Keith Stokes will share his expertise on the history of enslaved and free African Americans in Newport, Rhode Island on Wednesday, November 2 at the United Congregational Church on the Little Compton, Commons at 7 PM. His talk is entitled “American Irony: Religious Freedom and Slavery in Colonial Newport” is the next offering in the Historical Society’s Slavery and Freedom Speaker’s Series sponsored by the Rhode Island Historical Society.

“American Irony: Religious Freedom and Slavery in Colonial Newport” presents the simultaneous rise of religious freedom and African enslavement in Colonial Rhode Island. The presentation explores the religious, civic and commerce evolution of Newport through the eyes and experiences of enslaved and, later free, African men, women and children, including the founding of several of the earliest free African education, social and religious institutions in America.

Mr. Stokes is the co-founder of the 1696 Heritage Group, an organization dedicated to the study and sharing of African-American history in Newport. The talk is free and open to the public.

The Little Compton Historical Society’s Slavery and Freedom Speaker Series is part of a year-long project honoring the 200^th anniversary of the end of slavery in Little Compton. The Society has spent three years investigating the history of slavery in Little Compton and now offers a book and a special exhibition on the subject entitled “If Jane Should Want to Be Sold, Stories of Slavery, Indenture and Freedom in Little Compton, Rhode Island.” The exhibition is open every Saturday from 1 to 5 PM through February. Admission is free to members of the Little Compton Historical Society and $5 for non-members.

Other talks in the Slavery and Freedom Speakers series include:

On January 25, 2017 at 7PM, at the Little Compton Community Center, Elon Cook, Program Manager & Curator of the new Center for Reconciliation for the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island will speak on the exciting work of the Center for Reconciliation and how institutions and individuals can collaborate to increase public knowledge about slavery and Rhode Island’s role in the international slave trade.

On Wednesday, February 1, 2017 at 7 PM at the Community Center, Jeffrey Fortin will present “Two Generations of Freedom: From Kofi to Paul Cuffe.”  Dr. Fortin is the Paul Cuffe Fellow at Mystic Seaport Museum and Assistant Professor of History at Emmanuel College. His book on the life of Paul Cuffe will be published soon.

Last in the series on Thursday, February 23, 2017 at 7PM at the Community Center, Tony Connors, President of the Westport Historical Society, will present “Westport’s Stories of Unfreedom” based on his extensive research using Westport’s primary source documents.

Kevin Ryan, President and CEO of Covenant House International is the next speaker in the Little Compton Historical Society’s series exploring slavery and freedom. The series is made possible by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities and will run through February, 2017. Each event is free and open to the public.

Covenant House is the largest charity across the hemisphere serving homeless and trafficked youth. Each year, the charity reaches more than 50,000 children and youth across 30 cities in six countries. Mr. Ryan will speak Friday, October 21 at 1 pm at the Little Compton Community Center. He will discuss the harsh realities and devastating consequences of human trafficking in the United States and across the word today, especially as it pertains to the homeless children, teens and young adults who seek help from Covenant House. Legal slavery ended in Little Compton two hundred years ago, and in the United States in 1865, but the reality of illegal slavery continued and still continues today.

Kevin Ryan is a best selling author, father, husband and child advocate. He arrived at Covenant House in 1992 to provide legal assistance to homeless youth and he now leads Covenant House International, whose work has been awarded the Conrad Hilton Humanitarian Award and the Olaf Palme Peace Prize.

Over the past five years, Kevin Ryan and his Covenant House team have built an international Sleep Out movement, involving thousands of participants across two countries who sleep outside for one night and raise funds  to house, train and help homeless youth who are most at risk for human trafficking.

Mr. Ryan previously served as New Jersey’s first public Child Advocate and first commissioner of the Department of Children and Families. His first book, “Almost Home,” a collaboration with former New York Times reporter Tina Kelley, became a national best seller in the Fall of 2012. The book chronicles the lives of six homeless teenagers as they faced abuse, violence and heartbreak in search of a place to call home. “Almost Home” will be available for sale before and after his talk in Little Compton.

In 2015, President Barack Obama appointed Mr. Ryan as a member of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Kevin Ryan is a graduate of Catholic University, Georgetown Law Center and NYU Law School. His numerous media appearances include the TODAY Show, Good Morning America and two appearances on 60 Minutes. He lives in Fair Haven, NJ with his wife Clare Neitzey Ryan, a Little Compton native. Together with their six children, they make frequent trips to visit their family in Little Compton.

