Providence City Council Black History Month Celebration – March 10, 2026
Providence City Council Black History Month Celebration – March 10, 2026
On March 10, 2026, the Providence City Council hosted a Black History Month celebration at City Hall, featuring presentations by historian Keith Stokes, artist Muhammad Munir, community advocate Rochelle Lee, singer Elite G, and City Archivist Caleb. The program recognized the depth of African American history in Providence, including the origins of the first Black Wall Street in Rhode Island, and urged continued investment in historical preservation, community development, and reparative justice.
Consent Calendar
- No consent calendar items were presented.
Public Comments & Testimony
- No separate public comment period was held; the program consisted entirely of scheduled presentations.
Discussion Items
- Councilwoman Graves introduced the evening, stating the importance of reclaiming Black history and telling it from within the community.
- President Miller thanked attendees for coming despite snow and delay, and framed the celebration as honoring trailblazers who moved forward while reaching back to their communities.
- Keith Stokes, Rhode Island historian, presented a five-minute overview of early African American history, correcting three common embellishments:
- First Black Wall Street was in Providence along South Main and North Main Streets in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, not in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921.
- Two pre-Tulsa racial riots – the Hard Scrabble Riot (1824) and the Snowtown Riot (1831) – destroyed successful free African communities in Providence.
- Emancipation Day celebrations began with August 1st commemorations of British emancipation, decades before Juneteenth.
- Stokes emphasized that records exist but need digitization and public investment to be accessible for curriculum and community enjoyment.
- Muhammad Munir shared an oral history from northern Ghana (Dagomba kingdom), describing how inter-kingdom wars, the introduction of guns by Europeans, and the capture of people by the Asante kingdom led to enslavement and sale to the coast. He noted that 70–80% of enslaved people from northern Ghana were sent to Newport, Rhode Island, linking African and African American suffering and resilience.
- Rochelle Lee spoke on contemporary mechanisms that undermine Black wealth: racial violence, discriminatory financing (e.g., redlining), zoning abuse, and urban renewal (1949 Act). She argued that urban renewal in Providence destroyed over 100 Black-owned businesses in Fox Point, many replaced by parking lots. She urged attendees to look beneath surface-level programs and ask who benefits and who is excluded.
- Elite G performed two original songs emphasizing voice, courage, and community storytelling.
- City Archivist Caleb highlighted the importance of the City Archives in preserving African American history, naming mentor Paul Campbell and former councilmember Mary Kay Harris. He said many records were found in a leaky basement and stressed the need for ongoing resources to preserve and make documents available.
- Councilwoman Graves noted that Viola Fletcher, a survivor of the Tulsa massacre who died in November 2025 at age 111, secured reparations totaling $24 million for housing, $60 million for cultural preservation, and $21 million for land and small business development. Graves expressed that Providence, as the original Black Wall Street, should pursue similar reparations.
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes or legislative actions were taken. The program served as a public education and community-building event.
- Stokes, Lee, and Caleb all called for increased investment in archives and historical institutions to make African American history part of public school curriculum and daily community life.
- Lee recommended the book The Mechanisms of Ruin and outlined five systemic tools that targeted Black communities: racial violence, discriminatory financing, zoning abuse, urban renewal, and poverty as an industrial complex.
- The exhibit of historical documents (including Eleanor Eldridge’s arrest records) was displayed outside the council chamber, curated by City Archivist Caleb.
- The evening concluded with a group singing of “Nobody Turn Me Around,” and Councilwoman Graves encouraged attendees to serve their communities.
Meeting Transcript
A girlfriend last year, brown in the end of school year, so it must have been May or June. Her son came home, a grandson came home and said to her, Have you ever heard of Black Wall Street? And she was like, No, I never heard of Black Wall Street. So he was telling her about it. And she said, Oh, she called me up because they always call me up with something of history. And said, um, I want to know more about Black Wall Street. I said, Well, you do realize that people say Black Wall Street and only mean one thing, and that's Tulsa. But technically, there's numerous Black Wall Streets. Black Wall Streets were just the communities that were thriving, that had made their own way without the help of anybody. The ones that had their own doctors, their own lawyers, their own politicians, I mean, anything you can think of. The teachers, they had them. The banks, they had them. So they didn't need any help from anybody. And we're gonna go deeper into that. But I always like to start any black program, history program, with where we came from. So we're gonna do a little journey. So we want to let everybody know. This is not a new thing. This is not something that was given to us. This is something that we earned. This is something that we need to stand up and make sure that not only people outside our race, but our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren know. And your friends know. Because my friend, I told them, wait a minute, now you're almost seventy-something years old. But I'm glad that we talked about it. And I got her a lot of books, and she read it, and she's just passing it on. And I appreciate that because that's what we have to do. Because we gotta stop letting people tell us our history. You know, we got to stop letting somebody else be the um expert on our history. We need to be telling our own stories. We need to be telling them from our heart, our souls, and we need to make sure that we know so that we can tell. So you're never too old to pick up a book, because now they got the ones that talk to you. You don't even have to look at the page. So please, whatever you do after this, if you hear something that's new to you, go get a book on it, learn a little bit more about it, and then pass our information on. And we're gonna ask mix elite G to come up and sing in the woods. Good evening, everybody. Okay, so uh thank you to the city council for having me. It's an honor to be here, and I sing this song with so much gratitude for my ancestors, my not so distant relatives, and for all of you with whom we are creating history right now, um, because we all have a purpose and a God-given gift of um adding to this legacy of perseverance, of growth and of excellence. Okay, live every voice sing to earth and ring ring with the heart of liberty, let our reties, let it re shine loud as the rolling seas, sing uh song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us. Sing usong full of the hope that the present has brought us, facing the rise our new day become, let us march on to victory is one. Thank you. Okay, there's the one. So like I said, we're gonna talk about that thing, but I that's one thing that we have to acknowledge. Another one of our icons died last month, and we were gonna talk about him if we had gotten a chance to. And I know when I say this, we all gonna know who he is. I am somebody. So, who is he? I'm listening. I know you all know who's thank you. I told you, I don't like people just sitting around. This this is give and take.
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