Si tuviéramos que buscar a una candidata que represente a los Dominicanos de Rhode Island, tendría que ser Josefina Rosario. “Doña Fefa” es querida, respetada y honrada como “La Madre de la Comunidad Dominicana.” 

Los Dominicanos son ahora el grupo Latino más grande en Rhode Island. Pero, en el 1955 cuando llegó Doña Fefa a este estado,ella estaba convencida que ella fue la primera dominicana. Después de su llegada, muchos siguieron su camino.

 Rosario abrió una tienda pequeña conocida como Fefa’s Market en el 1959, cerca de la entrada hacia el parque de Roger Williams. Vendía las comidas que ella alguna vez extraño de casa, incluyendo plátanos, yuca, café y cilantro; también ordenaba periódicos Dominicanos, y daba consejos a los recién llegados para conseguir empleo, una licencia de conducir, y como registrar a sus hijos en la escuela. Ella era como un comité de una sola mujer y su bodega se convirtió en un centro de comunidad que proveía comodidad y consejos para empezar en un mundo nuevo y extraño. 

Fefa y su esposo Tony, de la herencia puertorriqueña, frequentemente apoyaban a los inmigrantes dominicanos y les daban un hogar en su casa de siete dormitorios en la 145 de la calle Chester, en la esquina de la calle Broad, hasta que ellos conseguían su propio apartamento. Sus hijas, quienes hablaban el inglés con fluidez, servían de traductoras cuando los recién llegados necesitaban ayuda con los detalles infinitos de la vida en Rhode Island.

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“Young man, if you don’t get out you’re going to end up with a little round hole in the middle of your forehead.”

The words were polite and calm, but ominous, spoken to a youthful group of summer people during a late night visit to Briggs Beach during Prohibition, according to local resident Howard Huntoon.

Little Compton’s fourteen beautiful miles of coastline have long attracted tourists and sun bathers, but during Prohibition, the beaches also provided a convenient route to smuggle illegal alcohol. “Rum running” became an important way for locals to earn money, especially during the early years of the Great Depression.

Although the rum runners broke the law, their friends and neighbors usually looked the other way and even lied to local enforcement agencies to protect this income stream. Seasonal residents returning for the summer sometimes found cash in their mailboxes, payment for the use of their empty barns and land as hiding places for illegal booze.

Prohibition banned alcoholic drinks from 1920 until 1933, the result of the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Most residents of Little Compton didn’t support Prohibition, and some took advantage of the demand for liquor to earn much-needed money for their families. Eleanor Simons, the daughter of Little Compton farmer John Flores, remembered her father’s secret rum running:

“I think people didn’t want anybody to know but I think they survived better because of it. Dad’s farm wasn’t as profitable to carry us through.”

The potential profits also enticed businessmen from other areas of the East Coast to set up shop. Manuel Avila came to Little Compton after Prohibition closed his bar in New Bedford, looking for a place with less of the competition and violence that was associated with the illegal liquor trade. In Little Compton he became a central figure in rum running.

Avila kept a safe house on Amesbury Lane where his trusted runners could eat, wash, and rest. In 1927, he bought the old Cornell farmhouse on Adamsville Hill. The house became the center of operations for his “gravel business,” a cover for his rum running. Located uphill from the Westport River, the house allowed for secret liquor deliveries at night and there were numerous places where the booze could be quickly hidden on the farm.

Today, the rum runners are often portrayed as exciting figures—cowboys on boats—but rum running required rough edges and desperate deeds, more than the romantic stories indicate. Rum runners faced the constant threat of being arrested or shot, either by the Coast Guard or by their rivals. Smuggling liquor during Prohibition was a dangerous, illegal business in an economically desperate time.

Many people also remember the Little Compton rum runners as farmers and fishermen, husbands and brothers. Manny Avila was known as a strong family man. His godson, Barry Federman, remembered Manny and his wife Nettie as “very fine, generous people, some of the nicest people you would ever want to meet.”

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In the Old Burial Ground is an odd grave maker. It reads, “In memory of Elizabeth, who Should have been the Wife of Mr. Simeon Palmer… died Augst 14th 1776 in the 64th year of her age.” A clue to the meaning of this inscription may lie in a 1901 account by a Little Compton resident of an eccentric belief held by local minister Richard Billings, who “firmly believed in cats as an article of diet, and fatted them for the purpose.”

