaim their African heritage and culture. In their 1967 book Black Power, Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokley Carmichael) and Charles V. Hamilton assert that, “It is absolutely essential that black people know this history, that they know their roots,

that they develop an awareness of their cultural heritage.[…] If black people are to know themselves as a vibrant, valiant people, they must know their roots,” (Ture 38-39).

This sentiment carries a weighty significance, which is not dissimilar to the weight of the legacy of African-Americans in the United States. This renewed interest in many African-Americans to reclaim their history comes from a desire to know their roots. Yet how can African-Americans reconnect to their roots?

The history of the African-American is a silenced past. While many African Americans, be they historians, scholars, or individuals have documented this history there is still so much deep richness and truth in our history and culture that has been whitewashed, watered down, written out of the textbooks, unspoken or unshared. This has left the African-American community feeling disconnected to their own history with little understanding of the truth of their heritage. Despite this palpable feeling of distance from our own history, we know that the story begins on the shores of Africa.

"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."