Resources on African American History

Bibliography of Text Resources

• Clark-Pujara, Christy Mikel. Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island. New York: NYU Press, 2016.
  In this book, Clark-Pujara employs primary documents, mainly personal records of enslavers and the few first-hand accounts left behind by enslaved people, to construct an image of slavery in colonial Rhode Island. The institution of slavery was central to Rhode Island’s colonial economy: West Indian planters and the enslaved people that worked for them contributed ingredients to Rhode Island rum production used for trade in the triangle trade route. Slavery also led to the distinction of Rhode Islanders as the leading producers of “slave cloth” or “negro cloth,” a coarse wool-cotton material made especially for enslaved blacks in the American South.
• Clark-Pujara, Christy Mikel. "Slavery, emancipation and Black freedom in Rhode Island, 1652-1842." PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) thesis, University of Iowa, 2009.
  This online article highlights the importance of the institution of slavery to the Rhode Island colonial economy and argues that Rhode Island's complicity in and profit from the slave trade, helped to maintain slavery throughout the United States.
• Coughtry, Jay Alan. The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700-1807. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978.
  This book, based on Coughtry's dissertation, explores the circumstances of what would become the US, from 1700-1807 and makes connections from those factors to the need for labor and therefore, impact on the slave trade.
• Emlen, Robert. “Slave Labor at the College Edifice: Building Brown University’s University Hall in 1770.” In Rhode Island History 66, no. 2 (2008):35-46.
  Emlen’s article details what little facts are known about the slave labor used to build University Hall at Brown University. Ledgers of pay from that project do not list workers of African descent but using other research, Emlen is able to make inferences.

Primary Documents

• Cemetery records for “God’s Little Acre”. Newport Historical Society.
  Published records of burials with records of stones lost or destroyed over time. “God’s Little Acre,” in Newport’s Common Burying Ground, is the largest colonial African American burying ground in the United States.
• Manuscript collections pertaining to transatlantic slave trade and African enslavement in Newport. Newport Historical Society.
  Extensive collections of primary source documents pertaining to the 18th century transatlantic slave trade, including merchants’ correspondence, account books, and ships’ logs. Many of these papers have been microfilmed as part of LexisNexis’s Papers of the American Slave Trade, Series B: Selections from the Newport Historical Society. NHS also holds records of indentures and manumissions.
• Papers of the AMerican Slave Trade. Rhode Island Historical Society.
  The Rhode Island Historical Society was a major contributor of archival material to the microfilm collection of Papers of the American Slave Trade / editorial adviser, Jay Coughtry (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, c1996). While this does not include digitally available content, interested individuals can request a scan of specific documents by contacting reference@rihs.org. The full microfilm can be viewed at the R.I.H.S. Robinson Research Center at 121 Hope St., Providence, R.I.  Finding Aids for this collection can be accessed online (Series A, Selections from the Rhode Island Historical Society):
  • Part 1: Brown Family Collections, Rhode Island Historical Society
  • Part 2: Selected Collections, Rhode Island Historical Society

Online Exhibitions

• Ships of Bondage and the Fight for Freedom. Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University.
  Ships of Bondage and the Fight for Freedom examines the global networks involved in the African slave trade. This exhibition tells the story of slave insurrections on three vessels including the Amistad, the Meermin, and the Sally, exploring the struggle of the enslaved to resist captivity, gain freedom, and return to their homelands.
• Black Mechanics. Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University.
  Black Mechanics: The Making of an American University and a Nation examines the ways in which slavery shaped the founding of our country and its universities. Furthermore, the exhibition speaks to tensions between the ideas of freedom and liberty in the nation's founding documents, the ways in which these have been denied throughout American history and how people have fought to reclaim them.
• Makers Unknown. Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University.
  Makers Unknown: Material Objects and the Enslaved examines material culture to understand the ways in which the institution of racial slavery shaped the daily lives of all Rhode Islanders by representing the work of artisans of color whose contributions to their craft remain unrecognized. The material culture produced by enslaved and free people of color for themselves or in their capacity as an unending source of coerced labor gives us a lens into their agency, humanity, and the many ways they negotiated freedom.

Video Resources

• How was slavery in New England different from slavery in the South? Choices Program, Brown University.
  This video, produced by the Choices Program at Brown University, discusses how slavery in New England differed from slavery in the American South.
• Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. POV, 2008.
  This website offers information and video trailers for a PBS special about the DeWolf slave-trading family of Bristol, RI.