Little Compton’s original proprietors set aside the land for the Burial Ground in 1678, and the oldest marker belongs to Mary Rouse Price, who died in 1698. Other stones mark the graves of children who died with alarming frequency in the early years of the town, victims of epidemics, and many of Little Compton’s most notable residents including Primus Collins and Betty Alden, whose stories are also available on Rhode Tour.

The story of Simeon and Elizabeth Palmer might be the Burial Ground’s most unusual. Lying next to the woman who “should have been the wife of Simeon Palmer” is the grave of Lidia Palmer, identified as the “Wife of Simeon Palmer.” According to one local legend, Simeon Palmer jilted Elizabeth during their courtship and married Lidia instead. In fact, Elizabeth actually was the wife of Simeon for 21 years. They married in 1755, after Simeon’s first wife, Lidia, died.

In 1901, Little Compton resident M.L.T. Alden offered another explanation for the perplexing stone. If his account is true, it is even more fascinating than the legend.

According to Alden, whose source was “the antiquarian of the village,” Simeon Palmer adopted Reverend Billings’ habit of including cat meat as part of his regular diet, perhaps because an attack of heat stroke left him “mildly insane.” Simeon attempted to force his wife and baby daughter to partake in his cat meat diet, but Elizabeth would not have it. She took their daughter and moved into her parents’ home.

Simeon and Elizabeth continued to maintain a semblance of a marriage. Simeon visited his wife and daughter on Sundays, and Elizabeth took care of her husband’s laundry and mending. But Simeon remained bitter about this arrangement, and when Elizabeth died he ordered her gravestone engraved with the unusual epitaph. The “should have been” referred to Elizabeth’s refusal to perform her duties as a wife by living with her husband.

Church records indicate that Simeon married a third time and moved to New York State. Whether he continued to eat cats is unknown.

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Vernal pools are temporary wetlands that annually fill with water in the winter and early spring and then become dry when the weather turns warmer, although some pools may not completely evaporate in a wet summer. When pools periodically dry, predatory fish cannot survive, and this results in a protected breeding environment for all sorts of critters. Vernal pools are excellent habitats for many amphibians and invertebrates to complete part of their life cycles.

Creatures found at the Pardon Gray pool include wood frogs, spotted salamanders, marble salamanders, and fairy shrimp. These species require the protected waters of a vernal pool to survive. Other local species may use the vernal pool but can survive in nearby wetland habitats. These include spring peepers, gray tree frogs, green frogs, leopard frogs, pickerel frogs, red-spotted salamanders, several species of turtles, dragonflies, and whirligig beetle larvae. Vernal pools also supply drinking water for other wildlife. When in proximity to other pools, vernal pools enable amphibians and reptiles to pass from one wetland to another.

Vernal pools are reproductive hatcheries for terrestrial amphibians. Though most of us do not encounter these creatures as we trek through the woods, several thousand wood frogs use a moderate-sized vernal pool to breed before returning to the forest. The nutrients and energy from decaying vegetation on the pool floor nourish the frogs and salamanders of the nearby woods. The complexity of these food webs within the pools maintains a balance that enables a sufficient number of individuals of each species to survive and maintain the population in future years.

Each fall as leaves drop into the pool, bacteria and fungi begin the decaying process at the base of the food chain. Zooplankton feed on the bacteria and fungi, and a variety of insect larvae feed on the leaves, a process continued by adult insect forms, snails, and small crustaceans. The leaves also provide food for hatching tadpoles. These creatures in turn become food for predaceous diving beetles, dragon and damsel flies, and water scorpions. Salamander larvae join the list of pool carnivores. Joining the food web nearer the top of the chains are turtles, snakes, wading birds, and raccoon.

The presence of vernal pools at Pardon Gray Preserve is important to maintaining the biodiversity on both a local and global scale.

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Repurposing older structures is a tenet of historic preservation. Here the West Broadway Neighborhood Association practices what it preaches. Since 1983, the WBNA has been one of the strongest and most active neighborhood associations in the city. This 1930s Art Moderne Texaco station is a classic Walter Dorwin Teague prefab design, but instead of pumping gas, this service station has become a fueling place for community. Don’t miss the gas pump out front. Once a grand avenue of wealthy mansions to rival Broadway, Westminster Street became a part of the Route 6 transcontinental highway, running from Provincetown, Massachusetts across the country to Long Beach, California. When the Interstate network was built, traffic was rerouted, and gas stations like this one had to look for a new purpose. Kari Lang has led the WBNA for twenty years and made the organization a model of engagement and community. Neighbors come here to find out about solar panel installation, home composting, community, politics, safety, and neighborhood events.

