Exhibition Invites Visitors on a Journey of Collective Healing While Exploring the Enduring History of Slavery and Colonialism

The exhibition will delve into key questions about freedom and its expressions across six sections. Organized by the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University and the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Center for the Study of Global Slavery, “In Slavery’s Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World” grew out of a decade-long collaboration between international curators, scholars and community members who were committed to sharing stories of slavery and colonialism in public spaces. The collective worked across geographies, cultures and languages, connecting the past and the present.

The Newport Historical Society has named Simmons Center Adjunct Lecturer in Slavery and Justice Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes, Native Newport scholar and curator, to spearhead the development of a new center for Black History, set to open at the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House. The appointment marks a significant step in the organization’s efforts to highlight Newport’s diverse historical narrative.

This past semester, as part of the Simmons Center’s Community Engagement Initiative and K–12 focus, we hosted Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM) in Norwood House as they held their annual fall training series. This year’s series was called Liberation 101 and was led by Suonriaksmay Keo (she/her/hers), the Youth Engagement Director of PrYSM.

A new Smithsonian book entitled "In Slavery's Wake: Making Black Freedom in the World," co-edited by Simmons Center Director Prof. Anthony Bogues, reckons with the enduring legacies of slavery and capitalism.

The book is the companion catalog to the exhibition of the same name that opens at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture on December 13, 2024.

Simmons received the award for her accomplishments in higher education.

President Joe Biden presented former University President Ruth J. Simmons with the National Humanities Medal, an annual recognition of leaders in the humanities, during an Oct. 21 White House ceremony.

Simmons made history as the first African American woman president of an Ivy League institution when she served as Brown’s 18th president from 2001-2012. Simmons’ tenure at Brown and her work supporting equity in higher education were highlighted in a White House press release detailing honorees’ achievements.

When the Providence Preservation Society initially sought to sell a historic building in March, its past as the site of Providence's first newspaper and a boarding house was noted. However, there was no mention of the enslaved individuals who had lived and worked there. Traci Picard, Simmons Center Senior Research Assistant, was brought in to dig deeper into the building's history.

Picard's research revealed significant details, including that two generations of enslaved women, Ingow and her daughter Fanny, lived in the household. Her findings also dispelled the idea that the building's former owner, Carter, was an abolitionist.

Instead, Carter participated in the slave economy by printing flyers for runaway slaves while also publishing abolitionist materials, underscoring the complex relationship between business and slavery at the time. Now, with Picard’s 17-page report completed, the building is once again up for sale, but with a fuller understanding of its ties to slavery and its deeper historical significance.

The Simmons Center is excited to welcome our first cohort of Public Humanities MA Students to campus in the fall of 2024. This cohort is expected to graduate in 2026.

The Newport Historical Society (NHS) announced a $4.5 million capital campaign to restore Newport’s oldest colonial home and convert it to a museum de­voted to the region’s Black history. At an unveiling of plans for the 1697 Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House, NHS board President Douglas Newhouse hailed the conversion as a project to share the history of African Americans in Newport that has gone untold for the most part. “No other place in New England or perhaps the whole country will tell this history the way we will here at this house,” he said as he made note of Newport being a hub of the slave trade from colo­nial times to the early 19th century.

Akeia de Barros Gomes, Simmons Center Adjunct Lecturer in Slavery and Justice, grew up in Newport and attended the city’s public schools. She said she is pleased that generations of ad­vocates would have their efforts rewarded with the conversion of the house to a museum of Black history. A member of the NHS board, Gomes has consulted on the Wan­ton Lyman-Hazard House project.

SOAS University of London will award honorary degrees to six distinguished individuals at this year’s graduation ceremonies.

Professor Anthony Bogues will be awarded a Doctor of Literature (DLit) (honoris causa) in recognition of his substantial contribution to the studies of African and African diaspora political theory, African and Caribbean politics; Global South development issues; Caribbean Art; political economy of race, and slavery and the history of capitalism. The award also acknowledges his significant work as founder and Director of the Simmons Center.

