Rhode Tour

A Public Hearing for Charity Bailey

2022-01-11T00:40:21+00:00

It was Monday, April 23, 1928. The Providence Public School Committee was holding its regular meeting at Central Fire Station on the eastern edge of Burnside Park. The room was packed. Charity Bailey (1904-1978), an accomplished pianist and recent graduate of Rhode Island College of Education, was there to give a public statement against Superintendent Isaac Winslow, who, according to multiple accounts, told Bailey that he would not appoint a Black teacher to work in the school system. Bailey, at 23 years old, had already shown herself as a gifted musician and educator. In the years leading up to the hearing, she performed with her sister Amy at the Pond Street Church and delivered a memorable performance of the spiritual “Wish I Could Die in Egypt Land” for National Music Week at Brown University’s Sayles Hall. A writer for the Providence Journal captured the scene: “Both in the rendition of the weird, dirgelike piano accompaniment and in her singing of the haunting, plaintive melody, Miss Bailey approached an artistic triumph. Prolonged applause compelled her to give an encore number, the only one of the evening.” At the same time, Bailey applied for teaching jobs. Despite strong letters of recommendation from her professors, supervisors told her that there were no vacancies. And so, Bailey advertised as a governess. A year later Bailey was fed up. She and a member of the school committee met with Winslow, who explained that Bailey had fulfilled all of the requirements but was “not in a group of candidates eligible to become teachers.” Bailey and her mother then contacted attorney Joseph G. LeCount, legal counsel and cofounder of the Providence Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the oldest NAACP branches in the country. On April 23rd, a crowd of teachers, students, and community members filled the school committee’s meeting room in the fire station to capacity. LeCount set-up an improvised witness stand. He questioned Bailey first, then Winslow. The following day the Providence Journal printed a partial account of Winslow’s testimony. A few blocks over at the Evening Tribune, the paper’s news editor, John Carter Minkins, an African American, published a big story with extensive testimony from Bailey and Winslow, as well as reactions from the crowd. “I think it’s a lot of bunk,” said one committee member after listening to Winslow defend himself. Later, local activists leveraged Bailey’s case to mobilize Black voters toward the Democratic Party. They ousted at least one member of the school committee who had backed Winslow and elected Democrats into high offices in exchange for support on civil rights. Like so many promising educators at that time, Bailey left the oppressive culture of Providence for New York City, where she worked for the Federal Works Progress Administration, studied piano at Juilliard, and taught music at The Little Red School House. Between 1954 and 1956, Bailey hosted the television show, Sing a Song, a pioneering, interacial children’s program. She recorded albums and published a bestselling book, Playtime with Music, in which she shared her progressive philosophies. Bailey challenged the traditional teachings of music appreciation. As she argued in Playtime, musical rhythm and word pattern should be felt and enjoyed by children without preliminary instruction because, “Children, like all of us, do best and learn most from that which they love to do.”

For more (including 6 images) view the original article

Providence Art Club

2017-05-07T14:25:10+00:00

Artists on the Hill

Providence’s tightly-knit community of artists and collectors created the Providence Art Club to congregate, create, and display art. It is the second oldest art club in the country after the Salmagundi Club in New York City. The westernmost of the club’s four buildings is the Fleur-de-Lys Studio (1885), built by Sydney Burleigh as workspace for himself and fellow club artists. Designated a National Historic Landmark, the studio is a masterpiece of Arts and Crafts architecture with finely rendered detail. On the street level corner is inscribed the phrase “Fair among the Fairest.” Not everybody appreciated this building; H.P. Lovecraft found it so revolting that he set his horror story “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) there.

Among the founders of the Providence Art Club was Edward Mitchell Bannister, a celebrated African American landscape painter. Bannister’s work Under The Oaks earned him first prize at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, although he had to overcome prevalent racist attitudes. Bannister discovered from a newspaper that he had won the prize, and when he arrived at the gallery to claim it, the clerk demanded to know “what it was to [him].” Bannister later wrote: “In an instant, my blood was up: the looks that passed between him and others in the room were unmistakable. I was not an artist to them, simply an inquisitive colored man; controlling myself, I said deliberately, ‘I am interested in the report that Under The Oaks has received; I painted the picture.’ An explosion could not have made a more marked impression. Without hesitation he apologized, and soon everyone in the room was bowing and scraping to me.”

Bannister’s wife, Christiana Bannister, is historically significant in her own right. An entrepreneur and self-proclaimed “hair doctress,” Bannister ran successful hair salons in Boston and downtown Providence which allowed her husband to pursue his art career.

For more (including 3 images) view the original article

Interstate 95

2017-05-05T15:44:29+00:00

Cutting Providence in Half

After World War II, Providence's fortunes were shifting. Textile jobs had moved south. Industry was leaving. Jewelry manufacturing went offshore. Between 1950 and 1980, the population of the city declined by a third. These western neighborhoods were hit hard. As part of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System and urban redevelopment efforts, I-95 was cut through here. The redevelopment of the high school campuses also meant significant demolition, leaving few traces of the neighborhood that was. Take a look at the two postcards, one looking eastward into downtown from Cathedral Square, just behind McVinney Auditorium, and the other looking westward up Westminster Street, to get a sense of how these streets and neighborhood once appeared.

