For 100+ years, students have been discussing the history and role of women in this exact seminar room. Imagine writing on the chalkboard. Feel the history in the dark wood chairs, revel in the gaze of the figures lining the ceiling. Each frieze highlights the ways women have participated in various types of education. Today, every honors thesis from the Gender and Sexuality Program is safely housed in these cabinets.

Pembroke Hall was the first physical building erected for the Women’s College at Brown University and became the social and educational hub for its students. In his inaugural address in 1899, Brown University President H.P. Faunce celebrated the value of the “separate but equal” educational experience for women:

“When the collegiate life of women is left free to organize itself, neither excluded from the privileges of men, nor forced into their social tradition -- and the latter is now our danger -- it will create its own ideal, and around it will crystallize all educational activity. In this realm imitation is suicide, and freedom to be womanly is the only safety.”

However, this “freedom to be womanly” was full of double standards and narrow expectations -- there was a forced separation between men and women but also the opportunity to create a separate culture. While women were offered the same courses as their male counterparts, it was expected that the needs of men always came first. Local women and alumnae had to raise money to support the inadequate funding given to the Women’s College. And even though the classes were the same, women had to take them in a separate location, at Pembroke Hall. Some electives could be taken with men upon instructor permission, but according to Nettie Goodale, Class of 1895, a dean told the women to be “inconspicuous” and “dignified” when they took classes on the men’s campus. But despite their efforts to be invisible, the presence of women on an all-male campus nevertheless raised men’s attention:

Here she comes,

There she goes,

All dressed up

In her Sunday clothes.

Centuries of struggle, triumph, and trailblazing can be captured in the space where you are standing. However, while the seminar room has been preserved, the $9 million 2008 renovation has largely modernized the interior and left few traces of the building’s rich history. In contrast, the redesign of nearby Smith-Buonanno Hall by William Kite Architects, Inc. has won a historic preservation award for its sensitive renovation from Sayles Gym to current classrooms. If you take the time to look, traces of history can be found through the lines of the wood panel basketball court on the first floor. Pembroke Hall and Smith-Buonnano Hall are examples of adaptive reuse on Brown’s campus. Sheila Bonde, Professor of History of Art & Architecture, defines adaptive reuse as “the adaptation of buildings to new functions.” She taught in the seminar room before the remodel and knew Sayles Gym before the renovation.

While Pembroke College has folded into Brown University, the building itself is a site of continual learning. Today, Pembroke Hall continues the legacy of women’s studies through providing a home for the department of gender and sexuality studies, which continues to ask questions about various forms of inequality, oppression, and identity. Asking these questions is necessary for the critical examination of relevant issues including the #MeToo movement, new laws about family leave, and current leadership in the U.S. and globally. How does the gendered experience matter in the world in terms of policy, pay, and power?

Contemporary, cutting-edge research about women happens here. And, you don't have to be a woman to take a class, concentrate in gender and sexuality studies, or engage in a deep conversation about these issues. They impact you, no matter who you are. Click the video to hear Drew Walker, Director of the Program of Gender and Sexuality Studies and Assistant Director of the Pembroke Center, discuss the importance of diversity in the classroom when engaging with issues of difference, broadly defined.

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Pero, slave. Job, Native American. Mingow, free African. Have you heard about these men on the admissions tour? These individuals were three of at least four slave laborers who built University Hall, then called the College Edifice for the College of Rhode Island, but they aren’t often discussed.

While Pero was forced to work, his owner, Henry Paget Esquire, received his pay. Paget was a wealthy merchant who used to live in an elaborate home on South Main Street where the Providence County Courthouse currently stands. The ledgers from Nicholas Brown and Co. that document their names are uncomfortable yet critical reminders of Brown’s ties to the institution of slavery.

Slavery greatly contributed to New England’s economy for 150 years, yet it is often silenced in the narrative of the region’s past, as white northerners are often morally elevated and positioned in direct contrast to whites in the South. Divorcing New England from the legacies of slavery leads to a harmful erasure of blacks not only in the story of New England in the 18th century but also in present-day society. Click on this video from the University of Minnesota to learn more about historical trauma and why the past informs the present.

