Race Relations

I am sure that the word sharecropping brings to most folk’s minds, images of the antebellum deep South, poor Black men and women toiling away for little reward, and merciless …
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Note: This article is the second in a two-part series on the career of civil rights reformer George Downing. Readers can access Part I at https://smallstatebighistory.com/george-t-downing-and-the-black-convention-movement/

My self-respect revolts at …
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Fear not; no antagonism of interest would be the result of admitting in common to your workshops the colored mechanic, of admitting his child as an apprentice.

(Appeal to …
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We live in a day wherein Liberty & freedom is the subject of many millions’ Concern; and the important Struggle hath already caused great Effusion of Blood; men seem …
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The Washington Post, in its January 16, 2022 edition, published a first-of-its-kind database revealing that more than 1,700 United States Senators and Congressmen once held enslaved people at some point …
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In the early days of the abolition movement in the United States, by necessity, abolitionist work had to come primarily from white people because, before the American Revolution, most black …
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This is the story of the Reverend James Manning, Brown’s first president, his wife Margaret, and Lewis Manning, his slave. The manumission of Lewis Manning in 1784 is important for …
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The opening page of Rhode Island blacksmith “Nailer Tom” Hazard’s diary includes an entry for June 21, 1778, during the American Revolutionary War. At the time, the British occupied Newport. Hazard records …
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Last spring, Patrick Donovan, the talented and hardworking curator at the Varnum Memorial Armory Museum in East Greenwich, announced his discovery of  a handwritten letter from a formerly enslaved man …
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Despite its familiarity to students of Rhode Island history as the site of one of this country’s early nineteenth century race riots, occurring the night of October 17-18, 1824, the …
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