On this episode, host Sharon Hinton continues her conversation with Keith W. Stokes.
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On Another Level
I have a problem every year around in the payday because Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. for some reason has been treated as America's civil rights mascot. On this day you'll have folks who would have never in their life marched with, agreed with, voted with, anything we should believe in, one of the biggest biggest in the United States Congress. If you ought to actually send out a Dr. King for the march has begun every day. We rise like the sun is right to the back. Welcome and good evening for another episode of On Another Level. I'm your host Sharon Eaton Hinton. I am the producer and the host of this show and I am the proud, proud interviewer of an amazing man. Let me introduce you to him. This is actually part two. In a series, he was so wonderful and so amazing I had to bring him back and his name is Keith W. Stokes. He's a native Newport, Rhode Island resident. He served as the Rhode Island advisor for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, along with serving on numerous regional and national historic preservation boards, including Chairman of the Turo Synagogue Foundation. His Vice President and Trustee of the Preservation Society for Newport, Newport, Rhode Island. Newport County advisory board the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society. Board member of the Newport Historical Society has a long distinguished career in business, history, and community development degrees from Cornell and the University of Chicago. He's a frequent national, state, and local lecturer in community and regional planning. Historic preservation and interpretation with an expertise in early African and Jewish American community history. Mr. Stokes has lectured extensively to regional and international organizations. He's developed interpretative program, interpretation programs, let me get that right. Historic Main Street Planning, Historic Site Recovery. He has been the recipient of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society's Frederick Williamson Award, Daughters of the American Revolution Excellence and Community Service Award, and along with his wife, who's not here tonight, unfortunately, try to get her begin. He's the recipient of the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities Prize for Creative Achievement and the Humanities, and he's got so much more, but before I say anything else, I want to introduce Mr. Keith W. Stokes, hello Keith, how are you? I can't hear you, but I know that you're speaking. And I'm so glad that you got a chance to come back and we get to see your amazing room with all the archives. I got to see your family before I got to see you when I visited Rose Cliff Mansion. It was a trip, a day trip that the Jubilee Christian Church's Women's Group had. We had over 100 women, all dressed in yellow that were there in Newport, and we did actually the exhibit is over now, it was over May 30th, June 30th, I'm sorry June 30th, but made a June 30th about African Americans in Newport, Rhode Island. And then on our previous show, you talked about the fact that there has been a long history black presence or African American presidents in Newport, Rhode Island, and your family was a part of it. And if we have the picture of your family, I want to show this picture while you're talking to me, because you're in this portrait, I believe. Well, the exhibit was developed in with the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, and we worked in collaboration with the Newport mansions. Oh, which one are you now? Are you the one with the tie, the red tie and the hat in the back? No. That's an image of, that's from 1913, so that's a little bit before my time. Oh, okay. That's my late aunts and uncles in Newport at East East Beach from ages three to eight, and they're posing after Easter services, but again, the purpose of the exhibit was to present the fact that we as African heritage people have always existed from the very beginning in America, particularly here in New England. And the exhibit, even though it was called the Gilded Age Newport in color, many of the original artifacts which include clothing, business cards, fine furniture, documents came from vibrant African heritage families from Fort Boston, Philadelphia, Harlem, New York, Brooklyn, New York, and also throughout Connecticut, particularly Bridgeport in New London and Hartford, Connecticut. So, we really were telling the story of what we call in Rhode Island Creative Survival, how African heritage people, despite arriving in the worst circumstance of enslavement, facing almost daily racialized discrimination, we persevere. And in that exhibit, we talked about the evolution of the first black owned businesses, the evolution of the black church. They're all into twine, benevolent organizations, and mostly, and I thought I was most exciting in the exhibit is, is that it all got its start well way back in the 18th century, and I think that surprised many of our visitors. They had no idea that they were vibrant, free black communities in places like Beacon Hill, Boston, College Hill Providence, Historic Hill, Bellevue Avenue, Newport, the Seventh Warder, downtown Philadelphia, what is today largely part of Central Park, New York City, these were all vibrant African heritage communities where we lived, worked, and worshipped well before the Civil War. Now, when we talked about, I looked at that exhibit and I kept taking pictures and I was fascinated. I wish I'd had more time to stay there, but I was part of a tour, but I did go into every single room. The exhibits showed different women's leagues, and I think there were four different churches, there