If anyone deserves a blockbuster biopic on this tour, it is Sissieretta Jones. Jones, a soprano, studied voice at the Providence Academy of Music, the New England Conservatory and the Boston Conservatory and in 1892 became the first African-American to perform at Carnegie Hall. That year, she also performed at the White House for President Benjamin Harrison, and later for three other presidents after him. By 1895 Jones was the highest paid African-American performer of her day.
Married at age 14, she divorced her husband in 1899 due in part to his gambling and mismanagement of her musical career, and formed a traveling dance-comedy-musical group called the Black Patti Troubadours as many opera houses barred African-Americans from singing (it wasn’t until 1955 that Marian Anderson broke this barrier at the Metropolitan Opera in New York).
]]>Fed up! Perhaps they didn't hear you the first time. Every so often, you have to redeliver the message. That’s exactly what happened in 1975, when a Third World Coalition led by Black students occupied University Hall for 38 hours. Black, Latino, and Asian American students’ snaked through University Hall, equipped with their voices and drums reverberating, a robustly creative ruckus of music, dance, and rhythmically sounded demands.
Equal access, visibility, and services; are these reasonable demands? Brown University’s planned budget cuts would decrease financial aid, student services, ultimately reducing the population of minority students, staff, and faculty. In an attempt to persuade the University to rethink their decision, students formed an alliance demanding to view the budget, and to be part of the conversation.
For two months students of color attempted to have a seat at the administration’s table to address their concerns, but access was denied. They assembled and deliberated, but the administration didn't budge. They organized campus rallies, but the students’ demands were unmet. They put forth a list of demands, most notably an increase in scholarship funding from the administrations’ amount of $3.3 million to $3.5 million. They also demanded that the Black student body proportionately reflect the national percentage of Blacks in the United States—which echoed a demand from 1968. Despite the students’ orderly negotiations and clearly outlined requests, plans remained in place to proceed with the budget cuts.
Nearly 3,000 students went on strike on April 14, 1975, ditching pencils for picket signs to stage a protest. With very little revision, the Advisory and Executive Committee passed a new budget. Had every option been exhausted? University Hall housed the office of the president of Brown and other administrative offices, and was a place for the students to be heard. The students believed that confrontation demonstrated their seriousness and commitment. On April 24, 1975, students occupied University Hall for nearly two days, insisting the university fulfill the promises they made to Black students during a 1968 walkout.
The 1968 walkout, staged by twenty-three Black women of Pembroke College in solidarity with Black male students from Brown University, demanded several changes in the admissions process. The Dean of Admissions refused the first and most important demand: an increase of the black student population to eleven percent enrollment for the class of 1973. On December 5, 1968, the Brown Daily Herald reported, “A substantial majority of black undergraduates at Brown and Pembroke will dissociate themselves from the University at noon today…” The debate around Black presence and representation in education—and by extension in America—was not new. In 1961, Malcolm X spoke at Brown on racial oppression, Black Muslims, and, in his eyes, the need for dis-integration of Blacks in America to move toward liberation.
The irony of Brown University’s complicated relationship with Black America is the role of Black Americans from the institution’s birth. University Hall, the oldest, and until 1832, the only building on Brown University’s campus, was financed with revenue from the slave trade and built in part by Black slave hands. In recent years, Brown has commissioned a slave memorial in an effort to recognize the Brown family’s role in the slave trade.
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]]>On November 18, 1949, at 56 Randall Street, in the mostly poor, mostly black, Randall Square neighborhood, local African Americans crowded into the new Celebrity Club bar. It wasn’t quite finished, but the crowd didn’t pay much attention to the details of interior decoration as it took in, according to historian Jason McGill, “the sounds of the first of innumerable jam sessions featuring some of Providence’s finest jazz talent.” White jazz lovers also came in to sit at the bar, enjoy the beer, and hear the best music in Providence.
