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.

You have to be part of this, you know.

Um, as you know, um, Jesse Jackson made that a mantra for us, but he wasn't the one that wrote that.

It did not come from him, it came from Reverend William Harold Borders, Homes Borders from a church in Atlanta.

And the thing was, after I heard him say that that speech, I happened to be watching Sesame Street one day.

And guess who was on there saying this, saying this poem?

Jesse Jackson on Sesame Street.

I was like, wow, this is cool.

This is really cool, you know.

So I snatched my kids up because by the time I got them to get in front of the TV, it was over, but I bragged about it.

So you know, another thing you should look up.

So we you know, we are losing I uh icons.

We are we are losing them slowly but surely, but they're getting up in age, like myself, you know.

Um but we are making so many more.

There are a lot of young ones that are coming up that's just as fly fiery, that are just the same.

They are still out there trying to seek justice, they're still out there trying to get the knowledge out to our people.

So we need to support them whenever we can.

So without before we go any further, I would like to also look over here to my right and introduce you to our president.

She's gonna come up and give us a few words.

Um, President Miller.

Thank you so much, Councilwoman Graves, and thank you for bringing us all together tonight.

Um, and thanks to everyone for coming back despite the snow and the delay.

I feel like we get uh slightly closer to celebrating Black History Month, 365 days a year by moving it into women's month.

So thank y'all for coming back and celebrating tonight.

Um I'm really excited about the program tonight.

I just want to share uh two quick thoughts on it as we celebrate.

One, we're gonna be celebrating trailblazers, right?

People who made up the forgotten uh black wall streets and so many other things, people who were told again and again and again um where the limit was, right, where the wall was, and knew what they needed to do no matter what, right?

Just didn't just wasn't gonna let that wall turn back their drive, their spirit, their passion.

And two, when we talk about Black History Month, we are forever talking about those same trailblazers who move forward for themselves, but also were constantly reaching a handback for uh the community that came behind them, and that is all of all of us, right?

We uh last downstairs heard very beautifully Black History Month is all of our history, and that is true, but uh more uniquely the trailblazing, the the um the victories have impacted our lives in so many fundamental and beautiful ways.

So thank you for um celebrating Black History Month with us here tonight, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the program.

Okay, thank you to our president, who has also been out there in the streets fighting for our rights, not just for black folks, of course, but for everybody.

So thank you.

Um the next thing I would like to do, because we're kind of rushed because we're starting a little bit late, but I'm not gonna rush our speakers.

I want them to give all of their knowledge that they want to give to us.

So I'm gonna jump right in and say that I am thrilled to welcome um our Rhode Island historian, Keith Stokes, and here his remarks.

Nope.

Did I jump over, Mania?

Okay, okay.

I thought I was doing it right, but I just want to make sure, you know.

Okay, and if you would give him a round of applause, because he didn't have to come out here tonight, but he did.

Thank you, Councilperson.

Thank you for bringing me back to Providence and City Hall.

I'm gonna do 400 years of history in five minutes.

So I'm gonna focus on three events and dates that we get wrong in black history, that centers on the beginnings, the origins, and the most important contributions to black history in America is as much associated with Providence, Rhode Island as anywhere else in the nation.

The first date, July 4th, 1776, signing with the Declaration of Independence.

That might have been the beginning of the birth of a free nation, but it is actually November 10th, 1780, when a group of African tradesmen in Newport, Rhode Island came together in the home of Abraham Casey of tradesmen, these are Africans, African born, not African Americans.

They come together and they form for the first time in world history the free African Union society.

We know this because the records still exist within the state of Rhode Island.

And over the next six years, these African men would reach out to African free tradesmen, businessmen, in Boston, Philadelphia, and in Providence, Rhode Island, and by 1789 in Providence, Rhode Island, the free African society is born.

And these free African tradesmen, we have their records, they are operating businesses across Providence, particularly centered in the first Black Wall Street, not Tulsa, Oklahoma, but South Main, North Main Street, and Market Square.

The first great collection of black entrepreneurs.

This is the 18th century and early 19th century.

This is not 1921.

The first collection are situated along South and North Main Street, Market Square, and many of those men, women, and families are living, working, and worshiping are what today we call College Hill.

And when they came together, they would express for the first time in American history that we are free, we have an African identity, and we will build life and intergenerational wealth by building businesses within our community.

So these first free African communities in America, starting after 1776 and accelerating in places like Providence, Boston, Philadelphia, and Newport into the early 19th century, are in places called College Hill Providence.

Boston, it's Beacon Hill.

In Newport, it's Historic Hill Bellevue Avenue, and in Philadelphia, the historic Seven Ward.

And each and every one of these black communities are interacting, they're talking, they're sharing letters and notes.

And what these early black entrepreneurs, because they're creating wealth, they use that wealth to begin to invest in their community, their African community.

And one of the first actions they take is they help to assemble and evolve their African societies into the first free black churches.

In Providence, Rhode Island, the African Society becomes the African meeting house and school house on Cogden Street, and then by 1819, they dedicate what becomes the Cogden Street Baptist Church.

