The Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice is located at 82 and 94 Waterman Street. Our renovated 19th-century house (94 Waterman Street) includes a rotating gallery exhibition space, the stunning glass wall art piece “Rising to Freedom” and a Symbolic Slave Garden.
Gallery
94 Waterman St, Providence, RI 02906
The Simmons Center gallery is open on Mondays-Fridays from 10am–noon and 1–3pm.
Please reach out in advance if you plan to visit with a group. For interest in bringing a student group to the Center, please email cssj_youthprograms@brown.edu. For all other inquiries, please email slaveryjustice@brown.edu.
Symbolic Slave Garden
In small spaces beside their cabins and huts on the plantation, along marginalized hillsides, in swamps, gullies and forests, and in outdoor sanctuaries created to honor their dead and contemplate that ancestrality, enslaved Africans and their descendants throughout the Americas “stole” back their own time and labor in snatches of the night, on Sundays or “holidays,” to plant garden plots of use, beauty, and spiritual and physical refuge. Located behind and to the side of our 94 Waterman Street building, the Symbolic Slave Garden designed by Prof. Geri Augusto draws on that history. The garden renders imaginatively a small part of what the slaves knew and wrought, and what they might have thought as they created new landscapes against all odds. It is a work of cognitive justice and contemplation.
Slavery & Legacy Walking Tours
The Slavery & Legacy Walking Tours examine the history behind Brown University, the State of Rhode Island and their roles in the transatlantic slave trade. The tours help students (junior high, high school, and college) as well as adult groups think critically about the University and state histories.