were four major churches in Newport, they were actually the mainstay part of the foundation, the political foundation, and the organizational foundation of Newport. Are those churches still there? What are the churches, there were four, I believe, and are they still there? They were four, but they consolidated into a single one, which is today the Community Baptist Church, which is still vibrant and active in Newport. But the story we were trying to tell is that the center of the black community historically has always been the black church, and in fact, it's the black church was the one place before slavery and during slavery where we could assemble and not have white oversight. And when you begin to understand the dynamics of the black church, it's not only the religious services that are important, later it becomes a platform for political discussions, educational gaming, social justice, childcare. In fact, many of the founding members of the first free black churches in America are all directly tied to Newport, Providence, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. To give you an example, if we could take you back to the late 18th century, it's a Reverend Richard Allen who establishes in Philadelphia what is today the first African Methodist Episcopal Church in America, Mother Beth L. He is corresponding with free Africans in Newport, who introduce him in the fellow Philadelphia Africans to a man named Prince Hall and Boston, who would go on to form the first Prince Hall affiliate that bears his name, African Benevolent Society, Masonic Society. So the first black churches are starting in places like Philadelphia, Providence, and Newport. The first black Masonic orders are starting with Prince Hall and Boston, and then you see them cropping up in Providence, New York, and Philadelphia. So the fact that we have so many of the original primary records that points to this history, a history that's largely unknown, really gives us a sense of what it was like to be the black founding fathers of America. And I have to point out that almost immediately after these institutions are founded, African women are founding their own benevolent societies. In fact, some of the earliest African benevolent societies you see operating in early 19th century, Boston, Philadelphia, and Newport. You know this because they're exchanging letters. Now I know that when you look at, we talked about the service industry in the beginning. I'd gone on an African-American history tour in Martha's Vineyard. And so there's a van that you get in there and they take you all around, and like you said, the black churches will the church. In Martha's Vineyard, it was actually an offshoot of a major church that the black congregation started. It was a story of the gentrification that happened in Martha's Vineyard and how. But there are legacy homes that have been passed down from family to family. And I'm wondering if there's a correlation in Newport, Rhode Island, to where the black families lived versus where they live now. And how that happened, if people were able to pass down, like is there still a certain part in Newport that's still the African-American area of town or has been moved all over the place or does it still exist? You know, one of the great ironies we touched upon in the exhibit, but a few years before, I did much of the reparations work for the city of Providence, Rhode Island. One of the things that we found is that as African heritage people became African-American and free in early America, largely in the North and particularly in New England, they would establish free communities. And we define free communities by Africans own their own homes, their own places of worship, and their places of business. So some of the earliest free African communities in America are places like the North Slope of Beacon Hill. If it was Providence, Rhode Island, today we call it College Hill, where Brown University and Rhode Island School design occupy the space. In Newport, it's the famous Bellevue Avenue and historic Hill. So what you find is that some of the earliest free African communities in America are today some of the most historic and most costly high-end communities in America that have little or no black presence. That's intentional. That wasn't done haphazardly, and it didn't begin 10 or 20 years ago. It started almost immediately when Africans became free. Today we talk about the Tulsa race riots of 1920, 100 years before that, nearly every single free African community in the North faced racial riots and displacement. We see these race riots in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Boston, Providence, all across the North. And in each and every case, those riots displaced black people. Black homes were burnt, churches were burnt, people were moved out of the neighborhoods, and then those lands were claimed for larger white community purposes. Fast forward 100 years into the mid 20th century, race riots are replaced with urban renewal policies and practices, where the federal government provided funding and legislative initiative for cities and towns and counties to create their own redevelopment authorities and lo and behold, areas that they determined to be blighted for urban redevelopment and the displacement were almost always black enclaves in the mid 20th century. The late James Baldwin had a term for urban renewal. He called it 1965 Negro removal. So what we're talking about is that African heritage people, later to be African Americans, have always been a part of the American history. We built American history and we've always lived in some of the oldest and most historic communities, but through a series of generations of focused removal by riots, by statutory process, by public policy, by investment strategies. We lost the