The Cape Verdeans’ Fox Point Origin Story

Members of Local 1329 during their annual clambake in 1956. Photography courtesy of Spia Media Productions, Inc.

Long before Interstate 195 bisected the East Side, Providence’s Cape Verdean community thrived at Fox Point. Beginning in the 1890s, Cape Verdean-owned packet ships made more than 1,200 trips across the Atlantic, carrying passengers, cargo and mail between the archipelago and the ports of Providence and New Bedford, Massachusetts. Glynis Ramos-Mitchell’s grandfather was among those who made the voyage and settled in the multicultural community at Fox Point. “I remember going down to the docks to welcome the packet ships when relatives would be coming into Fox Point,” says Ramos-Mitchell, president of Tockwotton Fox Point Cape Verdean Heritage Place Project Inc., a community-based research initiative dedicated to preserving the neighborhood’s Cape Verdean American history. Claire Andrade-Watkins, president of SPIA Media Productions, Inc., and the project’s founding executive director, is a historian, filmmaker and professor emerita at Emerson College who has spent decades researching and documenting its story. For many years, India Point was a working waterfront where Cape Verdean men made their living. Institutions like the Boys Club, the St. Antonio Cape Verdean Association and Local 1329 of the International Longshoremen’s Association anchored the neighborhood. “Everybody down the Point had somebody in their family who worked the boats,” says Andrade-Watkins. Today, few Cape Verdean residents remain. During the mid-twentieth century, urban renewal, the construction of I-195 and the expansion of Brown University displaced residents, and the formerly working waterfront was left in disarray. In 1974, the city established India Point Park. Michael Pereira’s father, Alberto, was among the local residents who advocated for the park, an effort spearheaded by Mary Elizabeth Sharpe. “We saved this place from being a scrap metal yard and [made it] an asset to the city. It’s our Plymouth Rock,” Pereira says. The group hopes to establish a commemorative space in India Point Park to pay tribute to the neighborhood’s former residents and educate visitors about its Cape Verdean legacy. “The buildings of our neighborhood have been demolished, yet our history is still very much alive,” Ramos-Mitchell says. downthepoint.com