“The heavens were open’d And She saw too Archangels descending from the east, with golden crowns upon there [sic] heads, clothed in long white Robes, down to the feet; Bringing a sealed Pardon from the living God.” In a note found in the Friend’s Bible titled “A Memorandum of the Introduction of the Fatal Fever,” Public Universal Friend described the vision they experienced that altered their life.  The Public Universal Friend was a Quaker born as Jemima Wilkinson in 1752 in Cumberland, Rhode Island. In 1776, after suffering a fever, the Jemima Wilkinson claimed to have “died” and been reborn as the Public Universal Friend (the Friend). Through this vision, the Friend believed they were called to preach as God’s mouthpiece. The Friend immediately began spreading the word of their rebirth in their hometown and throughout towns in New England. Their powerful oration and stances on women’s equality and the prohibition of slavery created a small following, known as the Society of Universal Friends.  While their beliefs were primarily standard Quaker doctrine, many onlookers were more focused on their androgynous appearance. After their rebirth, the Friend refused to respond to their old name, dressed themselves in androgynous preachers’ clothes, and forbade their followers from referring to them using gendered pronouns. One description of their clothing in 1787 describes them wearing: “…light cloth Cloke with a Cape like a Man’s–Purple Gown, long sleeves to Wristbands–Mans shirt down to the Hands with Neckband–purple handkerchief or Neckcloth tied around the neck like a man’s–No Cap–Hair combed turned over & not long–wear a Watch–Man’s Hat.” In addition, their tone and confidence were also considered “masculine.” Their manner of speech deeply compelled and sometimes confused their audience, who often speculated as to whether the Friend was truly a man or a woman. One onlooker wrote: “What she said, or of the subject matter, nothing is remembered; but her person, dress and manner is as palpable… as though she thus looked and spake but yesterday.” Of the detractors of their following, the Friend said: “They hate us without a cause, and thus evilly entreat us in the darkness of their minds, and in the ignorance and hardness of their hearts, for which my soul doth pity them, and even entreat thee for them, that if possible their eyes may be yet opened.“ The Society of Universal Friends grew in Rhode Island and slowly spread throughout New England, as the Friend traveled constantly. Eventually the Friend expanded their reach to Pennsylvania, shifting the group’s headquarters to Worcester, Pennsylvania, in 1787 and permanently leaving New England in 1789. During their short time in Pennsylvania, the Friend was planning to establish a settlement in rural New York, which they founded in 1790. They named it Jerusalem. With frequent land disputes and attempts to arrest the Friend for blasphemy–both stemming from the Friend’s former followers– the Friend persisted in Jerusalem but struggled to bring in new recruits. The Friend eventually passed away in 1819 at the age of 66. The legacy of the Friend is complex, with some portraying them as a manipulative con artist, and others praising their progressive stances. While the language of non-binary gender identity did not exist then in the same way it does today, the Public Universal Friend is often pointed to as one of the first self-described non-binary people in colonial America.

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“The public mind was awake” in Rhode Island, wrote Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895), “and one class of its people at least was ready to work with us to the extent of seeking to defeat the proposed constitution,” which would disenfranchise Black men. When news broke that the People’s Party had voted to exclude Black men from the vote, much to the chagrin of Thomas Wilson Dorr, abolitionists like Douglass and Abby Kelley flocked to Rhode Island to protest. 

The road to Rhode Island proved challenging for Douglass, as travel posed a particular set of dangers for African Americans. He remembers being dragged out of his seat several times for “the crime of being colored.” And, he was forced to sleep on the deck of the ship, while his fellow white abolitionists were welcomed in the cabin below. 

The abolitionists quickly discovered their task would be a difficult one. Douglass writes that “the contest was intensely bitter and exciting. We were as usual denounced as intermeddlers . . . and were told to mind our own business, and the like, a mode of defense common to men when called to account for mean and discreditable conduct.” But Douglass and his compatriots were not so easily dismissed. “We cared nothing for the Dorr party on the one hand, or the ‘law and order party’ on the other. What we wanted, and what we labored to obtain, was a constitution free from the narrow, selfish, and senseless limitation of the word white.”