opportunity to live in those neighborhoods. And today, we call that and we defined it as the racial wealth and equity gap. Today, the equity gaps and wealth gaps between black families and white families are vast, because white families, regardless of their ethnic background or immigrant status, eventually they're allowed to take advantage and benefit from the system. Access to loans, access to financial support, business support, education support, whatever they need to move into middle class. Whereas African heritage families and later African Americans were denied those benefits. So it's almost ironic today, you talk about Beacon Hill in Boston, and very few people realized that Joy Street in those areas were black strongholds. Today when you talk about Bellevue Avenue historic Hill in my community of Newport, very few people would realize that many of the homes still standing were once occupied by people of African heritage. So we use this history to present the historical facts, but also to provide an education opportunity for people of color today so that young people of color today can recognize what they once had and what they deserve to have today in going forward. They should have every opportunity to succeed in America because their forefathers and foremothers created that opportunity that was taken from them. What was it like knowing this history, knowing your family's history, seeing where it is now, and later on in the program we're going to talk about reparations because you're actually setting it up very, very well. In this current political climate, every election year, a presidential election year, pretty significant, and where you hear terms like, I was watching something, a video about, and it was from a Caucasian politician about, in America needs to roll itself back to the 60s, the way it used to be, and then make America great again. And so the question is great again for who? How do you see your family position because you're a historian, your wife's a historian, and not only African-American history, but Jewish history. So we're watching what's happening in Israel and the wars that are happening in Gaza. We're watching what's happening in this country and the political discourse that's pretty acrimonious in the United States and recent events. And then you look at your history of your family and of African-Americans in this country and in Newport, in the face of the stories of the great gaps being all this wealth that was built on the black people, building railroads and convict leasing and that kind of thing. How do you see where we are in history right now? We as African-Americans and people of color in history right now. Well, I think we're going through a dramatic demographic shift in the United States. In fact, in the 2020 census and we'll use Providence, Rhode Island, the Capitol, Rhode Island as an example, in that 2020 census, 43% of the population of Providence reported were Latino and Spanish speaking. They are projecting by the 2030 census, they'll be well over 50%. Wow. And when you start to look at the national census, by 2050, the majority of the people in the United States will be people of color led by Latino, Spanish speaking people. It simply just tells us that North America is going to start to look like the rest of the Western Hemisphere. The people of the United States are going to start looking like the West Indies and South and Central America. What we've tried to do in understanding that is that many of these people who are Spanish-speaking have African descent. In fact, one of the things that we did in our reparations as we were creating eligibility was to recognize the fact that the eligibility term we use was African heritage people, meaning African-American, African-born, because there are more African-born in Rhode Island than African-Americans, Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribians, Cape Verdeans, and as we started to add up everyone that represents the diaspora, because all of us that are the part of the diaspora has been persecuted. It might be by the English, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, but we were persecuted. But what we found is that by unifying people across the diaspora, now we have the majority population which could translate into the majority vote, which in turn translates into prioritization of policies, programs, and funding to meet the deeds of the majority people. So we really tried to unify people around the very fact that the whole aspect of the transatlantic slave trade, along with the indigenous land-taking, that only began in the 17th century here in New England, a long and still existing process of racialized discrimination. And in fact, that racialized discrimination that started with indigenous land-taking then almost was immediately followed up by enslaved Africans to work the land. So we took indigenous land, so you get free land, and then that land, you get to work upon it by free labor, no wonder of white institutions and people became so wealthy in a very short period of time. But what was most important is we carried that study and that analysis forward to the modern period. In fact, we found in the 20th century similar devastating public policies, lawful activities that dislocated indigenous and African heritage people who now included caverdians, people moving from the American South and now living in places like Providence and New England. We're now facing new forms of discrimination, and let me give you one very, very direct example. Today we look back during the World War II era, and we recognize and we call them America's greatest generation. We hear that all the time. And the reward for winning that war, defeating Nazi Germany, defeating Japan and Italy, the reward was the creation of the GI Bill. Tens and tens