The programs created and hosted by the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice support the educational and community recommendations outlined in Brown’s landmark Slavery & Justice Report. In addition, the Center's programming is influenced by the recommendations of the Land Acknowledgment Working Group and the Community Engagement initiatives of the University.
Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice
Public Engagement and Education
The programs created and hosted by the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice support the educational and community recommendations outlined in Brown’s landmark Slavery & Justice Report. In addition, the Center's programming is influenced by the recommendations of the Land Acknowledgment Working Group and the Community Engagement initiatives of the University.
Ongoing Programs
The Slavery & Legacy Walking Tours examine the history behind Brown University, the State of Rhode Island and their roles in the transatlantic slave trade and settler colonialism. The tours help students (junior high, high school, and college) as well as adult groups think critically about the University and state histories.
'Racial Slavery & the Making of the Modern World: Resistance, Freedom, and Legacies' High School Curriculum Project
A free summer program for Rhode Island rising 10th-12th grade students, the Black and Indigenous High School Summer Institute is designed within a restorative justice framework that centers on self-reflection, critical thinking, and reading against the grain to reframe how we understand history and heal our communities. This program is on pause for 2024 and is expected to run again in the summer of 2025.
Recent News from Education
News from the Simmons Center
PrYSM Collaboration Fall 2024
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.
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The Reimagining New England Histories: Historical Injustice, Sovereignty and Freedom project tells Black and Indigenous histories through publications, educational programming and exhibitions. Founded in 2021, the initiative is a grant-funded partnership between Williams College, Mystic Seaport Museum and the Brown Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice.
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With a deeper telling of Indigenous and African American histories, a pilot summer institute led by Brown’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice aimed to both teach and inspire students.
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Program Archive
Embedded within the American social, political, and economic systems are various forms of structural violences. The Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice's series This Is America explores how these structures and systems are rooted in anti-Black racism.
Running from 2015–2019, the Civil Rights Movement Initiative (CRMI) was an after-school program that served students from three Providence public high schools. This initiative aimed to help high school students understand the Civil Rights Movement as a bridge to understand the present. Each year's program culminated in a seven-day trip to visit historic sites and museums commemorating the Civil Rights Movement.
In 2022-23, the Simmons Center offered enrichment opportunities to creative, energetic, motivated high students. Working with the Education Manager, students developed community-based projects deeply-rooted in social justice.