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In the mood for a seance? If you were a member of the cultural elite in 19th-century Providence, all signs would have pointed to yes. East Side artists and intellectuals attended seances held in private homes, which also played host to literary salons that engaged with the hot topics of the day. These topics included Spiritualism, which had given rise to the mania for seances, and Transcendentalism, the philosophical movement that advocated for the inherent goodness of man and nature. Today we associate Transcendentalism most readily with Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson in Massachusetts, but Rhode Island had its share of luminaries involved in the movement, including Margaret Fuller and Sarah Helen Whitman. Margaret Fuller, journalist, educator, and advocate for women’s rights, briefly took up residence as a teacher in Providence’s Greene Street School. Whitman, born and bred in the city, associated in Fuller’s circle and was a well-known poet. Fuller, Whitman, and many other artists and writers would often gather in what quickly became a 19th-century cultural hub of Providence: the Athenaeum on Benefit Street.

 This Greek Revival-style library generated more than just abstract ideas and elevated conversation: love blossomed here between two writers. Having spotted her first in a rose garden and where he fell madly in love, Edgar Allen Poe courted Sarah Helen Whitman in the Athenaeum in 1845. Their courtship was short-lived, however: Whitman called off their engagement in 1848 when Poe’s sobriety came into question.

 In the next century, Providence inspired the work of another creative writer, H.P. Lovecraft, who set his novel “The Shunned House” (1924) in a colonial house down the street from the Athenaeum, at 135 Benefit Street.

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Few places in downtown evoke such fond memories like the iconic Shepard Company Department Store, a fixture of the 19th and 20th-century Providence shopping experience. Built in the 1870s, Shepard’s initially was 6,400 square feet. By 1903, it grew to include 301,000 square feet, occupying an entire city block!

In it's prime, Shepard's also helped to orient visitors in downtown Providence. Meeting “at the clock” friends and families used the large 19th-century cast iron clock outside the Westminster Street entrance as a point of reference. Though once successful, the Shepard Company went bankrupt in 1974. Fortunately, the exterior of the building and its iconic clock still remain largely unchanged.

Today the Shepard’s Building serves various educational institutions, an example of repurposing an iconic space to serve the neighborhood’s needs.

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In 2009, a group of volunteers stepped into the Woonasquatucket River at Donigian Park wearing waist-high heavy rubber boots and sturdy gloves to protect against the river’s pollution. Donigian Park in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence had once been a major destination for thousands of Providence residents who, in the 1880s, visited both Donigian and Merino Parks to enjoy a swim, a picnic, and the greenery. But by 2009, the park had become a defacto dump. On that single clean-up day, volunteers pulled out 150 shopping carts and two tons of automobile tires from the river.

Even in the 1880s the city should have warned residents against swimming in the Woonasquatucket. While mills, factories, and other industries used the Woonasquatucket River as a power source to engine their factories, they also used it to remove garbage and other waste from their buildings. Trace amounts of metals like zinc and cadmium, used to set dyes on fabrics, and pesticides containing mercury and arsenic, used to prevent insect damage to wool and cotton, made their way into the waters. But the biggest source of trace metals came from the production of the machinery used in these water-powered factories. Tin, iron, copper, and pewter used to make tools and parts regularly escaped into the air, soil, and water or were buried as a simplistic means of waste disposal. Most of these facilities used some type of volatile or semi-volatile organic compound to clean machinery and tools such as trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, known carcinogens. Many of these pollutants can still be found in river sediments today, more than 100 years after they were released.

Specific attempts to reduce the emission of at least some metals began in the 1950s and 1960s, but legislative requirements for industrial pretreatment of wastewaters did not come until the 1972 Clean Water Act. As more activist environmental movements took hold in the 1980s, concern for the status of the river and its importance to the city and the surrounding neighborhoods grew. In 1998, the federal government designated the Woonasquatucket River as one of 14 American Heritage Rivers, commemorating its role in the nation’s industrial history.

Shortly after, The Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council formed to improve the environmental, recreational, and economic assets of the river and its watershed. Thanks to their efforts, Donigian Park is once again a beautiful urban refuge.

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This 25-acre parcel and 12-building campus along the Woonasquatucket River was once home to one of Providence’s premier companies, Brown and Sharpe.