and tens and millions of dollars was set aside by Congress for the specific purpose of giving returning GIs, men and women, direct opportunities to buy homes, to have free education, workforce and apprentice training. If you happen to be a black GI, you have little or no access to those benefits. So by the end of World War II, over a 20 year period, all those GIs returned are great American generation and they literally had a jump start to buy a home, build equity, get a job, create wealth and build intergenerational wealth, and that's in 1945 going forward. I had four of my family members. My father and three uncles served overseas. My youngest uncle was the Tissigi Airman, killed in service to his country at 19 years old in 1945. It took my father and one of my uncles 10 years to see any part of a GI benefit, and the only difference was in their service and their contribution to their country was the color of their skin. So we're not talking about slavery in 1790. We're talking about relatively modern day discriminatory policies. And then when you couple that with redlining and you couple that with employment and housing discrimination, all running rampant in the 1950s and 60s and 70s, is it a surprise today that so many people of African descent have a significant racial wealth disparity gap as compared to the white counterparts. So reparations is not about slavery. It's about the ongoing onslaught of racialized discrimination largely centered on African heritage people in this country that is now measured by very specific gaps in wealth and opportunity. And in fact, what we did in Providence is we looked at seven very specific measurable gaps of African heritage people in Providence. We found income disparities, business ownership, health disparities, incarceration rates, poverty rates, medium income rates. In fact, Providence Rhode Island in 2022 had one of the lowest black homeownership rates in the nation. Wow. Providence. So when we talk about building equity as a middle class person, it's owning a home. So I was pushing back more on your personal family history and you did touch on it in terms of the GI bill and because it was a draft, so all the men had to serve. And we're going to take a short break and play a clip. And I want to revisit this discussion about reparations and I want to push back this a little bit. I do acknowledge oppression. I do acknowledge governmental policies and legislation that was color, color-inspired hatred, traumatic, and ongoing policies and everything, they're affecting all people of color. But I think I got to push back a little bit, but I want to take a break. If you've just tuned in, we're on another level. I'm here with Mr. Keith Stokes, who I could listen to forever, talking about the African-American heritage in Rhode Island, but also across the country. Don't go anywhere and get a pen and pencil because we've got a lot of information to help you. Stay with us. My goal today is to literally capsize your thinking of the history of America, the history of Newport and most importantly, the history of African heritage people. In this story today that you'll hear, there's a story of one of the earliest and largest African-Barian grounds right here in Newport. Before the American Revolution, Newport, Rhode Island was the largest and most active slave port in all of British North America. Not Boston, not Charleston, South Carolina, not New York, but Newport. As early as 1708, enslaved Africans outnumbered indentured white servants in this community by eight to one, and in the years leading up to the American Revolution by 1770, one out of every four Newport households owned at least one enslaved African. At that time, Newport had the highest percentage of enslaved and some free Africans in all the American colonies outside of Charleston, South Carolina. But before I begin to tell the story of these Africans and their evolution from enslavement to freedom, it's important to understand and recognize the history of Newport, the very settlement of Newport, because Newport specifically and generally Rhode Island was settled under the tenets of religious toleration and freedom. The early English settlers, the non-conformists that arrived here, and settled by 1639 were not explorers or conquerors. They weren't searching and seeking gold and land for kings and queens. They were highly persecuted men, women, and families of religious minorities, of both the old world and the new world, who were simply looking for a place to worship God freely. And those men and women and families that settled here were established by 1663, a body of lords or a charter, that for the first time in world history, any citizen had the right to worship God freely without the oversight of a king or a queen or a royal governor. That is why today we are the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. But most importantly, we are the first place where people were able to come and live freely and worship freely. Now the irony is that those men, women, and families would establish themselves. Some of the earliest Quaker communities is not Philadelphia, but it's here in Newport along our Point neighborhood or Easton Point neighborhood. By 1658, Jews arrive and today we have one of the earliest and most extensive collection of Jewish places of worship and households in early America. The Baptist faith established by Roger Williams and Providence, but the first Baptist church structures are built here in Newport. This was a place where men, women, and families had achieved religious toleration. But ironically and almost simultaneously, as they established themselves in the merchant trade, we are sitting by the sea, they are involving themselves in the enslavement of fellow human beings. So on one hand, they are practicing and benefiting