Commemorating the history of African-Americans in Rhode Island should be simpler than it often is, advocates say, and the Hardscrabble race riot of 1824 is a case in point.
A recent $45,200 state Department of Transportation allocation will enable the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society to create a memorial site on a small triangle of grass where Canal Street meets North Main Street, with a plaque detailing the riot, national park-style informational panels, paths, trees, and benches. But because the location of the disturbance is disputed, the memorial’s placement may give it short shrift.
The Hardscrabble riot began when a white man told a black man to step off of the sidewalk to let him pass, and the black man refused. Racial tension was so intense that only a small spark was needed to provoke the ensuing melee, in which hundreds of whites destroyed the homes of about 20 blacks, says Richard Lobban, a professor of African studies and Anthropology at Rhode Island College. Blacks and working class Irish immigrants lived among saloons, whorehouses, and sailors’ quarters in Hardscrabble, on the edge of Providence. Prosecution of the rioters was practically nonexistent.
In 1986, the Black Heritage Society created plaques marking important landmarks in the state’s black history, some of which comprise the Black Heritage trail. A plaque already exists for the 1831 Snowtown riot, which destroyed the black neighborhood rebuilt after Hardscrabble, resulting in the deaths of five whites at the hand of the state militia. Memorializing such a contentious history is rarely easy. Some of the plaques created by the Heritage Society have sat in storage for the last 20 years, including one — which the Society would like to place at the State House — mentioning the Emancipation Proclamation.
Ted Sanderson, executive director of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission, assisted Bela Teixeira, director of the Black Heritage Society, in the group’s application for the DOT funds. Sanderson says his research shows that the Hardscrabble neighborhood existed around the base of Olney Street.
Lobban, though, believes the riot took place on what is now the State House lawn, and he asserts that placing the memorial on North Main Street, farther from the Capitol, reflects the interests of those who want to tell the “white ruling class history of Rhode Island.” Sanderson counters that his interpretation is based on history, not ideology. “I’ve consulted historical documents and the work of other historians, who all agree that Hardscrabble was roughly along the waterfront, along the Blackstone canal and the Moshassuck River. Why Richard Lobban thinks this is an ideological issue is beyond me.”
Noting the long path to telling the tale of an important moment in state history, Lobban says, “We’re not talking about millions of dollars, we’re not talking about legal suits — we’re talking about human compassion and integrity in telling the history of our state. That is reparations.”