One of the first free black churches in America and the first in Rhode Island.

And that church, like similar churches in Newport, Province, Philadelphia, not only become places of worship, it's places to organize.

It's places to build businesses, it's places to begin to accelerate African identity in America, free Africans in America.

And this is happening in the 1790s and 1810s, where millions of other African Americans are still enslaved in the American South.

The second great embellishment where we get history wrong, and I kind of hinted about Black Wall Street, is that 100 years before the 1921 horrific Tulsa race riots that devastated black men and women and families' homes, places of business and worship, 100 years before, we have the hard scrabble riot in 1824 in Providence.

Hard scrabble would be today, very close to the South Lawn of the State House where the train station is, and then running down along the river.

That riot, which was an organized racial riot, was to dislodge successful black-owned businesses and homes and places of worship.

And they literally tore down homes, burned down homes, destroyed properties, and literally pushed the free African heritage community further out of town and further up the hill.

And in 1831, they're not done.

In 1831, the African Heritage Community, where there are businesses and activities and worship going on, in a location called Snowtown or Onleys Lane.

Today that's recognized as a large part of what is only street and bounded by South Maine.

And more importantly, today it's recognized as one of the earliest free black communities.

And in 1831, a second riot further dislodge, further disrupt, because they were recognizing that the time has come for us to take this land and take these enterprises and dislocate free African people.

This is 1824, 1831.

That's not 1921, it's not 1924.

So very the first Black Wall Street is along South Main and North Main Street in the Market Square.

And we have in the collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society, the Providence City Archives, the work that Caleb's doing, the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, we have the primary original documents and evidence of this history that's just waiting to be unveiled, a part of curriculums, a part of history, and a part of our community.

Now the third embellishment, Juneteenth.

Juneteenth is an incredibly important event, and it's important that we recognize the struggle of freedom post the American Civil War in the Emancipation Proclamation.

But what very few people get, and it's important that you recognize is that before Juneteenth, before anything going on in South Carolina or Texas, Providence, Rhode Island, and those other early free African communities, Boston, New York, Newport, they're all celebrating Emancipation Day on August 1st.

They are celebrating the British emancipation and the end of abolition of slavery in the British holdings in the West Indies.

So starting in the 1830s, it's abolished by 1831.

The next several years, province becomes one of the first African heritage communities that celebrates August 1st as African Emancipation Day.

In fact, we have records that thousands of African Americans in the 1840s and 50s were at Roger Williams Park on August 1st celebrating that event.

And that went on well into the present day.

So what I'm trying to do, and it's four and a half minutes, is tell you our history is deep, it's rich, it's documented, but it's still largely unknown.

And it's simply unknown because we're not making the proper investments in allowing our city and state archives and historical institutions to take these records, digitize them, and present them for public record, for school curriculum, for public enjoyment.

The one thing I can guarantee you, Rhode Island, particularly in Providence, Bristol, and Newport, have some of the deepest, largest, and most relevant early African heritage history and records as compared to anywhere in the country.

Not New York, not Boston, not Philadelphia, Rhode Island.

And here in our capital city, we're very much at the center of that history.

So this celebration today should be a starting point.

It should be a starting point that each and every day, 365 days of the year, we should be celebrating black history.

Why?

Because black history is American history.

And without black history, there's no American history.

So thank you.

I hit five minutes, and thank you for having me here.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I had to give it to him.

I didn't think he would get all that in five minutes, but he definitely did.

And it's wonderful that we can sit here and say, you know, it started here.

It spread all over, but it started here.

We should be proud of that.

You should be proud of a lot of things that little roadie has done.

There's been a lot of things that were, but we're here.

Um of the other things, before we jump to Manir, who's gonna give us a little bit of the African flavor.

Um, I need there's another person that died.

And because we're talking about, you know, the um Black Wall Street, Viola Fletcher died last November.

She was one of the of two of the people that were left for the um Tulsa massacre or the Black Wall Street, per se massacre.

Um she was 11 years old, and she fought all those years to try to make sure that something was done for her community in her city.

They took it to the courts, they took it to the high courts to try to get reparation and everything else.

They did get reparation.

Um, and some of the things that they got, I just want to let you know, these old ladies and men, because they were old when they got there, they were able to get 24 million dollars for housing, sixty million dollars for cultural preservation, twenty-one million dollars for land and small black business development.

Day for a high.

We could we should be fighting too, considering we're the original, you know.

Um, so I just think that we can do better than what we got in the reparation package the last time that nobody, I haven't seen.

I haven't seen really the profits of it.

So I think we need to start fighting some little bit harder and make sure that people know that there are things that you can do.

You know, there are things that you can instead of telling what is wrong with a group of people.

Tell us what is good about them, and how you can correct the wrongs that you did to them.

That's what I want to hear.

So without now, I have to um say the next person used to be my boss, yeah.

Him and his lovely wife, but um the next person that we're gonna uh brought this artist, uh near the shant the shiny.

I know Muhammad.

Um he's more than an artist, he is a wealth of knowledge.