from religious freedom and toleration. And on the other hand, they are practicing and benefiting from the enslavement of fellow human beings. But it's important to recognize that as Newport was established at that time and as slaves were entering into this community, how they lived together, how they worked together, how they worshipped together, and eventually how they died is much different than what we commonly know and understand of the history of slavery in the early history of America. And we're back. And that piece on the TED Talk, Thank You, Keith Stokes, is a little bit longer than that. It's much longer than that. But I want to talk to the men. Welcome back. This is on another level. I'm your host Sharon Hinton. Keith Stokes is on the line with me from, you know, on the line. I'll say online because they're not paying us. I want to talk about reparations. And I looked at the document that Mr. Stokes sent me, excuse me. And on, I think it's page 13, it talks about eligibility definitions. Parameters for eligibility criteria, centuries of racial discrimination and exploitation have left a majority of African heritage and indigenous residents of Providence much poorer than their white counterparts. Today's racial wealth gap is a product of centuries of public policies and practices that continue to keep non-white residents of Providence from getting ahead. We spoke about that before the break. And then further on, eligibility definitions, the commission, this is the reparations commission in Providence, Rhode Island. The commission undertook significant deliberations to develop an eligibility policy that reflected both the history of racialized discrimination within the city of Providence dating back to nearly four centuries and also the ongoing effect still influencing the present day. On noting this history of discrimination began with indigenous land taking an African enslavement, it soon evolved into new forms of intolerance that were constantly placed upon non-white residents. The eligibility definitions also recognize residents who may not have been harmed by early injustices to indigenous inhabitants and enslaved Africans, but were injured by the lingering legacy of disenfranchisement and enslavement due to their indigenous and African heritage once they arrived in the city in later years. In recognizing these irrefutable demographic facts, the commission adopted four eligibility categories for recommended reparations, investments that would most accurately reflect the city of Providence's unique history and also respond to the residents in the present day with the most measurable need so there's indigenous people, African heritage people, qualified census tracts and neighborhood and residents facing poverty. Welcome back, Mr. Stokes. Our previous show dealt with the history of your family and African-Americans in Rhode Island and Providence in Newport, especially in regards to a follow-up to the exhibit that I saw, African-Americans in Newport. What struck me when I was on that tour because I'm this kind of a person, I asked the tour guide, where were the servants quarters? Where did they live? What did it look like? Any of these servants or, well, servants, were any of them black, and she said no. Some of them were immigrants, Irish immigrants, but none of them were black, and so the whole second floor of Rosecliff, the mansion there, Rosecliff, was dedicated to this wonderful exhibit, and unfortunately, like you said, our previous show was going to be digitized, and I hope that people will be able to see this. It's not the same if it's digitized walking through those rooms, and it was on the second floor of Rosecliff. So on the first floor, when you come in, and I had the audio tour in my ears, is telling you about the opulence of the rooms and the marble and, you know, all this wealth of white people, and some of the history of who they were, how they got there, the businesses in the industries they were in, and then the stories. I heard from one of the tour guides about the stories generationally of the Rockefellers and some of the families that were actually owning these mansions, and how the first generation created the wealth, the second generation spent the wealth, and the third generation, there wasn't much wealth left, and even during the '60s, these huge mansions were sold for 35,000, 21,000 because it was the '60s, and people weren't into really showing the money that they had necessarily, but also it was so expensive to keep up these mansions, and it was sold, and that's how historic society is going to hold them, so that we could tour them. However, what struck me was the, and we talked about it before the break, some of the, a lot of the neighborhoods now that are those types of neighborhoods, Beacon Hill, Back Bay, here in Boston, people don't realize that those were black communities, and we talked about gentrification, and we didn't really talk about the governmental policy in terms of highways. Whenever there was a prosperous black neighborhood, the government put a highway in it, Central Park, a lot of people don't know, was black township, Seneca Falls. I believe it was, but it's, or Seneca Park, but it's, you know, Central Park in New York, and so we hear about, you know, you talked about the bloody summer, 1919, 1920, and there's always been these periods where black people were oppressed, were killed, were murdered, were lynched in this country. Now my question to you, Mr. Stokes, and because you do have a family that can trace its roots back to Newport, and so do I, I mean all of my grandparents or southerners, is it fair, and I'm not trying to play the oppression who was more oppressed than the other people, in the discussion about reparations, is it fair and just to the people who work to build this country