The Little Compton Historical Society’s Slavery and Freedom Speaker Series is part of a year-long project honoring the 200^th anniversary of the end of slavery in Little Compton. The Society has spent three years investigating the history of slavery in Little Compton and now offers a book and a special exhibition on the subject entitled “If Jane Should Want to Be Sold, Stories of Slavery, Indenture and Freedom in Little Compton, Rhode Island.”

The books’ author, Historical Society Managing Director, Marjory O’Toole became deeply engrossed in returning the stories of over 250 unfree people to the history of Little Compton, but she says the project took on special meaning in light of the thousands of people in the United States and across the globe who are still, for all intents and purposes, enslaved. She hopes her historical work will encourage the public to make connections between the past and the present, and take action against human trafficking today.

Other talks in the Slavery and Freedom Speakers series include:

On Wednesday, November 2 at the United Congregational Church on the Little Compton, Commons at 7 PM, Keith Stokes will present “American Irony—Slavery & Religious Freedom in Colonial Newport.” Mr. Stokes is the co-founder of the 1696 Heritage Group.

On January 25, 2017 at 7PM, at the Little Compton Community Center, Elon Cook, Program Manager & Curator of the new Center for Reconciliation for the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island will speak on the exciting work of the Center for Reconciliation and how institutions and individuals can collaborate to increase public knowledge about slavery and Rhode Island’s role in the international slave trade.

On Wednesday, February 1, 2017 at 7 PM at the Community Center, Jeffrey Fortin will present “Two Generations of Freedom: From Kofi to Paul Cuffe.”  Dr. Fortin is the Paul Cuffe Fellow at Mystic Seaport Museum and Assistant Professor of History at Emmanuel College. His book on the life of Paul Cuffe will be published soon.

Last in the series on Thursday, February 23, 2017 at 7PM at the Community Center, Tony Connors, President of the Westport Historical Society, will present “Westport’s Stories of Unfreedom” based on his extensive research using Westport’s primary source documents.

Join the Little Compton Historical Society as we explore the new

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture

Washington, DC  —  January 8-10, 2017

Our newest board member, Professor Steven Lubar of Brown University, a former Smithsonian curator, has arranged special tours for us which are not available to the general public. Enjoy custom tours of the:

¨ National Museum of African American History & Culture

¨ National Museum of the American Indian

¨ National Museum of American History

Join Steve and LCHS Director Marjory O’Toole on this trip designed especially for museum lovers. All tours are optional, and you may explore the Smithsonian’s other museums or the city’s attractions on your own instead if you choose. You may also explore DC’s fabulous options for meals on your own or join Steve or Marjory at restaurants they have pre-selected.

Cost Includes:

¨  Roundtrip airfare from Providence.

¨ Guided motorcoach transportation from Ronald Regan Airport to Mount Vernon to hotel on Day 1 and back to airport on Day 3.

¨ Two nights stay Hilton Garden Inn, Washington DC, Downtown. 1 minute walk to Metro and 20 minutes to National Mall.

¨ Two hot breakfasts.

¨ Day 1—Tour of Mount Vernon with lunch in its tavern-style restaurant.

¨ Day 1 & 3—Guided motorcoach transportation to a number of national monuments including the Martin Luther King Memorial.

¨ Day 2 & 3—Customized tours of three Smithsonian museums.

¨ Day 3—Tour of the Library of Congress.

Options:

¨ Transportation to and from the LC Historical Society and the airport. Cars may be left at LCHS.

¨ Travel Insurance.

Cost:  $865 Double Occupancy

¨ $200 Deposit Due by October 10

¨ Refundable only if LCHS cancels trip due to lack of interest

¨ Non-refundable if trip proceeds

The Little Compton Historical Society and The Brownell Library are pleased to welcome Ray Rickman to Little Compton to speak on “Racism and its Roots in Slavery” at 6 PM, Wednesday, August 3, 2016. The event is free and open to the public and will take place in the tent behind the Brownell Library. Refreshments will be served thanks to a generous “Friend of the Brownell Library.”

Ray Rickman is a long-time advocate for equality and justice in Rhode Island and is considered a leader in the promotion of African American history and culture. He resided in Little Compton every September for eleven years from 2000 to 2011.

Mr.  Rickman has been a prominent figure in Rhode Island politics and culture since he came to this state over three decades ago.   He is a former State Representative from College Hill in Providence and served as Deputy Secretary of State from 2000 to 2002. Mr. Rickman is also a rare book dealer and conducts general and African American cultural tours of the College Hill neighborhood. He is a former president of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society and was secretary of the Rhode Island Historical Society for seven years. He was also the first treasurer of the Heritage Harbor Museum and is a member of the Rhode Island 1663 Colonial Charter Commission. He and the late Posey Wiggins co-taught a class using the 1883 William J. Brown autobiography as a tool to teach about racial and cultural issues in 19th-century Rhode Island.  In the 1970s, Rickman served as Chief of Staff for United States Congressman John Conyers, Jr. During his tenure working for the Congressman, Ray worked next to Rosa Parks.