Lesson Plans

• Any Sort of Labor. Rhode Island Historical Society.
  Enslaved people in Rhode Island usually worked on small farms or in businesses but on the larger farmlands and plantations in Narragansett, enslaved people worked raising and breeding farm animals. Many also became skilled as stone cutters, coopers, barbers, weavers and in a number of other trades needed in a diversified, 18th century economy. Such trades sometimes helped secure freedom for many enslaved people.
• Just and Right As Any Trade. Rhode Island Historical Society.
  Four Rhode Island brothers, Nicholas, Joseph, John and Moses Brown, had ventured into the slave trade with the voyage of the Sally in 1764-65. This voyage was plagued with misfortune and it ended in great financial loss for the Brown family. It was also an example of the devastation and degradation of the slave trade on humanity. By the late 1700’s this trade was waning in most of New England except for Rhode Island.
• Notice: To Be Sold. Rhode Island Historical Society.
  Most students enter the history classroom with an understanding of slavery that is primarily geographical. They view it as a “Southern issue” and overlook the role slavery played in the North. This unit uses varied primary sources to teach the presence and effect of slavery in the northern colonies and eventually the United States.
• Outfitting the Slave Ship Sally. Rhode Island Historical Society.
  This activity can be used with students to explore the web of complicity throughout Rhode Island that supported the global slave trade. The activity also familiarizes students with the many things necessary to outfit a slave ship in the 18th century.
• Using the 1790 Census to Document Slavery in Rhode Island. Rhode Island Historical Society.
  This lesson plan enables students to practice interpreting primary sources as they use the 1790 census to determine the number of enslaved people in Rhode Island and then compare those figures to other states in the country during this time.

Web Sources

• Colonial Cemetery. 1696 Heritage Group.
  This webpage is dedicated to the God's Little Acre Cemetery in Newport, RI. God's Little Acre is a cemetery with many graves for both enslaved and free Africans who lived in Newport in the Colonial Era. The Cemetery also features gravestones that are the work of enslaved stonemasons.
• The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.
  This database was created though international partnerships lead by W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University, Emory University and with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Search by port city where the ship was registered, owner, ship name, etc. For example, a record for the Brig Sally (1765), owned by the Brown Brothers, is included, as are many other ships registered in Rhode Island and owned by Rhode Islanders.
• Voyage of the Slave Ship Sally 1764-1765. Brown University.
  This webpage showcases records of the slave ship Sally and constructs narratives about people and events relating to the ship. There is also a timeline of events related to the voyage.

Bibliography of Text Resources

• Emlen, Robert. "A Grievance Immortalized: a story of race and class, crime and punishment in Providence, 1781" in Markers: Annual Journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies, Vol. XXXIII, (2017): 47-61.
  Emlen's article uses a specific instance of a white man shot by a black soldier in the Continental Army, defending his barracks from intruders, to highlight the realities of race, class, crime, and punishment in Rhode Island in the 1780s. The main source he uses to inform his argument is the gravestone of the man who was shot, that was unearthed in Providence, RI.
• Geake, Robert A and Lorén Spears. From Slaves to Soldiers: The 1st Rhode Island Regiment in the American Revolution. Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2016.
  Geake’s book details the decision of Rhode Island General James Mitchell Varnum to form the 1st Rhode Island regiment, or the “black regiment,” as it came to be known, as well as the successes and obstacles faced by those men. The 1st Rhode Island regiment was composed of indentured servants, Narragansett Indians, and former enslaved people.
• Newman, Richard S. Black Founders: The Free Black Community in the Early Republic. Philadelphia: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 2008.
  This essay was written to accompany an exhibition at The Library Company of Philadelphia entitled "The Black Founders: The Free Black Community in the Early Republic." The essay, with the same title, highlights the struggles and accomplishments of African American reformers in the Revolutionary Era and beyond.

Primary Documents

• Records of the Free African Union Society, African Humane Society, and African Benevolent Society. Newport Historical Society.
  Original record books of the Free African Union Society (FAUS), a self-help organization established in 1780 by free African Americans in Newport. The FAUS was later known as the African Humane Society, which merged with the African Benevolent Society in 1808 and established the Free African School for children of color in Newport. A reproduction of the earliest FAUS record book is available in the NHS Library.

Online Exhibitions

• The Many Faces of Toussaint L’Ouverture. Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University.
  The Haitian Revolution was an event of world significance which challenged the then dominant system of racial slavery. This exhibition by one of Haiti's leading artists, Edouard Duval-Carrié, will pay attention to the many different ways in which the leader of the Revolution, Toussaint L'Ouverture, was portrayed.