He is uh a person that kids love to go because he teaches them art, he shows them what they the talents that they have, he helps them to develop the talents, you know.

I've seen some people that were really, really timid that would not come out of a shell, but they blossomed under him.

You know, any person that can just by a stroke of a paintbrush, bring out that essence in the child, it's fabulous.

And I see I seen him firsthand do that, and you know, I am very proud to call him up so that he can give us a little bit more on this black history month.

Thank thank you, thank you.

I thank you for the opportunity to stand here to share something with you.

Okay, to share something with you.

I wrote everything down because a lot of what I'm gonna talk about is much more like an oral history, and I just want you to know that Keith is amazing, the stories that we hear from him is something that you have to be someone of knowledge to be able to do that.

I'm not a speaker, but let me share with you about a history that a lot of people don't know.

I want you to travel with me back in the history before the transatlantic slave trade.

Before that, the Portuguese were the first people to land in Ghana or the Gold Coast before it was known as Ghana.

And the head of the person who was a captain, his name was Digoji Azambuja, and that was somewhere in the 1400s.

So when he came, they came with trade.

They're gonna be trading with us, and guess what?

After trading with us, they found out that the chiefs have all this gold all over them, especially the Ashanti Sandis, and so instead of just trading for goods and whatever it is, don't shine anything on the face of any European that has to do with minerals.

You are signing your own death sentence when they saw gold.

That was it.

This is the best thing that ever happened to them.

So instead of going to India for spice or going to China for suck, it was now West Africa.

So they remained, and then they built all these forts, castles.

I wrote down everything because some of them were passed to us as children, and most of them were not written.

I have to sit down and remember everything.

There are some that are written, but some are not.

So please forgive me if I'm reading.

All right, so here it is.

The land we know today as Ghana.

In those days in 1774, there was a king in the forest.

The Asante King.

You remember when I said I said Asante, I didn't say Ashanti.

Ashanti was created by the British.

Even up to now in Ghana, we have the Ashanti region, the Ashanti people.

No, we don't call them Ashanti.

It's Asanti without the age.

So this Asante people were wonderful in terms of it when it comes to war.

So in 1774, they had a king.

His name was Oseikojo.

And under his rule, the kingdom of Asante grew strong.

Drums of war were heard across the land.

The Asante warriors marched.

They marched to the lands of the Kau people, they conquered them.

They marched to the Achim land, they conquered them.

They marched to the Sefi land, they conquered them, but they were not able to conquer the dentura people.

I don't know why.

But yet they really fought and they conquered a lot of these kingdoms until they got to the coast.

One by one, a lot of kingdoms fell under the power down south.

But the king was not finished.

He looked north beyond the forest, beyond the rivers, beyond the long grassland, there lived the Gonja people.

The Asante warriors went north and defeated the Gonja people.

Then they continued further to the great kingdom of the north, the Dagong Kingdom, which is the land of the Dagonba people.

And this is the area where I'm from.

So I'm telling you this story, not just by reading it about it, but it's been passed on to us.

So you are hearing it from someone who is from that tribe.

At that time, the ruler of Dagang was Yanagarba.

It is said that the Asante king first came to settle a dispute within the kingdom.

But sometimes when men come with power, the pride walks ahead of wisdom.

Peace turns into misunderstanding and misunderstanding turns into war.

The war between the Asante and the Dagombas was fierce.

They carried spears, they carried bows and arrows.

And they fought like men defending their home.

This were the Dagumbas.

Something the North had never seen was the gun.

Okay, more about it, had come through trade with the Fanti who traded with the Europeans at the coast.

And then they in turn sold the guns to the Asante people.

Guns against spears, spears, guns against arrows, and in the end, the Dagombas were forced to surrender.

My people have to surrender.

I mean, if someone points at you and you see fire and a sound, and about two, three people fell dead, then that means I know this is not a war that we can win.

So they surrounded.

After the war, the Asante king made a heavy demand, a tribute.

This tribute is why I felt like I should tell the story.

So listen to the tribute.

The Asante king demanded from the Dagumba king one thousand people, one thousand cows, one thousand sheep, one thousand goats, one thousand chickens, one thousand guinea hen, we call it guinea fowls.

So imagine if every year a king has to donate thousands of his people.

So what he did was that he had to tell all the chiefs around the other kingdoms that are under under him that we have to do something, or tomorrow the Asante is gonna come and we're all gonna suffer.

So they started donating their people to the Asante king.

So what happened is is that at the end the weight was too much for the Asante for sorry for the Dagomba people.

So the Dagomba chief or king said no more.

When the king of Asante heard the story, he sent some army that they have to go and capture the Dagomba king.

And they have to bring him down to his Kumasi Manshia Palace.

I've been there in last time, Linda and I have been there before.

Linda is here.

We've been there before.

It's a beautiful huge palace.

So why when they went and captured him, I hope I'm not going past my time.

I'm okay.

Well, thank you.

I think Keith, you have only uh three minutes, so I'll be taking your two minutes.

Okay.

So what happened is that, but the Dagomba's king said something.

He told his people, he said, let them take me.