Ray currently serves as the president of the Rickman Group, a consulting firm that helps nonprofit organizations and other small businesses with development and fundraising and as the executive director of Stages of Freedom, a non-profit organization that produces and promotes Black cultural events to raise funds for their programs that engage and empower youth of color in Rhode Island.

Among Stages of Freedoms’ programming is Swim Empowerment, which raises funds to provide swimming lessons to youth of color and to increase the state’s awareness of the history of exclusion of African Americans from public pools and the resulting disparity in drowning related injuries and death that disproportionately afflict communities of color.

This talk is a collaboration between the Brownell Library and the Little Compton Historical Society and is part of a year-long project honoring the 200^th anniversary of the end of slavery in Little Compton. The Historical Society will be hosting other speakers is a series featuring authors and historians with expertise on slavery and freedom in New England. The series is made possible by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities and will run through February 2017. Each event is free and open to the public.

Joanne Pope Melish, a nationally-recognized authority on gradual emancipation in New England, will begin the Little Compton Historical Society’s Slavery and Freedom Speakers’ Series on Tuesday, July 19 at 7 PM at the United Congregational Church on the Commons. Dr. Melish has entitled her talk The Worm in the Apple: Slavery, Emancipation, and Race in Rhode Island. She will discuss, among other topics, the amnesia that New England developed concerning its history of slave-holding and the emergence of racism as a means of control once slavery ended in the North.

Dr. Melish is well-known as the author of “Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780-1860” (Cornell University Press) a book that has been frequently used and discussed in university classrooms across the country since its publication in 1998. Dr. Melish is Associate Professor of History Emerita at the University of Kentucky, where she also directed the American Studies Program for several years. Dr. Melish received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University and now resides in Rhode Island. In addition to Disowning Slavery, she has authored many essays on race and slavery in the early republic and on slavery in public history. Currently she is working on a book-length project tentatively entitled “Gradual Alienation: How a Multiracial Laboring Class Formed, Persisted, and Became Invisible in the Post-Revolutionary North.”

The Historical Society’s Slavery and Freedom Speakers’ Series is generously sponsored by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities. The talks are free and open to the public.  Reservations are not required.

If Jane Should Want to Be Sold

Stories of Enslavement, Indenture & Freedom

in Little Compton, Rhode Island

Book & Special Exhibition 2016

Restoring Voices

This summer the Little Compton Historical Society will restore the voices of over 250 forgotten people to our local history. The Historical Society’s latest project uses hundreds of primary source documents to bring to light the lives of people of African, Native American, and European descent who were enslaved and forcibly indentured in Little Compton between 1674 and 1816. The organization will share their stories with the public in a year-long effort that includes a book written by Managing Director Marjory O’Toole, a special exhibition that will run through February 2017, a permanent addition to the Wilbor House tour, a memorial to the enslaved in the Old Burying Ground, a lecture series, programs for school children and a research database.

Sponsors

The project has been sponsored by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, the Newport Country Fund, The Rhode Island Foundation and The Ocean State Charities Trust as well as over 70 local donors.

The Book

Entitled If Jane Should Want to Be Sold, Stories of Enslavement, Indenture and Freedom in Little Compton, Rhode Island the Historical Society’s new book is based on three years of primary source research and tells the true stories of people like Jane who were enslaved by Little Compton families. Jane’s story includes a decision whether or not to be sold, a marriage, a move to another community, and the loss of a son in the Revolution. The Revolution also factors into the story of Boston Wilbor, an enslaved man who secured his freedom by volunteering to serve in the Rhode Island First Regiment. Jane and Boston are just two of the dozens of men, women and children whose stories appear in the 300 page, full-color, softcover book. The book will be available at the Historical Society on July 1 and 2 for anyone attending the special events scheduled on those days and during normal business hours thereafter. The Society will also offer the book in our booth during the Congregational Church Fair on Saturday, July 9 and the Little Compton Antiques Festival on August 5. The cost is $15 for members and $20 for non-members. For anyone unable to come to the Historical Society, the book will be available on Amazon.com beginning July 3. Local stores like Wilbur’s General Store and Partner’s Village Store will also be carrying the book. The Brownell Library will have borrowing copies.

Continue reading “2016 Season”