Even though the word “slave” was never used, naming conventions in the ledgers strongly suggest that at least four slaves were indeed used to build University Hall. Because last names were seen as depicting status and potentially legal standing as a free person, we can conclude that names with last names were primarily whites, and names without last names were slaves. In addition, to further distinguish them from whites, slave owners gave African American slaves particular names. They often were classical names such as Caesar or Jupiter, names derived from African words, or mocking titles such as Prince or Duchess. Furthermore, racial descriptors such as “negro” were sometimes used to identify workers. And lastly, the ledgers reveal that slaves’ wages were diverted to their white owners. For example, one entry from February 8, 1771 reads: “10 days work of Mary Young’s Negro Man at 3 shillings, to her account.”

Through the stripping of a last name, special names to make their status even more inferior than whites, and the diversion of wages, the slaves who built University Hall were deeply deprived of their personhood on many levels. This exhibition continues the conversations about Brown’s ties to the slave trade. Pick up a copy of the official report and take the opportunity to see the ledgers in person in the University Archives at the John Hay Library.

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We have a show that hopefully gets out every woman’s opinion. Well, we can’t do every woman’s opinion, but as many types of views on the topic that we would like to display.

With this, Berry-Jean Murray, Production Assistant and Interviewer, summarized the thinking behind the name of the 1990s public-access television show Obviously Women. As a March 1991 article by Mary Ann T. Rossoni in the Providence, RI based The Third Wave newspaper reported, Berry-Jean and her collaborators Toni Salisbury, Carol Dunbar Skoglund, and Nancy Harrison saw as their charge “to show women in a positive light everywhere doing everything,” as well as “being a forum to bring out issues of the day, not just issues that normally people would think would be a headliner.” Obviously!

The show had its beginnings in another format: Berry-Jean, along with Nancy and Carol, had been hosting a radio show, Airwave Women, on the University of Rhode Island’s WRIU station. The show primarily featured women’s music and news, and continues today with different hosts as Voices of Women. Rhode Island has always had the base of a women’s community, in which Lesbians have always played a critical part, and for Berry-Jean, feminism and Lesbianism always went together. Lesbians have always been a part of the “gay community,” as well, though differences existed between gay men and Lesbian women, especially around women’s issues. So Lesbian participation in Pride parades, for example, was tenuous, and Lesbians were present but not always prominent.

Thirty minutes long and commercial-free, the Obviously Women public access television show emerged because Berry-Jean and friends decided the community needed something more. They were so prideful of themselves as women and wanted to share that pride with anyone who would watch. As Berry-Jean remembers the feeling: “We exist. We’re here. Watch us!”

The Airwave Women group took production classes at the PEG - Public Access TV, and created a show for women with a feminist slant. Berry-Jean, a Black Lesbian, was the host of the show – making a statement that women of color were involved in the community. In news, entertainment, interview, and special feature segments, Obviously Women featured everyday women doing interesting things (for example, fixing a lamp) or in “non-typical women roles…women soldiers, women carpenters, women welders.” Stories centered on resources for local women, including the Women's Resource Center talking about violence against women; therapists talking about adult children of alcoholics; and speakers addressing the community issues of homelessness, religion and oppression. The women behind Obviously Women strove to create a public service to let community members know about the resources available to them.

This collective effort lasted approximately two-to-three years in the early 1990s. While the show may no longer be on the air, the bonds that created it remain. In a recent interview, Berry-Jean giggled as she looked at the 1991 article: “I’ll show this to Carol and Nancy and Beth. They’re still around and we all laugh when we’re together.”

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“On the President’s landing, he was welcomed by a federal discharge of Cannon, and the Ringing of Bells. The Concourse of People was prodigious. The Procession was conducted with great Decorum, and exceeded anything of the Kind before exhibited in this Town.”

- Providence Gazette and Country Journal (August 21,1790)

Have you ever seen the windows of University Hall illuminated by candles? We can thank George Washington’s stroll on the Main Green after Rhode Island joined the Union in May 1790 for this enduring tradition, which has persisted for 228 years.