Around 200 years ago, the area near the Rhode Island State House and the train station was home to a working-class neighborhood called Snowtown. It’s largely forgotten today, but a team of researchers is trying to change that. Globe RI’s Carlos Muñoz talks to two members of the Snowtown Project research team - Heather Olson and Traci Picard, Simmons Center Senior Research Assistant. They say they're aiming to "put those people back into the imagination, as real as people who matter."

“Wail on Whalers, a Portrait of Amos Haskins” by Felandus Thames, an “homage to escaped enslaved people who found autonomy in whaling,” is comprised of hairbeads strung on coated wire. The piece is part of the Mystic Seaport Museum's “Entwined” exhibition, which reimagines thousands of years of maritime history through Black and Indigenous worldviews and experiences.

"Entwined" is the culminating exhibition for the Reimagining New England Histories project organized by the Simmons Center at Brown University, Williams College, and Mystic Seaport Museum and generously funded by the Just Futures Initiative of the Mellon Foundation.

The Commemoration Lab, The Department of Art, Culture and Tourism (ACT,) and the Rhode Island Historical Society (RIHS) are commissioning nine creative practitioners to interrogate the ways that Providence residents construct and share memory and culture. Simmons Center Senior Research Assistant, Traci Picard, has been chosen as Writer in Residence for this project.

The Atlantic Ocean connects indigenous people along the coast of what is now New England and those in the western African nations of Ghana, Togo, and Benin. Kalunga, in the Bantu language widespread across Africa. Kuhtah in Pequot.

The depths of these connections are explored at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, CT–Pequot land–during “Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty, and the Sea,” an exhibition breaking from the Museum’s tradition of telling maritime stories through a colonizer, shipbuilder, industrial, extractive perspective. Before starting any work, “Entwined” curator Akeia de Barros Gomes, Senior Curator of Maritime Social Histories at Mystic Seaport Museum and Simmons Center Visiting Scholar, assembled a committee of indigenous and African descended community members to discuss what they wanted to present and how.

"Entwined" is the culminating exhibition for the Reimagining New England Histories project organized by the Simmons Center at Brown University, Williams College, and Mystic Seaport Museum and generously funded by the Just Futures Initiative of the Mellon Foundation.

Indigenous and Black people tell their own seafaring stories at Mystic Seaport Museum.

"Entwined" is the culminating exhibition for the Reimagining New England Histories project organized by the Simmons Center at Brown University, Williams College, and Mystic Seaport Museum and generously funded by the Just Futures Initiative of the Mellon Foundation.

This spring, Sophia Janssens and her classmates added nearly 33,000 words and over 300 references to Wikipedia articles as part of Dr. Mack Scott’s course “This is America,” which focused on people and events often marginalized or forgotten in American history. During the weeks of the course alone, their collective work on Wikipedia was viewed 237,000 times.

Growth made Rhode Island’s capital city vibrant, but multicultural, working-class neighborhoods were sacrificed in the process. Traci Picard, a Simmons Center Walking Tour Guide, historian, and graduate of the JNBC Public Humanities program at Brown University is also a researcher for the project.

On Thursday, October 19th, 2023, UNESCO, in partnership with Brown University, The University of the West Indies, and Liberty Hall (Jamaica), had the pleasure of hosting a groundbreaking dialogue on Sports and Racism at Liberty Hall, in Kingston, Jamaica, within the framework of the 4th Convening of the Cost of Racism Project.

As the discussion unfolded, Michael Holding, the renowned Jamaican sportsman, cricketer, and social justice advocate, engaged in a compelling conversation with Professor Anthony Bogues, the Director of the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University, providing insight to the impact of racism on the life and careers of promising sportsmen and women and proposing how the issues of racism and discrimination could be overcome.

In the Martin Luther King Lecture on October 9, 2023, at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Prof. Anthony Bogues called for taking as an example not the dreaming, but the radical Martin Luther King, and addressing the problems of our present time. ‘Action is what makes us stand out as human beings.’

Prof. Bogues is the inaugural director of the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice at Brown University and is a visiting professor of African and African diaspora thought at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.