For more (including 3 images) view the original article

Primus Collins: Freed Slave and Governor

2016-06-06T17:20:16+00:00

Primus Collins was a man with great responsibilities within his community. He mediated disputes, ensured that laws were obeyed, and handed out punishments when necessary. He was similar to any other governor, with one exception—Primus Collins had once been a slave.

Collins was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1777, to enslaved parents Sorphox and Phillis. At the age of four, Primus’s master gave him to Colonel William Richmond of Little Compton with a term of twenty-five years of servitude. During the Revolutionary War, Richmond gained fame by raising a regiment to fight for America’s independence.

According to the 1800 Federal census, Collins belonged to a small group of twenty-two enslaved African-Americans in Little Compton. Colonel Richmond owned other enslaved persons, including Saul and Saul’s wife (name unknown). Richmond gave one of the couple’s children to local clergyman Mase Shepard.

By the end of the American Revolution, most slaves in Little Compton had been freed or their contracts turned into apprenticeships. Some had joined the black regiments in the Revolutionary War with the promise of freedom in exchange for serving. Primus remained enslaved.

Around 1800, Colonel Richmond freed Collins, releasing him from his term of service about five years early. There are no records to indicate why Richmond’s attitude toward slavery changed, but he also gave Collins a farm plot adjacent to his own land that became known as Primus’ Flat Iron because of its triangular shape.

This land gave Collins the legal right to vote in state and local elections as a free, property-owning man. However, the first time Collins tried to vote, the moderator at the polling station would not allow him to cast a ballot. His former master, Colonel William Richmond, who had encouraged Collins to vote in the first place, interceded on his behalf, raising his cane and shouting, “That man shall vote!” and Collins was able to cast his ballot.

The legal status of freed slaves was unclear in early nineteenth century America. The voting laws in some states allowed people like Primus Collins access to local politics. Perhaps in response, Little Compton’s Isaac Wilbour, Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, supposedly inserted the word “white” into the state voting statute. The voting rights issue would not be resolved until the passage of the 15th amendment in 1870.

In spite of this, Collins continued to vote in Little Compton throughout his long life. He married, purchased additional land, and upon his death in 1858 left this inheritance to his daughters, including Lucy, shown in the photograph. Collins was nominated to serve on the Rhode Island General Assembly, but racial sentiments prevailed and he was not appointed.

Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, black communities in New England chose their governors on an appointed “‘Lection Day,” an event that combined North American and West African celebratory traditions.

‘Lection Day usually began with a procession to the polling place, and a “grand jollification” when the ballots were counted and the winner of the election was declared. The celebration included singing, dancing, and another procession to the home of the new governor, who treated supporters to food and rum.

It was a fitting celebration for a new governor, and for the life of a remarkable man who achieved success far beyond the boundaries that confined him. His grave is located in the Old Burial Grounds next to his wife and daughters.

For more (including 4 images) view the original article

"Watchman, what of the night?": Watchman Industrial School

2014-06-18T15:18:15+00:00

By the early 1900s, race relations in the United Sates had grown increasingly tumultuous. Despite the abolishment of slavery, post-Civil War America was laden with barriers for people of color. Prominent Black leaders disagreed about how best to move forward. On the one hand, W.E.B. DuBois urged his supporters to challenge racial segregation and Black disenfranchisement directly. However, Booker T. Washington, a famous former slave, advocated for a less confrontational approach. Only education, argued Washington, could lead Blacks toward economic prosperity and ultimately give them an opportunity to attain true American freedom and equality.

Heeding the words of Booker T. Washington, a young Providence minister and his wife decided to open their own institution of learning for Black Rhode Islanders. Reverend William S. Holland, the son of a Virginia slave, had come to Providence in 1902, to take the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church. He quickly realized that the racial realities of the twentieth century – namely, the lack of educational and economic opportunity – threatened his congregation and the Black community at large. In 1908, the couple founded the Watchman Industrial School on Codding Street in Providence, naming the school after the Reverend’s favorite biblical passage:

“…Watchman, what of the night?

The Watchman said, ‘The morning cometh, and also the night…”