Bibliography of Text Resources

• Grossman, Lawrence. “George T. Downing and the Segregation of Rhode Island Public Schools, 1855-1866.” In Rhode Island History 36, no. 4 (1977): 99-106.
  This article details the work of George Downing, an upper-class African American man in Rhode Island, who organized around the issue of segregated schools. He petitioned the state government to de-segregate schools citing the lacking facilitates and resources found in black schools. Legal segregation in Rhode Island schools ended in 1866.
• Melish, Joanne Pope. Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and "Race" in New England, 1780–1860. New York: Cornell University Press, 2000.
  After the abolition of slavery in New England, white citizens chose to forget that it happened there. Author Joanne Pope Melish draws on a wide array of primary sources—from slaveowners' diaries to children's daybooks to racist broadsides—to reveal how northern society changed and how its perceptions changed as well.

Online Exhibitions

• A Peculiar Aesthetic. Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University.
  Utilizing historic artwork from the Brown University Library Instructional Image Collection, A Peculiar Aesthetic examines these images as representative of early America. A world in which plantations, slave markets and dwellings, maroon ambushes, cosmetic boxes, figurines and decorative tables, and printers’ typefaces of runaway slaves, this American image evokes again and again the realization of how central slavery was to ways of life within New World and American societies.

Lesson Plans

• Citizens All. Rhode Island Historical Society.
  Chattel slavery had been outlawed in Rhode Island by gradual emancipation in 1784, yet it was over forty years before there were no longer any enslaved people in Rhode Island. Long after abolition, discriminatory laws repressed and oppressed the citizenship of African Americans. One of the many rights refused to African Americans was suffrage and that denial of suffrage (for African Americans and also immigrants) would plunge Rhode Island into an armed rebellion between the People’s Party led by Thomas Wilson Dorr and the Law and Order Party of the established government led by Governor Samuel Ward King.

Web Sources

• “The members Rose and Received them”: African American Church Membership of Hotel Era Newport. Newport Historical Society.
  Web resource created by NHS 2017 Buchanan Burnham Fellow, Melissa Drake, using ArcGIS Online’s Story Map platform. The Story Map combines geo-mapped census data with original research conducted in NHS’s extensive collection of Newport church records to explore the African American religious community in 1850s-1860s Newport.

Primary Documents

• Thomas Wentworth Higginson papers. Newport Historical Society.
  These papers are a collection of original correspondence to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, minister, writer, and activist abolitionist, who lived in Newport for a time in the 1860s-1870s. Letters date from 1851 to 1862, and document Higginson’s involvement in the Anti-Slavery Society, the Underground Railroad, recruitments for Union regiments, and efforts in coordination with John Brown Jr. to free enslaved African Americans in the South.

Online Exhibitions

• Changing America RI. Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University.
  Changing America RI tells national and local stories about the years 1863 and 1963—two moments in time that radically altered the United States’ history of struggles for equality. Changing America RI uses resources from Rhode Island collections to illustrate how struggles for civil rights were fought and documented in national and local contexts.

Video Resources

• The Civil War and the Meaning of Liberty Video Collection. Choices Program.
  These short, free videos on the Civil War, produced by Brown University's Choices Program, are designed to answer key questions regarding the causes of the Civil War, the role of the question of slavery in the Civil War, and the 13th Amendment. The videos are free and available to all. They accompany Choices' Civil War unit.

Web Sources

• Bullets and Bulletins: African American Activism in Civil War Era Rhode Island. Rhode Island Department of State.
  This online exhibition tells the stories of black Americans in Rhode Island and throughout the Union who served in the Civil War in the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery (Colored) and their struggle on the home front for equal rights including education access, the right to interracial marriage, and an end to discrimination based on race.

Online Exhibitions

• The Black Shackle. Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University.
  This exhibition examines the stories of the African Americans who migrated from the rural South to make their home in the coal fields of West Virginia, Tennessee, and Eastern Kentucky.

Web Sources

• Sable Soldiers. 1696 Heritage Group.
  The Sable Soldiers website is meant to introduce readers to the African American experience during World War I, including their dedication to serving their country though facing extreme discrimination at home.

Web Sources

• Gilded Age Newport in Color. 1696 Heritage Group.
  This photographic journey illustrates the African American Summer Experience in Newport, RI from 1870-1925. It includes photographs, biographies and quotes from newspapers.

