PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – The Brigantine Sally slave ship set sail from Providence to the African coast in 1764, carrying gallons of rum and boxes of candles – but also pistols, handcuffs and leg shackles. That year, Brown University was formally chartered.
The wealthy Brown family ties the two events together. The four Brown brothers who organized the voyage through their merchant firm were also leading benefactors of the university, which later took its name from a member of the family’s next generation.
A new exhibit at Brown, on display at the John Carter Brown Library, looks at the relationship some of the university’s founding fathers had with slavery and chronicles the early spread of the slave trade through Rhode Island and New England.
The exhibit is part of a comprehensive self-examination of Brown’s centuries-old link to slavery. A report released by an internal committee last fall suggested the creation of a slavery memorial and an academic center focused on slavery and injustice.
The Ivy League school, responding to the report, said it would raise $10 million for an endowment to help Providence public schools.
Since much of the committee’s research was done in the library, “We figured, why not put up a companion exhibition,” said Richard Ring, a Brown librarian and one of the curators of the display. Some of the documents on display are also referenced in the report.
The exhibit’s purpose is not to take a position on the report but rather to contribute to the campus-wide discussion, Ring said. The meticulous records kept by the Brown family and still preserved in the John Carter Brown Library made it easier to piece together the history.
“It is literally the case that if you bought a cup of sugar from a Brown family enterprise in 1750, I can tell you your name, date and how much you paid,” said James Campbell, an associate professor at Brown who led the committee that produced the report.
Though the Browns were slave traders, they were relatively minor players in the industry by the standards of the Rhode Island merchant class, Campbell said. But their role in the university’s founding is unmistakable.
For instance, one of the four Brown brothers, Nicholas, is listed on the school’s charter; another brother, John, served as treasurer of its governing corporation. The school was chartered as the College of Rhode Island in 1764, but its name was changed to Brown University in 1804 following a gift from Nicholas Brown’s son, Nicholas Jr., an ardent abolitionist.
The exhibit reveals the searing debate, even within the Brown family, about the institution of slavery.
It includes the constitution of the Providence Abolition Society, which Moses Brown helped found in 1789 after adamantly renouncing slaveholding. Next to it, though, is a defense of slavery written by his brother John and published in a Providence newspaper that year.
“For my part, I wish the whole race of mankind, of every colour, all the happiness that was designed them in their creation,” John Brown writes. But, he continues, “there have been and ever will be distinctions among men.”
The exhibit gives special attention to the voyage of the Sally, a 100-ton slave ship owned by Nicholas Brown & Co. – a merchant firm run by the Brown brothers. A cargo invoice detailing the goods the ship carried is on display, as is a daily log that reveals the slaves who died onboard.
The Sally reached the West Indies in 1765, but the trip was considered a disaster because of the large number of slaves who died due to illness, suicide and a failed uprising, according to the report.
The exhibit includes Boston newspaper advertisements for slaves in which children and adults are marketed like pieces of property. Some materials relate directly to Brown itself, such as a draft of the college charter and a design plan for University Hall – which was the oldest building on campus and was partially constructed through slave labor.
“Seeing an actual historical document and being able, as it were, to touch the past can be a more powerful experience than simply reading something in a book,” Campbell said.
The exhibit is on display through the end of April.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