Because he doesn't want his people to be slaughtered.

He doesn't want his people to be killed.

So he said, Allow them to take me.

So while they were taking him to the Asante kingdom, they have to go through the Gunja land.

The Gunjas were already been defeated by their sanctists.

So they felt like they don't need to take a lot of soldiers to northern to the Dagomba kingdom to bring in the king.

So when they got to the Gunja land, the Gondja people ran to their king and say, you know what?

They're carrying the paramount chief of the of northern Ghana, Northern Gold Coast.

What should we do?

Then the king said, No, don't allow them.

Don't allow them to take the paramount chief or the whole of northern Ghana to the Assantic Kingdom.

So the king was rescued.

This area is hard to get this written if it wasn't passed down to us.

I haven't read anything that mentioned how he was rescued.

But the Gonja people and us, we do play with one another.

If someone is a Gonja person now and I said I'm from the Dagomba tribe, he will say, Oh yeah, okay, without me, you wouldn't have a king.

So we all laugh.

And that's how some of these histories are passed on so that we don't forget.

Another thing that happened also is that when you go to uh Africa, especially Ghana, you hear people drumming.

They will drum and stop, and the head of the person, the people drumming, will be telling the king stories about the war, stories about the kings, stories about women that did so much, and that story will never change, and they still telling the story till today.

And that's why I'm standing here telling you what has been passed on to us.

So after that, the Asante understood that they cannot go and fight anymore because the Northerners were just as powerful as their Saintes.

So to start another war was not going to be right for them.

So what they did is that they didn't go to fight the Asante.

They stopped and that stopped the uh retribution of all these thousands.

So I just want to add a little bit for you to know that.

Why I'm telling the story is because of the African American in America.

So I'll be coming down soon to end it for you to understand.

So what happened is that they carried the Asante people, got so many of the northern people that they couldn't contain them.

That's a lot.

So they marched them, our brothers and sisters through the forest, through over rivers until they got to the coast, and then they sold the enslaved Africans to the Europeans.

So these are some of the history.

Not that I don't know much about American history.

A lot of people know that history more than me, and one of them is sitting here.

So imagine Keith is sitting here, and I'm gonna tell you about American history.

That will be something.

That would be a slaughter.

So what I'm trying to tell you is that for now they're doing the DNA of the Northern people.

Between 70 to 80 percent of northern Ghana people were sent to the United States of America to Newport, where Keith is from.

Because sometimes when I hear a song from African American, R, there's a tone that comes.

And it reminds me of the northern Ghana.

Even though they might not be the same, but there is something, and you have to live it to know it.

So at the end, let me just finish this one, and then I'm gonna get my five minutes in.

Am I right?

Okay.

So just uh trying to let you know that we are speaking of people, people whose footsteps still echo across the land.

People whose blood still flows in the veins of our or their descendants, us.

Some remain in Africa, some were carried across the ocean, but the story did not die because a people may be shut scattered, a people may be wounded, but as long as the story is remembered, the people are never lost.

So I just want you to know that our history and African American history is the same.

The suffering of African Americans is the same with us.

If anyone said that we are in Africa, we don't care.

No, no, no, you're making a big mistake.

I will just look it up from our home.

I don't know who was the one that was sent over.

That's why I'm back home.

We also suffered.

It's not easy for your people to be taken away for you to sit down and say, Oh, they didn't get me, so it's okay.

We also suffered.

So I uh I uh from one of my answers, uh I did my ancestry, one of them one day called me and said, Munir, so you guys just sold us.

Am I right?

I'm saying, I said, cousin, don't tell me that you don't know what we also went through.

It hurts, but it happened.

We also lost our people, so there's no African that don't think about African American, never today.

As I'm telling you, African Americans are building houses in Ghana, they're building their own estates, and if you see how many of them just two days or three days ago became the world citizens, so I just want you to know that the suffering wasn't one-sided, we all suffered, and the only thing we can do is to get together and know that we can fight any war together.

You see, the Africans have a broom, which is made of the palm leaves, they peel it and they made it into a broom, and they always say, When you pick up one, you break it to pieces, but put it together and try to break it.

You can we have to be like the broom that we I'm talking about, and we will fight whatever it is that we are fighting for.

May God bless us, may God bless my people, my brother and sister in America and those in Africa.

Thank you very much.

Five minutes.

See, this is what I'm talking about.

We cannot talk about our history without us going back to our roots.

So I appreciate the story, and especially the the connection between Newport and Ghana.

See how we are all connected.

This is what we have to be teaching.

We have to teach our children, and I do want to say I I seen her, you tiptoe in and see my girl over here, the little tenant governor.

Thank you for coming out.

Okay.

Um said, there's this is so much more that we really really need to talk about, but um, I didn't want it to go too long, but there is one other little thing.

I did not get um a person to tell us any poems, and I believe in us always having something that's the spoken word.

One of my favorite um writers was I'm not even gonna say his name.

I'm gonna read a poem and then and then I'm gonna let you all tell me who it is.

Like I said, this is give and take, huh?