In 1833 David Brown and his son opened a shop in Providence for the making and repair of watches and clocks and other precision mechanical work. Lucien Sharpe joined the business as an apprentice in 1848 and became a full partner in 1853. While Brown concentrated on mechanical problems, Sharpe provided business acumen. Together they made Brown and Sharpe into a nationally recognized machine tool producer.

Brown and Sharpe’s products were the day-to-day tools of machinists and allowed them to produce the individual parts of complex manufacturing machines. Machinists, and the products they make, constitute the foundation of precision manufacturing.

The 1850s marked the beginning of the company’s spectacular rise. Brown devoted his career to raising the standard of accuracy in machine shop operations: he built an automatic linear dividing engine so fundamentally correct in design and workmanship that it has remained in continuous service. His pocket vernier caliper (a linear measuring instrument) of 1851 has been called "the first practical tool for exact measurement which could be sold in any country at a price within the reach of the ordinary machinist." In 1861, in perhaps his most important contribution, Brown invented the modern universal milling machine for cutting spirals. This machine helped advance mass production of cheap, interchangeable, and standard, parts.

After Brown's death in 1876, Oscar J. Beale became the company's genius in the field of mechanical design. He developed a measuring machine that enabled the company to make and sell its gauges with a guarantee of accuracy to within one ten-thousandth of an inch. In 1880, he invented an automatic screw machine.

Brown and Sharpe’s success depended on and helped to advance the mechanization of daily life in the 19th century. The machine tools the company produced proved instrumental to countless automotive, aeronautic, commercial, and domestic products. Brown and Sharpe's skilled workforce contributed to the development of the automobile and aviation industries and to the emergence of the United States as a global leader in manufacturing.

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“We claim . . . that to deprive the colored people of this State of the immunities of citizenship, on account of the color of the skin, (a matter over which they have no control), is anti-republican; and against such a procedure we enter our solemn protest.” This strongly worded missive reached Thomas Wilson Dorr and made clear the position of Providence’s Black community. When word had spread that the Dorrites were qualifying their call to abolish unfair requirements for suffrage and excluding Black voters, they responded swiftly.

The petition, Dorr was told, was written by Alexander Crummell (1819-1898), the minister of Christ Church during the Dorr Rebellion. A native of New York, Crummell had been born free and received an excellent education. While in New York, he had been involved in an effort to strike down the property requirement for suffrage, though the attempt was unsuccessful. In Providence, Crummell quickly became an influential figure in Providence’s Black community.

Crummell’s petition anticipates the arguments against suffrage for Black men and refutes them, drawing attention to inconsistencies in the People’s Party’s calls for so-called universal suffrage.

Black citizens decried the use of the word “white” to define universal suffrage in the People’s Constitution. The petition argued: “We are mostly native born citizens. We have lent our best strength in the cultivation of the soil, have aided in the development of its resources, and have contributed our part to its wealth and importance."

Crummell aligned the cause of his fellow Black citizens to that of the colonists fighting to gain their freedom from Great Britain. “We appeal to that great written charter of American liberty--the declaration of independence--in support of our protestation. We believe that ‘all men are created free and equal’; and we affirm, that no tinge of the skin can possibly invalidate that cardinal doctrine of our country’s liberty, or make nugatory or partial the political privileges which, as deductions, may proceed from it."

This site at 400 Benefit Street was the former site of St. Stephen’s Church. Crummell’s congregation, Christ Church, was eventually absorbed by St. Stephen’s in the 1850s.

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The Bell School was built in 1841 as a school for District No. 14, on the west side of the river. There was evidently some jealousy aroused in the other school districts when the residents of the Head of Westport decided to build so magnificent a building to be used as a mere schoolhouse. The Bell School was one of nineteen one-room schools that once dotted the Westport landscape in the nineteenth century. However, these once-admired buildings became the focus of a decades-long debate about education and an unsustainable district system. By 1900, the Westport School Committee described the overall conditions of Westport schools as “Deplorable! Unhealthful! Worn out! Dismal! Repulsive!” Nothing illustrates the plight of children in the 1800s more dramatically than the daily hardships that they faced at school. Although each one-room school differed somewhat from the exterior, they were all equally primitive inside and presented the students with some serious challenges to their wellbeing. In the winter, children risked being sprayed with hot soot from malfunctioning woodstoves. They risked contracting life-threatening diseases through the prevalent use of the common drinking cup and appallingly unkempt outhouses. They faced serious bullying and class disruption as anywhere from fifteen to fifty pupils ranging in age from five to twenty years crowded into a single room. Many children were sentenced to a life of impaired eyesight from the lack of adequate lighting in the schools. It is astounding that within these difficult conditions, children managed to read the literary classics, learn complex bookkeeping skills, take in the practical arts (music, drawing, agriculture), and learn how to plant gardens. Despite the poor conditions inside the buildings, the one-room schoolhouse has left a lasting architectural legacy, such as the Greek Revival Bell School and the temple-like Wolf Pit School. Many of the buildings that were once one-room schools still survive, but have been significantly altered. The struggle to provide an effective public education system is ongoing and many of the concerns voiced in the nineteenth century are still relevant today. In 1972, the Westport Library Association gave the Bell School to the Westport Historical Society, and so the building continues to dispense knowledge—even if in a different manner.