You are looking at a plaque commemorating this momentous yet brief visit on the west side of University Hall. He was to stay the night on Benefit Street at one Mr. Daggett’s home, but before he retired for bed, he was told that the university students had prepared a special illumination of University Hall and that they would be honored if he witnessed the spectacle. Despite the slight rain, he climbed College Hill with a few friends and “there beheld the college building completely illuminated with candle lights in every window.”

The next day, Washington met President Manning at University Hall, where Washington said, “I am sure to find in the measures adopted by the guardians of literature in this place, for improving the morals of the rising generation, and inculcating upon their minds principles peculiarly calculated for the preservation of our rights and liberties.” From the year that Rhode Island joined the Union, Washington’s visit legitimized the University as a place for “guardians of literature” for hundreds of years.

The strength and endurance of the tradition is evidence of Brown’s high regard of Washington as a fundamental character in the history of the university. Founded in 1764 as the third college in New England and the seventh in the United States, Brown participated in and was impacted by the Revolutionary War. British troops attacked Newport and President Manning was forced to close the college, which wouldn’t reopen for six years. Many students joined the war effort and University Hall served as military barracks for American troops and hospitals for French soldiers. Contrast the portrait of Washington through the candlelight tradition with that of a more traditional painted portrait. The John Hay Library has a famous portrait by Gilbert Stuart on loan, and the RISD Museum’s Pendleton House has a permanent one in their collection.

In addition, take some time to look at the other plaques on the outside of University Hall. One marks the building as a Historic Landmark and one commemorates Nathanael Greene, one of George Washington’s most trusted officers. Greene was born in Rhode Island to a Quaker family, and he struggled to reconcile the Quaker’s strict pacifism with his passion for military science. Think about University Hall’s connections and position in American history, which was designated as a Registered National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 1963. The Quakers had a large presence in Rhode Island and were known for their anti-war and abolitionist beliefs. Think about the multitude of lives University Hall has touched throughout its history -- slaves, George Washington, Quaker Nathanael Greene, and now you.

In addition, do we have a standard narrative of “Colonial America?” What is the story of Colonial America that is taught to us, and how much do we take the time to challenge that story? If we think about the language, how does the term “colonial” interact with that of “America” as born from revolution and independence?

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Providence was once a city of churches. All Saints' Memorial Church is one of the last of the religious communities that grew on “Christian Hill” in the 19th century. Within a stone’s throw were the Stewart Street Baptist Church, the High Street Congregational Church, the Union Congregational Church, as well as the Second Free Will Baptist Church and Mt. Zion AME Church, two anchors of the African-American community that grew here. All Saints’ Episcopal congregation was originally formed as St. Andrew’s in 1846 but relocated here in 1868 with a new name to honor Bishop John P.K. Henshaw, the first independent Bishop of Rhode Island. Edward Tuckerman Potter's Gothic Revival design was left without a tower due to financial difficulties. The exquisite interior features elaborate woodwork and remarkable stained glass windows, including the Sanctuary Window (c. 1875) over the altar by the Henry E. Sharpe Company of New York. Today's congregation embraces the diversity of the neighborhood, including many from Providence’s strong Liberian community.

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Right here in the heart of the city lies a trace of an ancient trailway used by the Indigenous Peoples who inhabited this region for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. This stop is located on a ridge of land looking east over the floodplain of a tidal marsh--today's downtown Providence. Much of downtown was an estuary, flooded at high tide except for a finger of land that pointed toward the east side about where the College Street bridge is today.

The Pequot Trail, leading from the tribal lands of the Pequots and Niantics in today's Connecticut, then through Narragansett lands, followed the high ground here into the marsh to that easterly pointing finger where you could wade across the river at low tide to reach the Wampanoag lands on the other side. The trail continued north to the lands of the Massachusetts, Nipmucs, and other tribes.

Weybosset (the street you're on) is a Narragansett word meaning the crossing or half-way point.