for free to be the only category of people who don't receive reparations for the harm that was done to our ancestors, and I put me in the category. Our ancestors, because I agree that there's discrimination in racial oppression and employment and all the other stuff going forward, but there's a specific class of people that are descendants of slaves, and there was, one of my other shows, we had a person talk about the Freedmen's Bureau, and how there was really a bureau established by a general, Civil War general, Union general, that said, you know, the forty acres of the mule, and that should be set aside, and then Lincoln was killed, and the next president said, no, we're not going to do anything, they pulled the troops out of down south, and then, you know, black people started getting murdered because of white citizens' council, and KKK and all that other stuff came to re-repress black people who had nothing, who got turned out for nothing. So my question to you is, should that be dealt with in this particular discussion where everybody is coming to the table, to get tables that they did not build, just because they've been denied eating at the table? I mean, that's a pretty simplistic way of putting this question, but shouldn't we deal with the people who are the original harm parties first, and then in discussion also include these other people because of political necessity? Does that make sense when I'm asking you? Yeah, my straightforward answer is, is that my task at the time was to interpret the history of racialized discrimination in Providence, Rhode Island, not the United States, not the American South, and not anywhere else but Providence, Rhode Island. So we developed a very comprehensive study that had over 700 footnotes of primary, secondary sources. So I think we did a very good job of presenting the case of racialized discrimination, how it began with indigenous slantaking, and then later African enslavement, and then continued into the present day. Let me ask you something. It's been proven. Excuse me. I'm going to cut you off. But let me just say this. Let me say something to you. But it's been proven that Brown University literally sold slaves, and that's in Rhode Island, right? And so there was a specific address for that. Brown University's participation in the slave trade, John Brown, the founder's name participation in the slave trade, is a drop in the bucket of the Newport slave traders. I get it. It was a redress. But I want to be very clear here, though, that was addressed, though. But the point that you're saying is that is recognizing who built this country. It is largely men and women of color over generations and over centuries that built this country. Slavery and indigenous slantaking began a process of racialized isolation and discrimination in continuing to the 19th century, 20th century to the present day. Our job was to define an eligibility criteria based upon the history of Providence, Rhode Island, not New York, not Mississippi, not San Francisco. So were there slaves in Rhode Island? Were there slaves in Rhode Island? Because I know recently-- Rhode Island. Recently was a discussion about change in name. Let me be clear on the documentation of Newport, Rhode Island, where I live today, where my ancestors were living at that time, was the largest slave trading center in British North America before the American Revolution, Newport, Rhode Island. As a part of our work, we were able to document 934 slaving voyages with 80% coming from Newport alone during that period of time. If I can bring you back to Rhode Island at that time, particularly places like Newport, Providence, and Bristol, significant percentage of our population were enslaved Africans. So we documented that, in fact, to a level that few other states and cities have done. But more importantly, we carried that forward to what went on once they became free. You know, one of the great ironies is, by the end of the 18th century, every now new United State in the England of the North, either immediately or gradually abolished slavery. So by the end of the 18th century, you have something in this country that never existed before-- 100,000 free African heritage men, women, and children, largely populated in places like Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. So now that they're free, what are they doing? They're building homes, they're creating churches, they're building livelihoods, they're making money, they want to pass it on to the next generation. And what begins to happen in the 19th century? Race riots, policies and practices that restrict their voting rights, their ownership rights, their movement within the cities and streets. In fact, what happens in the early 19th century as cities become incorporated, they establish police departments. And in a case of Providence, Rhode Island, the first mayor in is addressed to the newly incorporated city council specifically designates colored people and colored children as problems in the city that should be addressed by the newly formed police force. So I just want to be clear to the fact is the issues that we're wrestling with today, the criminalization issues, the poverty issues, the lack of access to healthcare, education is now playing out to new African heritage people. In many cases, it's still occupying the same neighborhoods and facing the same struggles. So all we tried to do was to create a plan that fit Providence, Rhode Island. What you're talking about is what the United States government should do. That's a national reparations policy and plan. Our goal was not to create a national plan. Our goal was to complete a plan that made sense for Providence in the state of Rhode Island. Well, the reason why I'm asking you about this is because I've gone to a lot of, and I'm glad