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The Handy House is not the home of a famous person—Washington did not sleep here! Yet the story of the people who lived here provides an extraordinary window into a world of ordinary lives that is otherwise lost to history. As you walk through this house you will travel through 300 years of history and encounter some of the individuals who lived in its rooms. You will discover how they shaped the house and also, how they were shaped by the world around them. Perhaps what makes the Cadman-White-Handy house so interesting is that it is not simply a well-preserved old house, but rather three remarkable houses that correspond with the first three significant trends to occur in this nation’s architectural history. Each campaign—from the original early eighteenth century house, to the mid eighteenth century improvements in the Georgian manner, to the Federal style addition—speaks volumes about the people, place, and period they represent. The original structure consisted of the east third of the house that exists today. It was built in c. 1713 for Elizabeth Cadman White and William White. It had a simple floor plan, consisting of one or two large multipurpose rooms on each floor. There was no privacy at all as the members of this family of thirteen shared these spaces for daily activities such as eating, sleeping, chores, and storage. Today, the Handy House is owned by the Westport Historical Society, and is open to the public July - October. Far from being an overly restored historic house frozen in time, the Handy House provides the visitor with an experience of discovery. The public will not encounter rooms full of rare and valuable antiques, but instead experience ever-changing “windows” into the town’s past through changing exhibitions and educational programs. The Handy House has been left mostly unfurnished so that visitors can view the walls, floors, windows, doors, hinges, moldings, plaster, and other parts of its structure. Visitors who are curious to know what lies behind the shingles, beneath the plaster, under the floorboards, can view “windows” in the walls and floors that contain the keys to evolution of the house.

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With careers marked by a series of firsts in New Bedford politics, Rosalind Poll Brooker (1928-2016) and Rosemary Tierney (1932-2020) were trailblazers for women in law and politics. Rosalind, the first woman elected to the City Council, the first female City Council president, and the first female City Solicitor; and Rosemary, the first and only woman to be elected mayor, as of 2021, used political office to mobilize change from within the walls of City Hall.

Rosalind Poll Brooker overcame every obstacle to make her community a better place. Not only did Rosalind enter the fields of law and politics at a time when women were expected to focus on home and family, she also did not let polio, which left her using crutches, hold her back. She began her public service career in 1969 when she was elected to the New Bedford City Council. Although she was first passed over to be City Council president, Rosalind was elected to the role at the next opportunity. Her colleagues described her as tough, kind, fair, and tenacious.

Mayor John Bullard, who named Rosalind as New Bedford’s first female City Solicitor, the chief legal officer of the city, stated “As a city councilor she had a strong personality. She was a great lawyer and a dynamic person.” Former New Bedford City Solicitor Irene Schall remembered Rosalind as an intelligent leader dedicated to advancing women attorneys. Shortly after her 1969 election, Rosalind stated, “I’m not going down in history, I’m going up.” She continued to rise up throughout her life bringing other women with her.

Committed to public education, Rosemary Tierney was elected to the New Bedford School Committee in 1971, where she served for several years. Beginning in 1984, she was elected to the Massachusetts Governor’s Council three times. Rosemary’s trademark grassroots campaigning style, which she perfected in these early elections drove her to victory in the 1991 mayoral race. Former Mayor Scott Lang remembered Rosemary as someone who "understood that door-to-door neighborhood campaigning and personal relationships drove public policy. No one in the City has ever built coalitions to drive an issue like Rosemary Tierney."

