“A Matter of Truth” Dives Into Rhode Island’s History of Discrimination
The new State House exhibit presented by the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society explores the lives of African heritage residents from the 1600s to the present.
A series of portraits on display in the lower level of the State House as part of “A Matter of Truth,” a new exhibit by the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society.
While the Rhode Island State House has always been a destination for teachers and students eager to learn how our state government operates, today it is home to a different type of education.
“A Matter of Truth,” a new exhibit presented by the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society in partnership with Secretary of State Gregg Amore, opened on the lower level of the State House last week. The exhibit traces the history of Rhode Island’s African heritage residents and the discrimination they faced from the 1620s to the present day.
“You can’t delve into this history without feeling it here,” said Theresa Guzmán Stokes, executive director of the RIBHS, as she indicated her heart during an opening ceremony on Friday, Nov. 10. “It’s not something that’s in your head, it’s in your heart.”
The exhibit covers the ways Rhode Islanders were implicated in the slave trade and slavery-based economy, as well as how discrimination continued to flourish in the North following the Civil War. While Southern states and the Caribbean often come to mind in relation to the slave trade, Keith Stokes — Guzmán Stokes’ husband and the project lead for the exhibit — notes Rhode Island was a major player in the Colonial slave trade due to its port cities and large number of rum distilleries. In the 1700s and 1800s, at least 900 voyages were carried out on Rhode Island-based slave ships, and twenty-eight distilleries in the state produced rum that was later traded for slaves.
“One of the biggest challenges in developing this exhibit was to cut through the myth of the Transatlantic slave trade,” Stokes says.
Following the end of slavery, Rhode Island continued to discriminate against residents of color by using a “warning out” system to force them from certain neighborhoods. Black and Indigenous residents eventually settled in an area near the present-day State House that became known as Snowtown and Hardscrabble. Those neighborhoods were the sites of riots in 1824 and 1831 in which working class white residents destroyed numerous homes.
As the 1900s arrived, Providence officials continued to force residents of color to live in certain neighborhoods through a system of redlining. Among the artifacts on display is a 1935 redlining map of Providence used by mortgage lenders. As a result, residents of color tended to settle in a select few neighborhoods, including Fox Point, Mount Hope, West Elmwood, Smith Hill, Olneyville, South Providence and Lippitt Hill.
“This sense that New England and the North is a safe haven for people of color is a false narrative. They were wrestling each and every day with racial strife and racial oversight,” Stokes says.
A portrait of Christiana Carteaux Bannister on display as part of “A Matter of Truth.”
In the 1960s, urban renewal meant that many of those neighborhoods were the site of redevelopment projects that forced residents to leave their homes. More than 600 homes and 125 Black-owned businesses were removed from the Lippitt Hill neighborhood to make way for what’s today the University Heights shopping center. In West Providence, 455 Black families lost their homes to redevelopment.
Today, Stokes points out, the descendants of those early residents are still far behind in wealth, education and success. While the average income family on College Hill was $179,000 in 2019, that number in Olneyville was just $18,900.
Discrimination was also present in government programs. In 1944, the United States established the G.I. Bill to offer benefits to military service members returning from World War II. The program was established at the federal level, but its administration was left to the local level, allowing individual states to decide who benefitted. While more than 10 million veterans received benefits between 1945 and 1955, less than 1 percent of them were Black.
“The common denominator is if you’re not white, you don’t benefit,” Stokes says.
Several state officials gathered to celebrate the opening of the exhibit, including Senator Jack Reed, Governor Dan McKee, Lieutenant Governor Sabina Matos, House Speaker Joe Shekarchi, Senate President Dominick Ruggiero and Secretary of State Gregg Amore. Amore noted the exhibit coincides with the election of Rhode Island’s first Black representative in the United States Congress, Gabe Amo, who was sworn in to the House of Representatives this week.
“It’s an exhibit that speaks to the importance of telling our entire story as a state and as a nation,” Amore says.
Stokes also explained his preference for the term “African heritage” as opposed to “African American,” noting the term is unique to Rhode Island and recognizes all individuals who trace their roots to Africa, regardless of where they settled along the way. Matos, in comments prior to the exhibit opening, said the research of the RIBHS helps her see the connection between Rhode Island and her own Black heritage in the Dominican Republic.
“Sometimes we forget how connected we are and need to see the history and have moments like this to see we’re all one people,” she says. “We were just dropped off at different ports, but we’re all one people.”
Guests view “A Matter of Truth” on the lower level of the State House.
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