Narragansett villages, large and small, could be found every few miles along these trails and highways throughout Rhode Island. A complex network of Native communities existed across southern New England, estimated as high as 100,000 people when Europeans arrived.

This native society and its culture were disrupted by devastating conquest after the explorations of this region by Europeans in the late 16th Century. Just imagine the shock and confusion of the survivors of the "Great Dying" years of 1617-1619 when some coastal communities suffered mortality rates as high as 90%, the Wampanoag being particularly affected. Over the next fifty years, scholars estimate more than 30,000 English people arrived on the New England coast, establishing settlements, first trading and living peaceably with these First Peoples, and then as English encroachments increased, coming into greater conflict, culminating in the brutal and bloody King Philip's War of 1675-76.

Today, we still remember some of those First Peoples who lived on these lands. Massasoit and Metacomet, father and son and leaders of the Wampanoag people in peace and war. Narragansett leaders Canonicus and Miantonomi who sustained the English colonists but were ultimately betrayed by them. In 1638, Canonicus and Miantonomi made an agreement with Roger Williams over this land whose meaning is still debated today.

Despite conquest, disease, forced assimilation, and the impacts of industrialization and urbanization, the First Peoples of Southern New England have survived and continue to practice and preserve their history and tradition. Today, the Narragansett Indian Tribal Nation is one of many tribal nations that preserve their history, continue their culture, and pass down their traditions. For more information about that history, spend time exploring the First Peoples of Rhode Island Rhode Tour.

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Colonial era roadways tell us something about the story of Providence.

Over the course of the 17th century, the English village settlement on the banks of the Moshassuck and Providence Rivers grew, and other settlements were established on Aquidneck Island, in Pawtuxet, and to the west. New roadways were developed to connect these farming settlements to the trading center of Providence.

By 1730, the settlement around Providence had close to 4,000 people, including 81 Native Americans and 128 people of African descent. The town was governed through town meetings and an assembly composed of men of property, all descendants of the English settlers. Administration and enforcement were communal acts. Slavery existed in Rhode Island at this time, both of indigenous peoples as well as individuals forcibly brought from Africa.

In 1708, a highway to Plainfield, Connecticut, was deemed necessary, and here, up on the high ground coming out of the salt marsh that became downtown Providence, the roadway split off of the Pequot Trail, today's Weybosset and Broad Streets. The old Plainfield Road ran along the rim of land that surrounded the Great Salt Cove like a bowl, and then headed up over Christian Hill across the plain to the west, today's Westminster Street.

At the time, Westminster Street in downtown Providence barely existed, coming just west of Turk's Head into the marshy lowlands at the edge of the Cove. Throughout the 1700s, obstructions were cleared and the marsh filled in so that Westminster Street crept gradually westward in a straight line, finally intersecting around 1763 with the Plainfield highway to form what would later be known as Cathedral Square.

When I.M. Pei's plan for the redevelopment of the western edge of downtown was implemented, that old pattern of roads, of forks that split or joined together, were replaced with a grid of streets, obscuring the old, organic pattern. Imagine standing at this intersection in 1900 and looking northwest along the Plainfield Road, filled with streetcars, horse-carts and people moving back and forth from the busy harbor to the mills of Olneyville amid the whistles, bells, clangs and clatter of the industrial city.

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Reverend Edward Scott was a political activist and anti-slavery agitator who had, himself, escaped from slavery in Virginia before becoming a minister and community leader.

Scott was born a slave in Virginia around 1812. He freed himself as well as others, eventually settling in Maine where he became a Baptist preacher. He led the Second Free Will Baptist Church (also known as the Pond Street Baptist Church) from about 1846 until 1864, living first on Angle Street as a boarder with the Gears family, also members of the church, and eventually with his wife at 54 Pond Street. Scott also worked as a clock and watch repairer with a shop at 98 High Street (today's Westminster Street).