Rosemary succeeded in the arena of male-dominated politics by working hard to create programs and policies that included all New Bedford residents. During her first year in office, she unveiled her “Cornerstone for Change” plan to rebuild New Bedford. Perhaps her most important accomplishment was restoring New Bedford’s financial stability through tough budgetary controls.

As firsts in their offices in New Bedford, Rosalind and Rosemary encouraged other women to be politically active by supporting female lawyers and harnessing the networking power of women and women’s groups to strengthen grassroots campaigning. They brought traditional community-based organizing into the formal halls of city government, opening new avenues for women to enact change in areas dominated by men.

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Jennie Horne’s (1920-1998) influential career in social services was fueled by her idealism, her love of people, and a desire to contribute to her community in New Bedford. During a time in which information on how people of color could access social programs was not always available, Jennie worked to make sure it was. She advised families on new initiatives that offered educational and job opportunities for everyone, particularly encouraging women of color to join the workforce. Wherever she went people shared their goals and dreams, and Jennie always responded positively with a smile and an offer of help. She is remembered as an “encourager, a connector, and a helper” who always lent a hand to raise others up.

Jennie started as a secretary in the main office of New Bedford’s ONBOARD (Organized New Bedford Opportunity And Resource Development), an anti-poverty community action project agency. Through ONBOARD, she helped acquire grants for city programs that provided education, employment, and recreation opportunities for minorities and poor people. Jennie then went to the West Central Community Center, eventually serving as its director. There she initiated several programs to aid the disadvantaged.

One of Jennie’s greatest gifts was her knowledge of the people who lived in the West End. She kept mental notes on the talents and needs of the people in her neighborhood. Robert Horne remembers his mother as seeming “to know instinctively who to call on in the West End to ask for assistance and also who in the West End might need the assistance that the [West Central Community Center] could provide.” She knew who had the sewing skills to lead a sewing class or the bookkeeping skills to organize and operate a neighborhood credit union.

Jennie also worked for Model Cities, a federal urban assistance program that—along with ONBOARD—was part of the War on Poverty, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s legislative agenda that sought to attack the root causes of poverty and provide opportunity for all. In 1968, New Bedford was one of 151 cities chosen in the Model Cities project, whose mission was to address the effects of prejudice and neglect on urban communities. While at Model Cities, Jennie was involved in improving public school reorganization, public housing development, and relations between police and the community. Model Cities eventually became the Community Development Block Grant Program. Later, as a member of the Mayor’s Citizen Advisory Committee, Jennie helped to channel federal Community Block Grants during several different mayoral administrations.

With boundless energy, Jennie served on several PTAs, nonprofit boards, and women’s organizations, including as president of the Martha Briggs Educational Club. Founded in 1920 by women of color, today the Martha Briggs Educational Club provides scholarships to local minority high school students. In 1939, the Club purchased the Sgt. William H. Carney House at 128 Mill Street where it has been headquartered ever since. For a century, the Club has been led by women of color like Jennie Horne and exists as a forum to self-organize from and advocate for their community. Its members have always been dedicated to education and the role that community service plays in making lives and community richer.

Jennie is remembered as personifying the motto of the Martha Briggs Educational Club: “Lifting as we climb.” Throughout her life, Jennie Horne was a tireless advocate for the disadvantaged. Through her government positions, involvement with community organizations, and everyday encouragement, Jennie worked to bring aid and assistance to those who needed it most. In 2020, residents and friends of New Bedford honored Jennie by selecting her as one of two women represented by large murals at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Jennie exemplified how one woman can light the way for others, who in turn can light the way for those who follow.

Thank you to the family of Jennie Horne for their contributions to Jennie’s biography and providing photographs. Their stories showcased Jennie’s special qualities and tireless efforts on behalf of her family and community.

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Equality was the vision driving Elizabeth Carter Brooks’ (1867-1951) work as an educator, social activist, and architect. She wove these seemingly separate paths into a long life of advocacy for African Americans of New Bedford and beyond in a time when African Americans faced many obstacles and overt racism in both the South and the North in the United States.

In 1901, Elizabeth became the first African American woman hired as a public-school teacher in New Bedford. She taught at the William H. Taylor School for over 25 years. When she retired the New Bedford’s Superintendent of Schools noted that “her work was characterized by a sympathetic understanding of children...Thousands of children in New Bedford will remember Miss Carter and her kindly influence over them for many years to come.”