The new constitution adopted in 1843, which included suffrage for Black men, was a victory for abolitionists like Douglass. Reflecting on their impact, Douglass wrote in 1881 that “our labors in Rhode Island during this Dorr excitement did more to abolitionize the State than any previous or subsequent work.”

This site in Woonsocket hosted the Anti-Slavery Convention in the fall of 1841.

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Providence’s exquisite jewel box of a French neo-classical temple, the Bell Street Chapel, was built in 1875 for art dealer and engraver James Eddy after a design by storied Providence architect William R. Walker. Eddy dedicated his church “to God, to Truth, and to all that ennobles Humanity.” Eddy was a radical progressive for the time, participating in the causes of temperance, women’s rights, and the abolition of slavery. He rejected the organized religions of his day, but could find no one to lead a congregation according to his vision. The church remained empty until after his death in 1888. The first service was Eddy’s memorial, featuring reformer and activist Anna Garlin Spencer, who organized an independent church in accord with Eddy’s thoughts and was Rhode Island’s first female ordained minister. Spencer fought against misogyny, racism, and poverty. Among her friends were history’s greatest fighters, including Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass. Spencer was a groundbreaker. Today’s Unitarian Universalist congregation continues the fight for social justice with Reverend Margaret Weis at its helm.

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“I would have been a millionaire today if I had bent to prejudice.” So said George Thomas Downing, prominent African American Rhode Island restaurateur and civil rights champion. From behind the curtains of his lavish Sea Girt Hotel, built on this site in 1854 and destroyed by arson just six years later, Downing fought against racial injustice in a life-long struggle that would eventually ruin his fortunes and cause the demise of his hotel.

George T. Downing was born in New York City, in 1819, into a family of successful restaurateurs. His father, Thomas Downing, helped elevate the city’s street snack, the oyster, into the world of fine dining. His luxurious Wall Street oyster house served pickled oysters and jellied turkeys to Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, and the city’s elite. George owned his own restaurant in New York City before moving to Newport in the 1840s to open an offshoot of his father’s oyster house, catering to big city gentry on holiday.

The oyster house has a long history in African American heritage, particularly in Rhode Island. Emmanuel Manna Bernoon, an emancipated slave, had opened one of the first restaurants in the United States, an oyster and ale house, in 1736 on Towne Street (now Main Street) in Providence. By the 1840s, oysters had become a shared passion for rich and poor. For many black entrepreneurs like Downing, oysters became the foundation on which they built their culinary empire.

Downing’s crowning centerpiece was the Sea Girt Hotel. Catering to a white clientele, the grand five-story building included large stores, a restaurant, accommodation for gentlemen boarders and families, and served as the Downing residence. Martin R. Delany, the African American intellectual, said of Downing’s Newport enterprise: “This fashionable establishment is spoken of as among the best conducted places in the country, the proprietor among the most gentlemanly.”

The Sea Girt served the community until an arsonist burned it down ten days before Christmas in 1860. While the culprit was never caught, many believed that the fires were lit in retaliation for Downing’s staunch advocacy of civil rights. A “race man” like his father and grandfather before him, Downing was keenly interested in the treatment of African Americans. As one of America’s earliest civil rights activists, Downing led the campaign for the desegregation of Newport schools and was instrumental in getting the first African American into the Diplomatic Corps.

His political concerns led him to Washington, where he made alliances with white abolitionists and other African American activists. In 1865, he became the manager of the Members’ Dining Room for the U.S. House of Representatives, a position he held for twelve years. There, he was able to wield his influence through political ties and friendships, such as the one he shared with Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. During his time in Washington, he worked for the passage of public accommodation laws in the capital city.

Downing died in 1903, a “galvanizing and enduring symbol of African American entrepreneurship and culinary excellence.”

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