In 1848, Scott led a public meeting that was widely attended to protest the expulsion of an African-American passenger from the Stonington and Providence Rail Road, one of the last unintegrated rail systems in New England. After 1854, he led the August 1st Emancipation Day celebration that promoted abolition in this country. The event included an invitation to all to march in a procession through the city and ended with speeches and a collation on Smith Hill. After Federal troops captured the South Carolina coastal islands during the Civil War, Scott travelled there to work with the Freedmen's Aid Society--helping the newly emancipated people adjust to freedom.

Reverend Scott died in South Carolina around 1864.

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In the early 19th century, the agricultural and mercantile economy of Providence was transformed by the Industrial Revolution in America, begun in nearby Pawtucket at Slater Mill. One essential ingredient for this transformation was capital. Money. The ability to gather funds from investors who were willing to extend potentially risky loans to entrepreneurs who were developing new methods of production.

Here, in Canonicus Square, there still remains one such institution formed at the time of the early industrial expansion that was driven by cotton and woolen mills. Citizens Bank now sits at the intersection of Westminster and Cranston Streets on the site of the old Hoyle Tavern (another institution of finance and exchange from another age). Citizens Bank, however, got its start just a few dozen yards east where the High Street Bank was established in 1828. The first bank established in Rhode Island was the Providence Bank in 1791, organized by local merchants who took advantage of the young country's new banking laws to pool their capital to fund ventures in shipping and industry.

By the early 19th century, smaller mechanics and entrepreneurs were opening banks to aggregate capital for their projects. Around the time the High Street Bank was formed, Rhode Island had more than 60 commercial banks, the largest number of banks per person in the country, and the highest per capita amount of funds and notes in circulation. This capital greased the wheels of the Industrial Revolution.

By the late 19th century, New England was the most capitalized region on the planet. Local merchants and leaders of the new industries were the founding partners of the High Street Bank, like Amasa Sprague, owner of a number of cotton mills and a governor of the state. Within a few steps of the bank, original founders Duty Greene and Robert Knight had stores that were also places of exchange and deal-making. Robert Knight's two nephews, Benjamin and another Robert, later became the most significant cotton mill owners in the country. Having an uncle on the board of a bank would have been a valuable connection for these early entrepreneurs.

Around 1800, Rhode Island banks reported capital stock from investors of a few hundred thousand dollars. By about 1860, the Rhode Island banking system had capital stock of $18.7 million; over half a billion dollars in today's money. As the city's economic fortunes declined in the mid-twentieth century, so did its financial sector, leaving only a few traces of this crucial component of Providence's once spectacular economic growth.

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The redevelopment of Cathedral Square in the late 1960s left few traces of what this busy city intersection once was. One of those remaining traces is the Arnold-Palmer house, moved in 1967 through the prescient preservation efforts of the Beneficent Congregational Church, to its current location at the corner of Pine and Chestnut Streets.

When the house was built, Cathedral Square was changing from a place where farmers weighed their produce on a hay scale to a posh residential district. The local economy had been transformed by the rise of finance and industry in New England. The need for labor drove immigration. All the new people and new jobs created new markets. The newly wealthy from this economic expansion were merchants and mill owners who built fine brick homes like the Arnold-Palmer House.

Daniel Arnold did well in the economic expansion of the 1820s and 30s. His trade focused on flour, but he speculated in cotton as well, as did almost all of the merchants who built their homes in the square at this time. Around 1830, five Federal-style brick mansions were built in a row on the north side of the square. Architectural historian Norman Isham has attributed these residences to skilled and prolific Providence builder John Holden Greene, whose signature monitor roof and fine craftsmanship argue for this attribution. Another merchant, Orray Taft, built his house at the corner of Jackson Street. His business focused almost exclusively on the cotton trade with Southern ports like Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans. Emma Taft, Orray's daughter, remembered that her father had spent his early business years in Savannah where he had met Greene, who was there to build a church.

Connections between Southern cotton ports and businessmen like Taft and Arnold--as well as architects like Greene--demonstrate how tightly bound Rhode Island's industrial economy was with Southern cotton and the enslaved people who produced it. Those ties would remain as long as there were cotton mills in Rhode Island.