I too sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes, but I laugh, eat well, and grow strong.

Tomorrow, I'm sorry, I used to know this by hand.

Tomorrow I will eat at the table.

When company comes.

Nobody will tell me then to eat in the kitchen.

They'll see how I'm gonna, I can't even see y'all.

I'm gonna say it again.

They'll see how.

Excuse me.

I'm gonna say it again.

I too sing America.

I am the Docker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes.

But I laugh, eat well, and grow strong.

Tomorrow, I I will be at the table when company comes.

Nobody will dare say to me, eat in the kitchen then.

Besides, they'll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed.

I too am America.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Tell me who it is.

No, no clapping.

Tell me who who wrote it.

Come on.

Thank you.

There you go.

One of my favorite all-time poets.

Okay.

Um the next part of this thing is I'm gonna ask my girl Rochelle Lee, who has been, I know you all know her.

She has been out there in the streets fighting for justice for all for decades.

I know because we bought together.

I used to drag her to boards that I was a member of and tell her, come over here, we need help, and she dragged me over to some other board.

So I think we saw between the two of us.

We served on every board there is in province.

But that's what they needed.

We sometimes it would just be us.

We be sometimes it would just be us as women, and sometimes we just us as black women, you know, or blacks, period.

And we all know if we don't sit at the table, then we'll never know.

We'll always get scraps.

We have to be at that table so that we can get our voices heard, so that we can be the ones that say, Whoa, wait a minute.

You have to do for all of us.

This cannot be a one horse show, you know.

So without further ado, I'm gonna bring her up, and we're gonna stand here together because that's what we do.

We stand together.

Um, she's getting her things together.

I think one of the things that we were talking about was um Black Wall Street, all the different ones, and we want and people probably are saying, well, what happened to them?

They were doing so well, why how come there's not a lot of them around?

There are reasons why things dried up for us.

There are reasons why um we're not still prosperous in other, you know, all throughout.

Um, and we're gonna talk about that.

I think we need to know what they are, and some of them are good intention, but I want you to listen to the words that are coming out because sometimes we use these words and we think that we it means something really positive, but we all know all of us that have lived in certain areas that certain things did not turn out to be positive for us, you know.

One of my biggest things, and I'm on a committee is urban renewal, because it sounds good on paper, it looks good on paper, but sometimes it doesn't help the people that it's supposed to help.

They move us out, and all of us never come back, you know.

So I are you almost ready?

Yeah, okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Um just uh sort of piggyback on our previous speakers who have been phenomenal.

The information I have to say is I appreciate it.

I've heard it many times, but every time I hear it, it it warms my heart.

Um of the things, and I don't want to be uh tapped and bring down or anything, but one of the things that out there asks me to talk about is contemporary um challenges that we have as a community.

And just a little bit about me, my background as I'm a city planner, spent most of my time in the last 20, 30 years here in Rhode Island, either doing neighborhood revitalization or affordable housing.

I probably can claim 80 or 90% of the early tax credit deals, subsidized housing programs, and uh work many years in public housing as well.

All of that to say, many, many years have gone into trying to change the equation for working families who happen to be African American, mostly uh non-white in many cases, but not necessarily.

But the way um we have experienced um city revitalization has um probably been a reflection of uh the greater society that we've been talking about.

Um this inherent fight to survive, this inherent um will to be in community to create safe spaces and success uh over generations.

So I'm gonna keep it brief.

Uh just want to give a kind of a snapshot of some of the mechanisms that are used to um compromise the uh opportunities and the talent and um needs of people in working poor and um African American communities in particular.

This is not just to Rhode Island, um, it's obviously systemic.

So in nature, it's throughout the country.

You uh mention it briefly when we talk about urban renewal.

We talk today about ARPA and all these acronyms, uh programs that are bifurcated that maybe don't um from the bottom up, they don't come from a spirit of people asking for certain types of support.

In many cases, the support people have asked for has been converted into something else, more comfortable, so that systemic um challenges and discrimination really don't actually go away.

So one of the uh books that I was recommending to folks is uh a book on um explaining so what what happened to Black Wall Street, what what happened to uh the wealth in the African American community nationally, and then it's called The Mechanisms of Ruin.

And one of the uh principles of those mechanisms is that people don't actually say what they mean, they say other things that we maybe want to hear.

So when we talk about urban renewal, it seemed like progress.

But then we look at urban renewal, and it uh pretty much um meant uh highway improvements went through every African American community of prosperity, even here.

Fox Point, one of the most prosperous communities for sure.

Cable show you in the while.

Um we lost over a hundred businesses that were never replaced.

We lost churches, we lost big um communities in general, both African American as well as uh Cabo Verde, um Portuguese, uh just gone.

Uh we we did go back a couple years ago to try to relocate some of the promises that were made by the PRA back in those days, and um to our dismay, a lot of those locations that were raised or demolished are now parking lots.

They're not places of business, they're not schools, libraries, nothing that contributes.

They just sort of wiped out the the topography and kept rolling.

So let me just talk a little bit about the five, the six things that essentially we're asking every one of us as stewards of the future, as well as people who are responsible teaching our each generation or people you know.