Lesson Plans

• A Better World. Rhode Island Historical Society.
  This lesson plan covers the topic of black service men and women who served in the US military during World War II. Students are asked to examine sources about their service and draw conclusions about race in America at this time.
• Stay on the Ball. Rhode Island Historical Society.
  In this lesson plan, students examine letters from Teena Diggs to her husband, Herman Diggs. Herman was stationed in Norfolk, VA during WWII. The letters highlight the issues of race and ethnicity that the couple experience in Rhode Island and the US in the 20th century.

Lesson Plans

• Here is Our Chance. Rhode Island Historical Society.
  This lesson plan focuses on the Fair Employment Practice Commission laws approved by the state of Rhode Island in 1949 and uses sources to show the issues surrounding race and fair employment in Rhode Island immediately following World War II.

Online Exhibitions

• Changing America RI. Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University.
  Changing America RI tells national and local stories about the years 1863 and 1963—two moments in time that radically altered the United States’ history of struggles for equality. Changing America RI uses resources from Rhode Island collections to illustrate how struggles for civil rights were fought and documented in national and local contexts.
• Unfinished Business. Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University.
  The Civil Rights Movement (The Southern Freedom Movement) was a catalyst for social change in America, with ordinary Black women, men, and children placing their lives on the line to disrupt Jim Crow and racial segregation. In this exhibition we tell the story of the relationship between the Black organizing tradition and the movement, from the moment of emancipation until the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson.

Video Resources

• Freedom Now: The Civil Rights Movement Video Collection. Choices Program.
  These short, free videos on the Civil Rights movement, produced by Brown University's Choices Program are designed to help high schools students understand the role that ordinary citizens played in the Civil Rights movement, especially in the 1950s-60s. The video collection includes Representative John Lewis speaking about the role of nonviolence in the movement. The videos are a supplement to the Choices' Civil Rights unit.

Online Exhibitions

• Memory Dishes (also the digital exhibition). Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, Brown University.
  Memory Dishes highlights the cooking practices of six Rhode Island families, following a long tradition of women of African descent who reimagined culinary practices in the New World. Everyday food and cooking become complex forms of culinary art and rituals of remembrance and independence as this exhibition pays homage to female cooks, both seen and unseen, and the ways their labor connects a vast and diverse diasporic peoples across generations.

Lesson Plans

• Teaching with the News Lessons. Choices Program.
  The Choices Program at Brown University regularly produces free, short lessons on breaking news stories form around the world. Teaching with the News lessons are designed to support teachers in covering complex topics as they arise in the headlines.  Selected lessons that address issues related to African -American History include:
  • History in Dispute: Charlottesville and Confederate Monuments
  • Black Lives Matter: Continuing the Civil Rights Movement

Bibliography of Text Resources

• Bartlett, Irving H. From Slave to Citizen: The Story of the Negro in Rhode Island. Providence, RI: Urban League of Greater Providence, 1954.
  Published by the Urban League of Greater Providence, this publication offers windows into various themes in black history in the state of Rhode Island including slavery, abolition, and the Civil Rights Movement.
• Bell, Andrew J. An Assessment of Life in Rhode Island as an African American in the Era from 1918 to 1993. New York: Vantage Press, 1997.
  This book is an account of life in Rhode Island as an African American in the 20th century, based on the author's experiences.
• Brown University. Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. 2006.
  This document is a report by the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, created by University President Ruth J. Simmons in 2003. The committee’s goal is to illuminate Brown University’s entanglement with slavery and the slave trade and to contribute to national conversations about present problems linked to past injustices. The report shows their historical findings and offers recommendations to move forward.
• Brown, William J. The Life of William J. Brown, of Providence, RI: With Personal Recollections of Incidents in Rhode Island. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971.
  This publication is the author's personal account of Providence history in the 19th century as well as personal reflections on being a black man in Rhode Island during this period.
• Cranston, Timothy G. We Were Here Too: Selected Stories of Black History in North Kingstown. Charleston: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.
  This book is a long history of black families and legacies in North Kingstown, RI spanning the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
• Garman, James C. From the School-Lands to Kerry Hill: Two Centuries of Urban Development at the Northern End of Newport, R.I. Newport, RI: Salve Regina University, 2009.
  This publication employs maps, photographs, and other primary sources to illustrate and explain two centuries of urban development in Newport, RI, particularly as it pertains to the African American communities in this area.
• O’Toole, Marjory Gomez. If Jane Should Want to Be Sold: Stories of Enslavement, Indenture and Freedom in Little Compton, Rhode Island. Little Compton, RI: Little Compton Historical Society, 2016.
  Based on over 1000 primary source documents, this book shares the true personal histories of people who were enslaved, indentured and newly free in Little Compton, RI and their descendants from 1674 to the 1950s. It provides insight into both Indian and African slavery and clearly illustrates the similarities and differences between slavery and indenture in New England. A final section on racism explores why Little Compton is home to so few people of color today.
• Rhode Island Black Heritage Society. Creative Survival: The Providence Black Community in the 19th Century. Providence: Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, 1984.
  This book offers insights into black life in Providence during the span of the 19th century.
• Youngken, Richard. African Americans in Newport: An introduction to the heritage of African Americans in Newport, Rhode Island, 1700-1945. Rhode Island: Rhode Island Black Heritage Society and Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission, 1998.
  This book details the rich legacy and history of African in Americans in Newport, Rhode Island from the state's early beginnings through World War II.