By the 1850s, Arnold's house was sold to Joseph Palmer, who, through the firm of Palmer & Capron, manufactured gold rings in Providence's growing jewelry business. By the 1950s, the demographic and economic decline of the city altered Cathedral Square from the wealthy residential square and busy commercial district it had been. The house had become the Grace & Hope Mission, a nonprofit focused on providing support and services for the most vulnerable in the city. By the late 1960s, the wrecking ball threatened, and thankfully, the congregants of the Beneficent Congregational Church preserved this rare piece of the past.

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While redevelopment often erases a city's past, the constant re-building of a city over time also leads to the loss of historical memory. One such site is 755 Westminster Street, a historic building from 1899, which replaced the High Street Congregational Church originally built in 1835.

In the 1830s, Providence was still in the first phase of industrial expansion, growing from less than 7,000 people around 1800 to almost 20,000 by the mid-1830s. At the time, churches were often at the center of people's lives and informed how they understood their place in the world.

Congregationalism is a Protestant sect that still exists today and was born out of the Puritan faith brought to this area with the English immigrants of the 17th Century. By the 1830s, Congregationalists were one of the leading faiths in Providence, along with Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists, and Universalists: all Protestants. The Second Great Awakening, a religious movement that was spurred--in part--by anxiety around changes in society caused by industrialization, revitalized religious life in the early 19th Century. At the time, many churches focused not just on an afterlife, but on reforming the living world through moral practice and belief. They often supported the education of women, the strict observance of the Sabbath day, total abstinence from tobacco and alcohol, and notably, the abolition of slavery.

While the economic expansion of Providence was tied to the cotton produced by enslaved people in the South, that expansion also reshaped society and produced social movements that targeted the roots of those changes. Many Protestant sects, following the early moral leadership of the Quakers, became staunchly anti-slavery. In 1836, this movement gathered itself for the first meeting of a statewide organization dedicated to the abolition of slavery. They met at the High Street Congregational Church, newly built on this site. Over 200 people gathered here for speeches and lectures and famous Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison made an appearance.

The Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society continued to agitate for the end of slavery until after the Civil War when the U.S. Constitution was amended to abolish it. After the war, the High Street Church reorganized, and the building became the home of the State Normal School, a teachers' college that eventually became Rhode Island College. For a short time in the 1890s, the church was the Star Theatre, which burned in 1899 and was replaced by the brick business block that still stands at 755 Westminster Street...another layer in the evolution of the ever-changing city.

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During the early 19th Century, textile mills, like Grant Mill in the city of Providence, were being built across Rhode Island. The textile industry required hands to work the many machines that produced the new wealth, and Providence’s population grew dramatically with this industrial expansion. From 7,000 inhabitants around 1800, the city had near 20,000 in 1835 and 50,000 in 1860--seven times the 1800 population in three generations.

The pull of the new industries drew people from not just local and regional farms and towns, but from across oceans too. A new wave of immigrants began to pour into Rhode Island in the 1820s, first to build canals and railroads, and later to labor in the mills. This wave was drawn largely from Ireland, reaching a peak during the Irish Famine of the 1840s. In 1860, about 10,000 (or 20%) of the inhabitants of Providence had been born in Ireland. When American-born children of Irish immigrants are included, they made up about 40% of the total population of the city, a radical transformation.

Back in the 1830s, when there were only a few hundred Irish families in Providence, the first Catholic parish in the city was organized to serve the spiritual needs of these new arrivals. Father John Corry, an Irish immigrant himself, was appointed parish priest and began to look for a site to build a church. He found it impossible to buy a plot of land himself. Protestant-dominated Providence did not want to sell land for a Catholic church. Prejudice against Catholicism--and Irish immigrants in particular--was widespread. Francis Hye, one of the few Irish arrivals to become a citizen at the time, was able to purchase a plot along High Street where the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul stands today. He bought the land from Isaac Mathewson in Duty Greene’s store near Hoyle Square, today’s Canonicus Square. When Mathewson learned that Hye intended to transfer the land to the Catholic diocese, the story goes, he offered to buy back the lot at a significant premium, but Corry refused, realizing the value of the land and its position in the westward growing city.

