Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice

Visit

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 garden.

Breadcrumb

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.

Exhibitions

Symbolic Garden of the Enslaved

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 Garden of the Enslaved 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.

Slavery & Legacy Walking Tour

History of the 94 Waterman Street Building

The earliest information we have about the Center’s building comes from the Brown University archive. It is a letter written by Susan Ely, granddaughter of the building’s first owner, Joseph Cady.

Handwritten letter

Mr. Cady served as what was then known as the Steward of the University from 1812–1826. His job was to look after the students’ well being including their rooms and meals, collect their tuition payments, as well as take care of the University grounds. Around the time of his appointment he purchased a lot on George Street near where Rhode Island Hall stands today. Mr. Cady purchased the lot from Mrs. Sarah Hopkins, the daughter-in-law of Esek Hopkins, the captain of the slave ship Sally commissioned by Nicholas, John, Joseph, and Moses Brown decades earlier in 1764.

In 1866, after Mr. Cady’s death the present building moved to the corner of Waterman and Prospect street. His granddaughter's letter tells us that “the old house commenced a journey across the back campus to a new location.” It remained there for just one year before again moving to its present location at 94 Waterman Street in 1867. For over a century Joseph Cady’s descendants lived in the home. These included the prominent physician and founder of the Providence Medical Association, Dr. James W.C. Ely ’42 and Joseph Cady Ely ’57, a prominent lawyer who helped reform the state’s laws and judicial system as part of an 1890 commission. The last Ely family member to live in the home, Ruth, bequeathed the building to the Providence Athenaeum upon her passing in the early 1970s, an organization she and her family had supported for many decades.

For many in the community, the building is most recently remembered as a real estate company before it was transformed into Simmons Center's present home.

Norwood House Expansion

In recognition of the Simmons Center's expansion of postdoctoral fellows, visiting faculty, and community fellows, the University provided the Center with a second building, Norwood House, located just down the street from the Center's original 94 Waterman Street location. Norwood House, located at 82 Waterman Street, was renovated during the academic year 2020-2021. Simmons Center staff and fellows moved into their offices on the first and second floors at the start of the fall 2021 semester. The building includes a seminar room and kitchen.