Primary Documents

• African Americans. Rhode Island Department of State.
  This online document gallery focuses on the role of slavery in and the pursuit of equal rights that took place in Rhode Island from the 1600s through the 1800s.
• African American Collection. Rhode Island Department of State Digital Archives.
  This online collection of primary documents tells not just the story of slavery and the slave trade in Rhode Island, but also the story of how that institution influenced life in early America. It also illustrates how slavery's legacy impacted Rhode Island into the 19th century.
• Guide to Manuscripts Relating to People of Color. Rhode Island Historical Society.
  This document is an item-level, searchable guide to material in the RIHS collections relating to people of color. These sources include references to individuals identified as being of African, American Indian or Asian descent, as well as general discussions of broader topics such as slavery or racial discrimination. While this does not include digitally available content, interested individuals can request a scan of specific material on this list by contacting reference@rihs.org.
• Union Congregational Church Records. Newport Historical Society
  Original records of the Colored Union Church and Society, initially a non-denominational church established by members of Newport’s African Benevolent Society in 1824. In 1859, the Union Church reincorporated as the Union Congregational Church. Records date from 1824 to 1946.

Lesson Plans and Student Activities

• Sankofa: African Americans in Rhode Island. Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University.
  This teacher resource-book book features lessons and activities that discuss a variety of topics including slavery, the Civil War, Civil Rights and African Americans in Rhode Island today. Activities are recommended for grades six through eight.
• Slavery, Citizen, and Civil Rights: Documenting Rhode Island’s People of Color. Rhode Island Historical Society.
  This lesson plan gallery features lessons for varying grade levels that explore slavery, citizenship and civil rights of African Americans and Native Americans in Rhode Island.
• 20th Century African Heritage Civil Rights in Rhode Island. Rhode Island Historical Society in partnership with the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society and the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission.
  These unit plans – broken down for elementary, middle, and high school learners – reference many types of primary sources from local Rhode Island collections and are meant to serve as a supplement to the Civil Rights history already being taught in classrooms with a focus on local events and people. Many lessons reference time periods earlier than the 1960s, while also drawing connections from those events up to today.
• T-TIME Productions
  This PDF with historic information and student activities considers the history of African Americans in the mid-20th century through the lens of professional football.

Web Sources

• Civil Rights Timeline. Rhode Island Black Heritage Society.
  This is a timeline of people and events that make up the unique history of African American Civil Rights in Rhode Island was created for a project collaboration with the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, Rhode Island Historical Society, & the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Cultural Commission. The project is supported by a grant from the National Park Service through its African American Civil Rights Grant Program, which assists projects that “document, interpret, and preserve the sites and stories related to the African American struggle to gain equal rights as citizens in the 20th Century.”
• PushBlack
  As an organization that believes in study of the past to inspire a better future, PushBlack serves as the US's first mobile-based organizing group for Black Americans. Their website informs viewers about current issues and leads them on how to take action on those issues.
• Teaching Tolerance. Southern Poverty Law Center.
  The Teaching Tolerance website offers classroom resources, frameworks, professional development, and more about a variety of topics, including those relating to African American history.
• Third and Long: The History of African Americans in Football - 1946-1989. T-TIME Productions.
  This website features photos, videos, teacher guides and more which illuminate the history of African Americans in the mid-20th century through the lens of professional football.

Interactive App

• Third and Long: The History of African Americans in Football. T-TIME Productions.
  This is the interactive platform of the Third and Long project that highlights the history of African Americans in the mid-20th century through the lens of professional football. This platform is most useful for students in a classroom setting.