As a social activist, Elizabeth organized local, regional, and national groups that supported African American achievement. In 1896, nearly 200 clubs across the country combined to establish the National Association of Colored Women Clubs (NACWC). Elizabeth was elected vice president of NACWC in 1906 and served as the group’s fourth president from 1908-1912. During her administration, Elizabeth set up a scholarship, started a newspaper, and strengthened the NACWC. She was the first Association president to travel across the country meeting with local and regional organizations. African American women’s clubs like the NACWC, and the local chapter of the Martha Briggs Educational Club, are rooted in a long history of activism against racism and sexism including anti-lynching and voting rights campaigns. They promoted education and training as the means to lift up and advance women of color. The NACWC and its affiliated clubs continue the work set out in their original mission.

Elizabeth joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) soon after it was formed and later headed the NAACP’s regional and local New Bedford branches. Elizabeth used her educational expertise and activism to organize the Elizabeth Carter Brooks Jr. Girls Club. Meeting on Friday afternoons, the young women studied African American history, explored current events and advocacy, worked with senior community members, and promoted kindness and good deeds.

As a child, Elizabeth enjoyed cheering up elderly people. She noted how they “all seem to feel that I understand them.” Yet she saw a lack of loving care for the city’s elders. With the endorsement of the Women's Loyal Union, she raised enough money and support in 1897 to create New Bedford's first organized home serving elderly women of color. Eleven years later, she designed the Home for the Aged’s permanent location at 396 Middle Street. A stately establishment, the Home provided a comfortable life for the city’s aged residents until the 1990s.

Through her educational, architectural, and organizing skills, Elizabeth Carter Brooks’ activism enriched the lives of New Bedford’s students, elderly, and people of color. To honor her legacy, the New Bedford Public Schools dedicated a school building in her name. Elizabeth’s activism and accomplishments are still remembered in the city and the country. Her work lives on in the women still fighting for equality today.

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Confectioner and abolitionist Polly Johnson (1784-1871) specialized in sweets and provided safe lodging to freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad at her 21 Seventh Street home in New Bedford. She and her husband Nathan helped several formerly enslaved people on their journeys to freedom, including renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass and his wife Anna. As a businesswoman with confectionery and catering businesses, Polly worked hard so that freedom seekers could find “sweet freedom” in New Bedford.

Polly’s early wages as a domestic worker were likely used toward the purchase of four properties on Seventh and Spring Streets, including her and Nathan’s confectionery and catering business. By 1836, New Bedford’s wealthy families regularly purchased Polly’s confections and cakes for parties and weddings. Her confectionery shop at 23 Seventh Street sold such items as ginger snaps, candy sticks, Jackson Balls, John Brown’s Bullets, and spruce gum. Polly specialized in candy, cakes, and ice cream. In 1844, the abolitionist Caroline Weston, then teaching in New Bedford, tried to persuade her cousin, the antislavery orator Wendell Phillips, to speak in the city by promising that “Polly Johnson shall freeze her best ice & ice her best cakes'' if he came. Ever conscious of social justice, Polly’s confectionery shop sold “free labor candy” made from sugar grown on sugar plantations that employed free workers instead of the enslaved.

In 1849, Nathan left New Bedford for the California Gold Rush leaving the properties, valued at more than half a million dollars today, in Polly’s name. Polly ran the business by herself until her death in 1871. Nathan never returned during those 22 years. Polly used her work ethic and business sense to continue the confectionery, paying off her home’s loan, having an addition made to the home, and furthering her abolitionist efforts. Polly was well-read on the social issues of the time and regularly attended antislavery meetings. She provided safe lodging to several other freedom seekers while Nathan was away. New Bedford was a welcoming place for freedom seekers due in part to its tolerance of diversity and a spirit of equality in its maritime trades. It is estimated that during the 1850s, the population of black freedom seekers in New Bedford ranged from 300 to 700.

Polly was well known not only for her cakes and sweets, but also for the care she and Nathan provided to freedom seekers along the Underground Railroad. People arrived in New Bedford looking for the home of the Johnsons. A passionate abolitionist and a successful businesswoman, Polly helped New Bedford become known as a city of tolerance and diversity. She stands as an inspiration for current generations who seek to affect change for a cause important to them.

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When 20,000 textile workers went on strike in the 1928 New Bedford Textile Workers Strike, 18-year-old factory worker Eulalia “Eula” Mendes (1910-2004) became a leader in her mill and community by encouraging Portuguese industrial migrant workers to participate in the strike. Later, she traveled nationwide to support other fights for justice and equality.