There's basically five ways that folks um were victimized.

Racial violence, obviously, is at the top of the list.

Uh racial violence uh can really put a damper in the community spirit, particularly if you witness uh lynchings, hangings, people's towns being burned, and Tulsa, they actually got in an airplane and dropped gasoline on top of small businesses from the air.

That's a lot of work.

That's a lot of anxious.

Uh, but that's those are the facts.

So racial violence has been a cornerstone of keeping folks in their place, shall we say.

So racial violence has been a cornerstone of keeping folks in their place, shall we say, and I don't necessarily think that it's just specific to African Americans.

As you know, the indigenous community was pretty much wiped out.

Um we have stories about witch hunters when women were not uh staying in their lane.

So racial violence in general, violence in particular, is a really heavy stone that is constantly thrown in our direction.

The other uh more recent um, but not necessarily, I mean, keeps talking about a hundred years before Wall Street, Black Wall Street.

Um, but one of the other mechanisms is discriminatory financing, so that you don't have access to capital, or if you do have access to capital, it is um different sets of rules.

Um one example we might look at today is redlining.

Um that really put a generational dent, shall we say, in our ability to maintain and own property, create assets, pass them on, and generational wealth.

So discriminatory financing may seem like a small word, but in fact it's a pretty deep strategy.

It's a tool that this gentleman has been fighting for a long time to sort of level the playing field.

We have small businesses that can testify how hard it is to raise money, raise capital, particularly if it's other people's money.

But we have come up with alternatives in many ways.

Small communities, immigrant communities, recent arrivals, they tend to pull their money, they tend to work in cash, um, and they obviously know their customers pretty well, and they often serve customers that were no longer um invited into the mainstream.

The other is uh zoning abuse, which we uh actually are sort of in a weird variation of that as we speak, because uh the city zoning ordinances were recently revised, um, they take a look at them every 10 years.

But the unfortunate thing, in my opinion for everyday citizens is a lot of times we don't think zoning affects us.

And in fact, zoning is a pretty pretty hefty tool to um to keep people uh to keep inequities and um abuses uh in play.

And uh one of those zoning abuses, for example, in a contemporary light, is a lot of programs, you know, card programs, you know, business districts that are designated as underserved, underprivileged.

Um the picture looks pretty good.

It looks like, well, let's work on main streets, let's work on Broad Street, let's work on Cranson Street.

But the surface is one thing, but underneath the process of implementing those programs is a whole nother set of balls.

Um typically banks, traditional banks are the underwriters, typically people who are not affected by those decisions are making the decisions.

And in many cases, um zoning is intentionally designed to avoid the more important institutions that we um rely on.

Public education being one of them, um health and hospitals being another.

I mean, when you go to rural communities, they're very mindful of the fact that it may be an hour before they see a hospital.

And in our case, uh we may not realize it, but we might be sitting underneath the hospital, but that hospital has basically been a marauder and um an intruder in a neighborhood that pretty much destroyed hundreds of families and their livelihood.

The last one, which uh we touched on a little bit, which is uh Urban Renewal, it's a 1949 act uh from the United States Congress.

Essentially basically it was removing blight.

And you don't want to be on the blight list if you can help it.

And you don't want to be considered a blighting influence.

But entire communities of color, whether they were prosperous, middle class, working class, farmers, rural, urban, they were considered blighting influences.

The focus of blighting anti-blighting policies.

So we end up with a neighborhood that uh was once prosperous and thriving, and homeownership was pretty uh significant too vacant, abandoned, um, deteriorating conditions, lack of services, lack of supplies.

I mean, who knows where you could buy um reasonably priced food in a neighborhood if uh there are no stores that you can buy from.

So those are the kinds of things that I'm asking, or uh in my discussion, I would like to make sure people are mindful that what you see on the surface is not necessarily what's going on underneath it.

And the way you can measure those is by asking the simple question what are we trying to accomplish?

Who are you trying to help?

Who are you trying to support?

Who are you trying to get out of the way of?

And one thing I can honestly say, for example, in politics today, there's a corporate sector, and then there's uh political sector of powerful people that understand how to read between the lines.

They understand advocacy, they understand when necessary, bullying people.

Um they understand the connection between a poor education, a poor educational system, a poor health care system, uh, poor streets and services, and people staying in poverty.

And poverty, believe it or not, is a business.

It is an industrial complex that creates a certain amount of momentum, it creates a certain amount of business opportunities, and you know, as many times as I've tried to envision what would society look like without uh systemic oppression and discrimination, it's hard for me to even imagine what that looks like, but I know what it feels like.

It feels like the communities that lived in the throes of slavery and still managed to buy property, find a way to safety, create safe communities, um, use their strengths.

And in our case, I believe our strengths is one another, and the communities that we build rely on listening to one another.

So you'll see stories, uh Caleb is gonna take you on of amazing individual accomplishment.

But if you add up all those individuals, you will find that they themselves are part of a greater community that gave them the inspiration and gave uh the community members around them the courage that they needed.

