Projo.com
07:36 AM EDT on Wednesday, March 18, 2009
By Paul Davis
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — More than 240 years ago, John and Moses Brown financed a slave ship bound for Africa. They also poured money into Brown University in Providence. Slaves worked on the first building, now University Hall.
Yesterday, Brown University said it will recognize its slave trade past through a new memorial modeled on monuments and sites in New York City, Montgomery, Ala., and Liverpool, England.
But the memorial may not be built on the Ivy League school’s Providence campus.
Both Newport and Bristol played major roles in the slave trade, which continued into the early 1800s, long after the state outlawed it. Many reminders of the trade –– former auction sites, Colonial homes and Newport’s slave cemetery –– remain, Brown’s Commission on Memorials said.
“It may be appropriate, in memorializing Rhode Island’s role in the trade, to look beyond Brown’s immediate neighborhood,” the commission said.
For more than 75 years, Rhode Island ruled the American slave trade. Its merchants financed at least 1,000 voyages to Africa and helped enslave more than 100,000 men, women and children.
Slave ownership was also prevalent in the state. Before the Revolution, a third of all Newporters owned at least one slave. Slaves also worked on the large farms in Washington County.
Full Story: http://www.projo.com/news/content/BROWN_SLAVERY_REPORT_03-18-09_PODNBMK_v31.3a18e91.html#
For a copy of the Commission on Slavery and Justice Report, click here: http://brown.edu/Research/Slavery_Justice/report/index.html
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