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.

As New York City intensifies its use of bureaucratic enforcement against massage workers, Red Canary Song is taking the city to court. The collective of Asian and migrant massage and sex workers has filed a lawsuit against the NYC Department of Buildings for refusing to release public records on its inspections and fines—documents they say will expose discriminatory targeting under the guise of regulation. Supported by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), the suit underscores how anti-trafficking rhetoric and administrative policing have deepened economic instability and state violence against Asian migrant body workers.

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.

A masterwork about forms of self-expression during the times of chattel slavery.

The National Museum of African American History & Culture and Smithsonian Books have produced what should be considered the definitive text for understanding Black people’s cultural contributions to world history and how the systemic implementation of slavery throughout the globe was and still is one of the key reasons for a significant amount of artifact conception and creation.

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.

In this episode of the Africa-Caribbean Reasoning Series, Professor Anthony Bogues explores the deep historical and cultural ties linking Africa and the Caribbean, urging a reimagining of Pan-African solidarity for the present moment. Drawing on themes of colonial legacies, intellectual collaboration, and collective self-determination, Bogues calls for building real connections, through institutions, ideas, and shared struggles, that move beyond symbolism toward a more just and united global Black future.

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.

The question of innocence (and lack thereof) is central to western imperial projects and their determination of who deserves to be “saved” and who, on the other hand, is expendable. In this text, Elena Shih describes the ways through which sex workers in Thailand refuse what she characterizes as compulsory innocence and organize together the political conditions on being “bad.”

As part of the Simmons Center’s 10th anniversary, the Marian Anderson String Quartet returned to campus with "On Being Enslaved"—a powerful recital tracing the journey from auction block to concert stage, uniting music with memory, resistance, and healing.

The Cluster hosted Dr. Michael Walker for a talk on his book, "Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail", exploring incarceration’s toll. Students archived letters, testified for reform, and amplified voices of those impacted by prison.

David Haas reflects on how Brown’s groundbreaking Slavery and Justice Report first drew his attention back to the university. He celebrates Dr. Ruth J. Simmons’ bold leadership in initiating a deep institutional reckoning and highlights the Simmons Center’s evolving role as a hub for interdisciplinary scholarship and public engagement

The Simmons Center, in partnership with the Tomaquag Museum, hosted a free 6-day Black & Indigenous Summer Institute for Rhode Island rising 10th–12th grade students. The Summer Institute is designed within a restorative justice framework that centers self-reflection, critical thinking, and reading against the grain to reframe how we understand history and heal our communities.

In a joint project with the International Institute of Social History, the Cluster unites scholars from across continents. Since 2021, the group has met in Amsterdam and Jamaica to examine racial capitalism, colonial rule, and slavery’s lasting impact, fostering global discussions on these interconnected histories.

The Stolen Relations project, launched in 2015 at Brown University, seeks to recover and reinterpret the often hidden histories of Indigenous slavery, offering a fresh perspective on the colonial past and its lasting impact.