Race Relations

Although the death rate of King Philip’s War, which raged in New England from 1675 to 1676, was higher among Americans than either the American Revolution, Civil War, or World …
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In the first half of the nineteenth century, while most white New Englanders opposed slavery in the South, they nonetheless did not believe that their freed Black neighbors should be …
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Alfred Niger, a Black voting rights activist from Providence, may have provided the final straw that broke the back of the Dorr Rebellion.  His attempt to vote in an 1841 …
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Benjamin Quarles once wrote that the loyalty of black Americans during the American Revolution “was not to a place nor to a people, but to a principle, freedom.”[1] In late …
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After a slow beginning in the 17th century, the colony of Rhode Island came to dominate the slave trade in British North America in the 18th century.

Slavery by the …
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Posy Wiggins made helped make change happen. I became aware of her at an event at the wonderful Paul Cuffee School in Providence eight years ago when the …
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The 17th century brought enormous changes to the Western Hemisphere, commonly called the Americas. European explorers and settlers claimed land in North and South America for economic, sovereignty, political or …
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Rhode Island has an extensive immigrant history. Evelyn Savidge Sterne’s Ballots and Bibles: Ethnic Politics and the Catholic Church in Providence is a comprehensive story about the discrimination Irish, French …
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Among the gifts that immigrants have brought to the United States are their native cuisines. Indeed, opening a restaurant or food-related business was—and still is—a traditional recipe for financial …
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In colonial times, death was a common occurrence reaching into all families, regardless of wealth, social station and race. In seaport towns such as Newport, Rhode Island, influenza, scarlet …
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