Ask Ray Rickman and Robb Dimmick whether the average Rhode Islander is aware of the state’s Black history, and the answer is a resounding “no.”
“Rhode Islanders and almost everybody who’s not in Rhode Island believe there’s absolutely nothing here,” Rickman said. “Nothing.”
Rickman and Dimmick, co-founders of nonprofit Stages of Freedom, which aims to address racial inequities, are hoping to change that with a roadside guide to educate the public on everything from “slavery to abolition, reconstruction to the gilded age, from civil rights to present day.”
List of RI Black history sites
The list contains dozens of sites across Rhode Island, including the First Baptist Church in America, the Cape Verdean museum in East Providence, historic homes on College Hill’s Benefit Street, slave burial lots in Cranston and the East Greenwich Academy where Frederick Douglass spoke in 1888. Travelers can also visit Brown University, the endowment for which was built on funds from plantation owners.
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The memory of those sites hasn’t been forgotten, Rickman said. Something worse has occurred.
“They’re hidden,” he said. “Remember the people who did this, who created slavery … they were in charge of the school system, the government, the newspaper, and it’s only about 1990 that they say, ‘Let’s tell the truth.’”
Dimmick noted the failures of the education system in teaching students the full picture of Black history.
“It’s hard to forget what you never knew,” he said, contending that educators are “not teaching this in our schools even though there’s supposedly a concerted effort to create a curriculum.”
Rhode Island’s moniker as the smallest state in the union doesn’t help either.
“Our smallest [status] tends to lead people to think that nothing much occurred, and it’s quite the opposite,” Dimmick added, citing Newport in particular. That’s where the Free African Union Society became the first Black philanthropic organization in the country in 1780, and a headstone carved by Pompe Stevens became one of the first pieces of art signed by an African in the New World. Historical debate
And it’s relevant to everyone, regardless of race.
As Dimmick puts it, “African American history is essentially a shared history. You can’t separate it out from white history because it’s intertwined.”
To learn more about Stages of Freedom’s work, go to stagesoffreedom.org. and check out the roadside guide here and register for Wednesday’s informational Zoom session at the Redwood Library through this link. You can also review “Disappearing Ink,” a bibliography of writings by and about the state’s African Americans.