That's it.

How do I get to the next verse?

All right, thanks.

Okay.

Now I know you're probably saying, oh God, they're shoving a bunch of stuff down our throat, but that's we only get well, we usually get the shortest month, so we gotta shove a lot of stuff down people's throat black history time.

We were able to spill over into March this year, so we got a little bit more time.

But um, but I do want to um say, staying on that that um black wall street thing, that there's there were hundreds upon hundreds of black wall streets all throughout, down in the deep south.

Florida alone had like six thriving communities that they just took away from because and it usually started with a rumor of oh the black man looked at the white woman or something, anything to incise people to get them to burn down and destroy.

Um but I do have to also make sure I mention that we in North Carolina had um Durham, North Carolina, and it was one of the banking nationwide, not just nationwide, worldwide banking institutions from there.

That's my home state.

You know, I'm gonna mention there whenever I can.

I'm a North Kakke girl.

So that being said, I also want us to realize that they're still around.

Some of the wealthiest areas are still there.

You still have Maryland.

I mean, if you go into um Baltimore and the Maryland area, there's like four or five thriving black communities.

That I mean, they are prospering.

They have lots of money, lots of experience, lots of people that I educated, you know.

We still have people here.

But you know, Martha's Vineyard, for the longest time.

When I was growing up, I thought Martha Bendy was for white folks, rich white folks.

Wait a minute.

Martha Bendy got a little wealthy spot for us, too.

You know.

So we just gotta see them.

We gotta get our children, let them know that you can thrive, you can be anything and everything that you may possibly want to be.

There is no stopping us, as the song says, ain't no stopping us now.

We should not be holding our children back.

We should not be the ones that are not telling them all the opportunities, all the heroes, because we got a lot of unsung heroes.

We need to tell them about them.

We have them locally, we have them nationally, we have them globally.

Let them see it.

And I'm preaching to the black folks now, but my Latino sisters and brothers, you got the same thing, you gotta do the same thing, because we can't leave it to this society for them to learn it in school, because it not it falls on us.

Education starts at home.

Make sure that we educate our children to the best of their ability, and if they see that something that the teacher's not teaching something, right?

Same old whoa, wait a minute.

I have a book that says X, Y, and Z.

Let them know that we come from a stock of Africans, proud and strong, the richest man that ever lived to this day, came from Africa.

Don't tell them who it is, make them look it up.

I'm true, believe in leaving out the little, you know, things.

I'm gonna give you the story, but I expect you to follow through.

Let them search for it, let them want to know, and if we as a people, let them know that they are loved, they are respected, they are strong, they are resilient, they're all that because they came from us, and that is a very we have roots so deep that in the tree, the branches are just out there.

Tell them look up in the branches, look up there and find a place for you, because we need everybody to be on that tree, and that tree that in order for it to sustain and stay strong, needs for us to show them their roots for us to let them know.

Look at us, ain't no stopping us, ain't no stopping us.

I would also like to ask our beautiful elite Jeans to come and give us another song and then okay, hey everybody.

Uh, thank you so much, Mr.

Stokes and Mr.

Mohammed for the history and the historical corrections.

Thank you as well, Miss Rochelle.

Thank you so much for that information for the work you're putting in and that distinction about the surface, but looking deeper, and that's often what's going to reveal where more of the work needs to happen.

Uh again, my name is Elite G.

I am a local artist.

Uh, some would know me originally as Elite Phoenix, but we are in a new season, so you can find me everywhere at Elite G.

And I am really excited to share this next song with you.

I hope that you receive it as encouragement, as a charge to use your voice and to speak up and share your stories, just as everyone on this panel has spoken to the importance of that.

Um, I believe that just by the mere fact that you're breathing right now means that you have a God-given purpose and a gift that you can give the world that no one else can do.

And so I hope this song is encouraging for you.

Okay.

But you're biting your tongue.

Spent a lifetime stuck in silence.

Afraid you'll say something wrong.

If no one ever hears it, how we gonna learn your song?

So come on, come on, come on, come on.

Got a heart as loud as lions, so I let your voice be tamed.

Maybe you are a little different.

No need to be ashamed.

Got the light to fight the shadow, so stop hiding it away.

Come on, come on.

I wanna sing, I wanna shout, I wanna scream to the worst try out, so put it in all of the papers.

I'm not afraid they can read up how read up at night we're waking up the neighbors while we sing away the blues, making sure that we're remembered, because we are mad at two.

If the truth has been forbidden, then we're breaking all the rules.

Come on, come on, come on, come on, get the TV and the radio to play our tune again.

It's found time we got some airplay of our virgin of events.

There's no need to be afraid.

I will sing with you, my friends.

Come on, come on.

I wanna sing, I wanna shout out, I wanna scream to the words try out, put it in all of the papers.

I'm not afraid they can read about it, read all about it, we're all wonderful, wonderful people, but when did we all get so fearful?

Now we're finally finding our voices, so take a chance, come help me sing it.

Yeah, we're all wonderful, wonderful people.

So indeed we all get so fearful.

Now we're finally finding our voices.

