PROVIDENCE,
R.I. — One of the darkest chapters of Rhode Island history involved
the state’s pre-eminence in the slave trade, beginning in the 1700s.
More than half of the slaving voyages from the United States left from
ports in Providence, Newport and Bristol — so many, and so contrary to
the popular image of slavery as primarily a scourge of the South, that
Rhode Island has been called “the Deep North.”
That
history will soon become more prominent as the Episcopal diocese here,
which was steeped in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, establishes a
museum dedicated to telling that story, the first in the country to do
so, according to scholars.
Many
of the shipbuilders, captains and financiers of those slaving voyages
were Episcopalians. The church, like many others in its day, supported
slavery and profited from it even after the trans-Atlantic slave trade
was outlawed and slavery had been banned in the state. Among the most
notable Episcopalian slaveholders were Thomas Jefferson, who was active
for some time in the church, and George Washington.
Over the last decade, the Episcopal Church of the United States has formally acknowledged and apologized for its complicity in perpetuating slavery. Some Episcopal dioceses have been re-examining their role, holding services of repentance and starting programs of truth and reconciliation.
The
Diocese of Rhode Island, like many others, has been slow to respond.
But under Bishop W. Nicholas Knisely, who became the Episcopal bishop of
Rhode Island in 2012, it is taking steps to publicly acknowledge its
past. They include the establishment of a museum focused on the
trans-Atlantic slave trade, slavery and the North’s complicity, as part
of a new center for racial reconciliation and healing.
“I
want to tell the story,” Bishop Knisely said, “of how the Episcopal
Church and religious voices participated in supporting the institution
of slavery and how they worked to abolish it. It’s a mixed bag.”
Other slavery museums — notably the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, La., and the Old Slave Mart Museum
in Charleston, S.C. — tell the story of slavery in the South. Some
museums and historic sites touch on slavery in the North. But no museum
is devoted to the region’s deep involvement, according to James DeWolf
Perry VI, a direct descendant of the most prolific slave-trading family
in the United States’ early years and a co-editor of a book called
“Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites.”
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