Eula left Portugal with her working-class family in 1912 and settled in New Bedford, a textile city with a large Portuguese-speaking community. At the young age of 14, Eula became her family’s primary breadwinner as a bobbin worker in a textile factory. In 1928, when the city’s textile workers went on strike in opposition to a 10% wage cut planned by the factory owners, Eula began attending meetings run by regional and national labor organizers.

She became a leader at her mill and in her community by promoting Portuguese worker participation in the strike. Eula translated the speeches of labor leaders into Portuguese and gave speeches herself. She became an organizer for the communist-influenced Textile Mill Committee (TMC), which demanded a wage increase, a 40-hour workweek, and an end to child labor. Eventually, Eula became a member of the TMC’s executive committee serving in a leadership role as secretary.

The TMC organized thousands of workers into pickets, rallies, and parades that attracted the attention of law enforcement and city officials. The National Guard and local police used force and arrested many strikers, including Eula. She noted that she “was arrested a number of times... We sometimes stayed [in jail] for just a few hours, sometimes overnight or sometimes even days or weeks, but we were usually let out on bail. And a few days later maybe we were arrested again.”

After six months, the strikers accepted a smaller pay cut and returned to work. For Eula, the 1928 strike sparked a life of union organizing. She traveled nationwide with the International Ladies Garment Workers and other unions to support other uprisings in the fight for justice and equality. Eula’s activism continued with her Communist Party affiliation in New Bedford and the region, and she refused to sign a Loyalty Pledge to promise that she was not a Communist.

The strike did not accomplish all the goals the TMC hoped for, but it did change the relationship between textile workers and mill owners in the city and New England for decades to come. After years of being ignored by the established mill craft unions, ethnic communities found a voice through the TMC and developed a new interest in unions, which encouraged them to come together to advocate for greater representation.

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Recognizing that diversity is our strength, Mary Santos Barros (1923-2018) was a strong and tireless advocate for equal education for all, Cape Verdean advancement, and many other causes in New Bedford. She demonstrated how others can build an inclusive community that treats all people with respect and dignity.

Mary’s concern for her own children and the children of others informed her active advocacy through Parent Teacher Associations (PTA)—coalitions of parents and teachers that advocate for public education and serve as a resource for community families. During the mid-20th century, many women used PTAs to organize on their children’s behalf. Mary often served as president of these PTAs. She also served on the executive committee of the Committee of Concerned Parents for New Bedford schools and was instrumental in the building and dedication of the Alfred J. Gomes Elementary School in 1977, named for a local Cape Verdean attorney and leader.

Using her experiences working in the PTA as a launching pad, Mary became more politically involved. Mary recognized that in order to accomplish certain objectives, one has to be active on many levels. Through a grassroots campaign, going door-to-door, to meet and listen to her constituents, she was elected to the New Bedford City Council in 1989 and served two terms as Ward 4 councilor. Upon her election she remarked that she would be “in the City Council for all the people of Ward 4.” Mary, like Rosalind Poll Brooker before her, brought her knowledge of the community to the Council to fight for changes from within City Hall. Her time in political office was marked by her support for affordable housing, drug rehabilitation programs, anti-poverty efforts, and continued educational advocacy through legislation.

She also brought her advocacy to the state level as a social worker for the Massachusetts Department of Social Services and as a member of the Massachusetts Board of Education from 1975-1979. She was recognized “for her distinguished service through the establishment of increased opportunities for the youth and exemplary parent participation.” She was also elected as a city and then a state Committeewoman to the Democratic Party Conventions.

Mary was a strong advocate for all people, particularly people of color, and especially Cape Verdeans. Her own Cape Verdean heritage was important to her and she did much to help Cape Verdeans in New Bedford and the land of her parents. When natural disasters assaulted Cape Verde, Mary, using her organizing skills, worked with others to lobby on state and federal levels to raise funds and send needed supplies to the islands. A believer in political empowerment as well, Mary helped many Cape Verdean immigrants become American citizens and served as a voice for immigrant parents, often taking them to school committee meetings and interpreting for them.

Her legacy is a powerful example that served as a role-model for her own children and all community members, as she spread the knowledge that they can empower themselves and strengthen the community.

Thank you to the family of Mary Santos Barros for their contributions to Mary’s biography and providing photographs. Their stories showcased Mary’s special qualities and tireless efforts on behalf of her family and community.

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