The first Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul--the first Catholic parish in the city serving these new immigrants from Ireland--was dedicated in 1838. In 1872, when Rhode Island was elevated to a Catholic diocese, the newly appointed bishop planned a grand new cathedral to serve the ever-expanding Catholic population of the city. The Cathedral became a monument to the Irish Catholic experience in Providence, facing hostility and prejudice, but ultimately reweaving the fabric of the city to become central to its civic life.

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I want to thank Diocesan Historian Reverend Robert Hayman for his hard work assembling a history of the Catholic Church in Rhode Island and his generosity in sharing that work.

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The Second Free Will Baptist Church (SFWBC) is one of the oldest Black congregations in Providence, formed around 1830 by a group who left the African Union Meeting House, itself formed from the departure of African-American congregants from the white-dominated First Baptist Church in 1819. By the early 1840s, the SFWBC had a church on the west side of the growing city, and in 1842, a new church building was erected at the corner of Pond and Angle Streets, where it would remain for over one hundred years. From its origins, church members were politically active, choosing to join the Free Will denomination because of its opposition to slavery rather than the Baptist convention, which countenanced bondage at that time.

From 1846 until the Civil War, Reverend Edward Scott, himself a man who escaped slavery in Virginia, led the congregation and organized annual Emancipation Day parades to agitate for abolition in this country. Reverend Scott also led the community in action to advocate for equal rights for people of color. Another notable congregant included Sissieretta Jones, the most famous African-American soprano of the late 19th Century, singing at the White House and Carnegie Hall as well as internationally. The activism of the church continued into the 20th Century with pastors like the Reverend Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor, an educator, college president, and political activist. Congressman Joseph E. Newsome was also a member of the church, chair of the Board of Trustees, and church organist. While attending a conference in Ivory Coast, Newsome learned of the struggle of Liberian students in the midst of civil war and organized an exchange program that brought many Liberian students to Providence. Many of those students became residents of Providence and members of the church. They continue the church's tradition of providing a haven for immigrants and refugees in a dangerous world.

When the city announced in the early 1960s that it would purchase and demolish the church's home on Stewart Street, the congregation entered a period of crisis and uncertainty. Deacon Ralph Simmons was among those who chose to keep the congregation together and build a new home on Chester Avenue in South Providence. Deacon Simmons is the living memory of the church. He joined the congregation in the 1940s and has been gathering, preserving, and sharing the church's history since that time.

Today, the church building contains the pews and old woodwork of their former home on Stewart Street and embodies a long tradition of activism, community, and welcome.

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I want to thank Deacon Ralph Simmons for his hard work over many years gathering and preserving the archives of the church and for his generosity in sharing that work.

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Maritcha Lyons was an African-American teacher, writer, and activist who testified before the General Assembly as a 16-year-old girl to desegregate the Providence Public School System. In 1869, she was the first African-American to graduate from Providence High School.

Lyons was born in New York City in 1848. During the New York City Draft Riots of 1863, Black people, homes and businesses were targeted and attacked, including Maritcha's family. The Lyons fled the city, ultimately resettling in Providence. Her father made and sold ice cream and other frozen desserts and her mother was a hairdresser. They lived at 16 B Street, two doors down from the celebrated painter Edward Mitchell Bannister and his wife, Christina Bannister, also a successful hairdresser and activist. The Providence public school system was segregated at the time, and there was no high school for students of color. Black community leaders like George T. Downing had petitioned for equal access to the city's schools for years, but the requests did not gain traction until the end of the Civil War. Because of her testimony, Maritcha became the first African-American graduate of Providence High School in 1869. She went on to become a civic leader, educator, writer, and activist in Brooklyn, New York. Lyons supported African-American anti-lynching activist and journalist Ida B. Wells and co-founded the White Rose Mission in Brooklyn, New York, an organization that offered support to Black immigrants from the South and West Indies.

Maritcha Lyons died in Brooklyn in 1929.

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