The Celebrity Club was founded by Paul Filippi, an Italian American who loved jazz, and was eager to make a difference in a segregated city. It was the first interracial club in New England, welcoming black and white musicians and audiences. Before it opened, African Americans in Providence who wanted to listen to live jazz, or even just go out for dinner, had to cram into narrow, crowded black neighborhood clubs or travel to other cities.
The club was an immediate success. It tripled in size to accommodate over 300 guests. In its heyday, from 1949 to 1960, famous black and white jazz artists played the club, including Duke Ellington, Cootie Williams, and Erroll Garner. It attracted African American community members and Providence’s white elite. The local black newspaper wrote about Nat King Cole’s 1951 appearance:
"People from all over New England have poured this way into this Randall street house of big name bands. … Judge Dooley and a party of six complimented Paul Filippi on his ability to bring nationally known entertainment to Providence. Other community leaders in the business and professional field are phoning in for reservations."
In addition to providing blacks and whites a chance to enjoy the best jazz music in Providence, the Celebrity Club worked for racial equality. It maintained, notes historian McGill, “a solid stance of openness and equality,” by providing its performers what one of them called “a musician’s paradise” and paying its African American employees top union wages.
But not everyone was happy to see a successful interracial club. The Providence police raided it regularly, harassing black club-goers. Filippi sold the Celebrity Club in 1958, and it closed in 1960. A commemorative plaque was erected in 2013 and can be viewed on the east side of the Marriott Hotel where Charles and Ashburton Streets merge.
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]]>"I remember being much pleased with my nice clothes, and still more so, as I saw so many boys and girls of all sizes at the school, all dressed so nice and clean. … I thought it was one of the most charming sights I had ever beheld." - William J. Brown, 1883
For many free African Americans such as William J. Brown living in Providence in the 19th century, education was more than just a form of social mobility; it was a way of securing autonomy and dignity. Brown attended school at a variety of institutions around Providence, including the Old Brick School House. For most of his young life education was expensive and available primarily through private institutions or individual tutors. The financial burden of schooling was often too much for students, many of whom were also expected to work to help support their families.
Students of color had an especially hard time, as private institutions could legally deny enrollment to anyone they saw as "not fit" for their schools. Occasionally, philanthropic women of society endeavored to establish "African schools," but they were often short lived. Another popular option, Sabbath schools, taught literacy through religious lessons, but only for a few hours on Sundays. Quaker schools would sometimes accept black students, although doing so made it difficult for them to retain teachers. As Brown tells us, "it was considered a disgraceful employment to be a teacher of colored children," and pupils were punished for addressing their teacher in public.
Finally, in 1828, the Rhode Island Schools Act passed, providing state funding for a centralized public education system—but also legalizing its segregation. The city purchased the Old Brick School House—built in 1769 to house a private and a "public," fee-charging, grammar school—and refashioned the space into a separate public school for pupils of color called the Meeting Street Grammar School. The site was a great success, and in its first year had 100 registered students with 60-70 regular attendees, among them such notable alumni as Brown and Sissieretta Jones, the nation's first Black opera diva. A plaque commemorating Jones’ career can be viewed at the corner of South Court and Pratt Streets.
By 1836, attendance at the school had declined to between 15-35 after a disagreement between the black community and the current schoolmaster. A second school, the Pond School, on the west side of Providence, opened as an alternative for disgruntled students. Before long, both schools were thriving.
In 1865, Rhode Island outlawed segregated schools, and the Meeting Street School became public and integrated. Due to its placement in a predominantly black neighborhood, and the subsequent withdrawal of white children after the law passed, the school was still attended by mainly African Americans until it was discontinued in 1887.
William J. Brown made it his mission to obtain an education at any cost, often alternating attending school with working to pay off his tuition bills, until the age 20. He eventually set up a successful shoe repair shop, adding to the small but proud group of educated free black business owners in Providence. The Old Brick School House went on to become a cooking school and then a "fresh air school" for tubercular children. It also housed a school specializing in the needs of developmentally disabled children, before being turned over to the Providence Preservation Society in 1960. It now functions as their headquarters.
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