Isaiah 21:11-12 Young men at the institute were offered academic instruction as well as courses in carpentry, masonry, and machine repair. Such tremendous learning opportunities were intended to increase young Black men’s chances of gainful employment. Interestingly, Reverend Holland recruited many of his students from Providence’s juvenile court. He defended youth who committed acts motivated by poverty – such as food theft – by asking judges to place them in his care at the Watchman Industrial School rather than sending them to the Sockanosset School for Boys.
The Watchman Industrial School became a beacon of hope for Rhode Island’s Black community. The variety of vocational and academic courses offered, in addition to the child care services that the school provided for working-class parents, made the Institute extremely popular – so popular, in fact, that by the early 1920s, it had outgrown its Codding Street location. Miraculously, by 1923, Reverend Holland had scraped together enough funds to purchase a spacious estate in North Scituate, Rhode Island.
The four acres that came with the new property allowed for the addition of courses in agriculture, blacksmithing, shoe repair, cooking, and sewing. Additionally, Reverend Holland established a summer camp that utilized a nearby lake. Unfortunately, the Watchman Institute’s move to rural Rhode Island brought an entirely new set of problems.
Within a decade of moving to North Scituate, the Watchman Industrial School was plagued by a rash of unexplained fires – vicious attacks attributed to Rhode Island members of the KKK. The hate group terrorized the Institute and its young Black residents relentlessly, hoping to force them out, or burn them out. While the Watchman Industrial School was never physically destroyed, the repeated arson succeeded in financially draining Reverend Holland’s dream. After the Hurricane of ’38 further damaged the deteriorating buildings, the year-round school closed. Reverend Holland continued to operate the Institute’s summer camp until his death in 1958. His wife continued the program until a lack of funds finally ended it in 1974.

For more (including 5 images) view the original article

The World was his Oyster: George T. Downing

2014-06-12T19:37:15+00:00

“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.”
For more (including 3 images) view the original article

The Celebrity Club: Best Jazz in Providence: The Celebrity Club

2014-06-11T18:56:43+00:00

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.
For more (including 3 images, 1 audio file, & 2 videos) view the original article

Education at Any Cost: The Old Brick School House

2014-06-11T18:16:11+00:00

"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.
For more (including 3 images) view the original article

Where Did West Elmwood Go?

2014-05-01T22:06:20+00:00

Staring at the endless concrete in the Huntington Expressway Industrial Park, it seems impossible that this was once a vibrant neighborhood. Laughing children ran across neighbors’ yards, caught up in games of hide and seek. The smell of coffee, oranges, and kerosene filled the air. Fruit trees grew everywhere. On a warm day you could hear cicadas sing, and, at night, the frogs chirped. Everybody knew each other.
A close-knit neighborhood, old West Elmwood referred to the community bounded to the east by Mashapaug Pond, to the north by the railroad tracks at Huntington Avenue, and to the west by Niantic Avenue.
Dennis Maynard grew up in West Elmwood in the 1950s: "As a child living in that area it was like Disneyland. It was just a playground. To this day we always talk about West Elmwood as probably the best place you could grow up. It was a combination of residential, country, a lot of gardens. Not farms, but gardens. Lots of fruit trees. You had the access to the water. Everybody knew each other. Regardless of your race, everybody knew each other. As kids you were in everybody's house."
Today, old West Elmwood is gone.
Providence was one of many American cities drastically altered by so-called “urban renewal” projects in the mid-twentieth century. Supposedly “blighted” and deteriorated neighborhoods were demolished to make way for highways, industrial parks, and other modern urban structures. These changes were supposed to improve cities, but in many cases, they destroyed vibrant communities and negatively altered people’s lives. This is what happened in West Elmwood.
The Providence Redevelopment Agency bulldozed West Elmwood to construct the Huntington Expressway Industrial Park. Studies describing unhealthy and unsafe living conditions in this portion of West Elmwood were used to justify the city’s action.
Knocking down this portion of old West Elmwood forced families to leave both their homes and their community. As a result of implicitly racist practices of banks and lenders, people of color often could not get mortgages to purchase new homes in new suburban developments. “Many neighborhoods, [the government] classified as white,” explained Cliff Montiero, a longtime activist and opponent of urban renewal. “People of color could not get mortgages [to live] in those areas.” For the former residents of West Elmwood, who could not afford to buy a home in desirable neighborhoods outright, that meant they were forced to live in sub-prime housing. ”Many people [in West Elmwood] used to be homeowners. After losing their home ownership in the Mashapaug Pond area, [they] became renters,” Montiero said.
Some West Elmwood homeowners fought to save their homes with the help of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Urban League. Two hundred people signed a petition. People attended city government meetings, speaking out about the injustice of the urban renewal project and the Providence Redevelopment Agency’s misrepresentation of West Elmwood. Arguing that “urban renewal is Negro removal,” they highlighted the implicit racial discrimination in urban renewal projects, which disproportionately negatively affected colored people.
For five years, the people of West Elmwood fought for their neighborhood, but in the end their struggle failed. Most of the houses in old West Elmwood were knocked down. Over five hundred families were forced to leave. "They came in and tore down the houses, bulldozed the hill," recalled neighborhood resident Ed Hooks. Now, West Elmwood survives only in the memories of the people who once lived there.
Discussion Questions
Even though the people of old West Elmwood fought to save their neighborhood, most of old West Elmwood was demolished. Why do you think the people of old West Elmwood lost their fight?
If your home or neighborhood were going to be knocked down, what would you want people to remember about it?
Why did many activists and residents feel urban renewal projects were racially discriminatory?
Why do you think projects like the construction of the Huntington Expressway Industrial Park were called “urban renewal”? What does “renewal” mean in this context? Who do you think decided to call projects like the industrial park “renewal” projects?
For more (including 4 images, 3 audio files, & 1 video) view the original article