So take a chance, come help me sing it.

I wanna sing, I wanna shout, I wanna scream to the world try out, put it in all of the papers.

I'm not afraid, they can read about it, read all about it, oh I wanna sing, I wanna shout, I wanna scream to the words try out, put it in all of the papers.

I'm not afraid, they can read up how it read up how it.

Thank you.

This is not quite over.

We have one more speaker.

Um and it's I'm sorry.

Caleb every year comes out and he puts out a display and he makes sure that we have something to talk about for not just blacks, not but the history for Rhode Island, you know, and whenever I talked to him, I told him what my wanted my theme to be.

He took he took it in Ebrand, you know, and I appreciate him for that.

You know, sometimes you you know, we overlook our staff.

We shouldn't.

Because they are the backbone to every organization.

Because those of us that think we're sitting up on top, if we didn't have them down there helping us out with uh seeing us through, we will all fall on our faces.

So I just want to call Caleb up, and he's gonna just tell us a little bit of what what's going on, and then when you go outside, he'll if you have enough time, please let him show you some of the exhibits.

Caleb.

So I'll keep it a bit brief so we can all take a look at the exhibit.

And I think the trailblazers out there really speak for themselves.

But uh I wanted to parrot something.

Um Keith said that uh, you know, African American history is US history.

Um I remember many many years ago, I had a professor, she was a mentor of mine, um, and the her first lesson in her class was just that.

Um, and she taught me how to write, she taught me to be a real historian.

Her name was Erline Ferguson um at the University of Rhode Island.

And I went down this journey in this real love for African American history, but as it relates to Rhode Island and Providence, and this is before I started working at the city archives.

I uh I wrote on the African American community and their plight and fight for suffrage, and I've spoken about that quite a bit and written about that, but it's morphed into other things.

Um particularly my love of uh that era of the 19th century, mid-19th century in the African American community, uh specifically in Providence.

Um, you know, I was going to after that I went to library school.

I uh interned up here and I trained under uh another mentor of mine named Paul Campbell, and I like to give him a shout out because it's been about 11 years since he passed, or or sorry, since he left, and then he passed about um five or six years ago.

But Paul and I actually found some records that are on display, believe it or not, outside in the basement of City Hall, in a leaky basement.

Uh the archives was not in very great condition at that point.

Um there was actually a committee by the city council to overhaul the archives in 2009.

Um I trained under him, I ended up taking over the archives, and um I like to give a very big shout out to Mary Kay Harris, who uh her and I actually went down this road to start these African American history exhibits every year, about 11 years ago.

Um it's funny how everything kind of fell into its place for me.

Um maybe it's destiny, I don't know.

Uh but again, a parrot parroting off of Keith.

Sorry to keep mentioning you.

Um we need these institutions more than ever.

These stories can't be told without them.

In fact, uh Keith and Sonny's uh Matter of Truth report, uh many of the references in that report come from the Province City Archives and other institutions, of course, and my colleagues uh around the state.

So our goal is to not have documents in a leaky basement or a leaky dome.

Our goal, and and I have to thank this administration tremendously for listening, cooperating, and helping, um, is to improve the city archives.

Our mission is to collect, preserve, but most importantly make available in order to collect and preserve, we need the um resources as Keith had mentioned um so much in this state, really, for all of our institutions, including Rhode Island State Archives, uh Black Heritage Society, of course, um, you know, Newport uh Historical Society, Rhode Island Historical Society, the list continues.

Um, you know, I'm not trying to make this about the city archives, but really these stories cannot be told without the city archives.

And black history again is US history, and we're a microcosm of US history, basically.

We're one of the most industrious, most important cities.

Um, you know, on the East Coast.

So a lot of things that happen here, including with the black community, other communities, is a reflection in that history that we store upstairs.

So really, when you look at this exhibit today, think of the city archive.

Look at the record from Eleanor Eldridge, the first printing of her book, the writs and warrants of her arrest.

Um, because she owed a debt, and you can read about that story um outside.

I won't go into great detail to save time, but really um so think of the archives when you look at that that collection, because in order to tell these stories, we really need to do our our due diligence to preserve these records.

And uh again, I'd like to thank my colleagues.

Uh this is fantastic and enjoy.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

I said we weren't gonna be here to midnight.

And I'm still trying to get us out here before midnight.

I just want to say thank you all for coming.

I hope you learned something.

I hope you bring something back to somebody, because that's what this is all about.

It's by we gotta keep spreading the information and spreading the love.

And it's also before we leave, one thing we all need to be doing in here, every last one of us, and it has really nothing to do with black history, is this one of the songs that we used to sing during it, and we took liberties with because we have black culture, we we do take liberties every now and then with things.

But I want everybody to think about this.

We need everybody to get out there and help in your communities.

You in order for us to have beautiful, big, welcoming and thriving communities, we gotta be out there in them.

We gotta help make them healthy.

The only way to do that is going nobody turn me around, turn me around, turn me around, and gone nobody, turn me around, I'm gonna keep on walking, keep on talking, serving my community.

Good night, everyone.