you clarified that. Thank you. I've gone to a lot of the ongoing conversation and reparations, commission, task force is like three or four different groups here in Boston that are doing the same thing that are saying, and so you delineated very well. I read this report, and so that you were dealing with Providence, which is why I said, well, what was the enslaved population there? And so Boston is dealing with that too. And in any place that had a large trade, because we had Long Wharf, how Long Wharf where slaves were traded, and it was called Long Wharf because they had to make the wharf longer to accommodate the slave ships. So we've had historians and come on this show, and I've talked to you. And so you pieced out and you teased out very well why your report was written like that. I'm wondering, do you know if there's been any conversations between what you guys have already done in Providence, in Rhode Island, and the Boston, well, there's the MERS reparations task force, then there's Kevin Peterson's Boston People's Reparations Commission. And then there's the Society of Sons and Daughters of American Freedmen. And then there's a Massachusetts Reparations Board that's dealing with that too. Have you had any conversations with these groups that are in the process of what you guys have already accomplished for Providence? No, no. I've spoken to a number of cities and states around the country, not Massachusetts, which is next door. Again, I just want to be clear to the fact that when we establish our eligibility criteria, we had four criteria, one, recognizing we include indigenous people because particularly here in New England, many indigenous people share an African heritage. You see that with the Wampanoic people of Massachusetts, the Narragansits here in Rhode Island, and certainly the Pequots in Connecticut. We also had the term African heritage because we were recognizing the diaspora. We also had, because our funding was coming from American Rescue Plan Act dollars, upper dollars. And under the U.S. Department of Treasury guidelines, they had already recognized that the COVID pandemic had significant and measurable negative impacts, both health-wise and economically to African heritage and Latino people. That was clear. So we also created a criteria called qualified census tracts, meeting where people live. People are mostly being harmed and where they lived and work. And then we also have the fourth category, which was very important, residents facing poverty. If we are going to prioritize funding and support, if Oprah Winfrey moved to Providence tomorrow, I don't think she should qualify. I don't think a Brown University professor that's making significant money and has tenure that happens to be black should qualify. But I think if it's a single woman of color struggling in a poor neighborhood, I think she should prioritize and qualify. So we tried to be very measurable. We created a KPI, key performance indicators. We brought in an economist to basically verify the exact disparities within areas of, again, from income to housing to business ownership to health disparities, poverty rates. I mean, just to give an example, in 2022, one of the census tracts in Providence, which is largely occupied by people of color, many newly arriving immigrants, the medium household income was about $32,000. That's it. Whereas another neighborhood where Brown University happens to occupy, the medium household income was twice that. So we're using that data to clearly justify where dollar should be spent, where investments should be made. So we tried to take, again, based upon the history of Providence over four centuries, coming forward, what would be the investment strategies and who should be the eligible recipients in 2022 going forward? Because our goal was decreasing the current day racial equity gap in Providence, Rhode Island. And I will say this again, and this was a political decision, but I think the right one, by casting a wider net, we're building a political base. Because ultimately, how do things get done in government, be it from school committees or presidencies, majority vote? We will soon be the majority people in places like Providence, Boston, New England, across the country. And if we can organize today, we can set priorities today, then we can start closing that racial wealth equity gap with programs and services and opportunities that have been denied us, simply by the color of our skin. I have a question we talk about today and we talk about the political climate of today. And in recent history, there has been a pushback to what you're doing now, teaching history and teaching history of people of color and having the research to back it up. And it has been this teaching of history, a holistic teaching of history, has been demonized and saying it's critical race theory and literally outlawed in at least 11 of the United States. What is your feeling about that? How do you think we should best combat that? Because what you're doing is you have to educate people to how things were, where they are and where you want them to be. But if you can't include the true history, how are you ever going to really make any progress towards this possibility? Well, again, I can only speak for Rhode Island. In 2021, I was involved with the Rhode Island Black Heritage Site and others and we passed into state law an entire K to 12 African heritage history curriculum. So we now have that law in place. I'm working with the Black Heritage Society, they're taking the lead on this, we're working with scholars, curriculum consultants, and we're developing a whole series of units of instruction that would meet the needs of elementary, middle, and secondary schools. I can tell you that the units of instruction will begin with Africa before European colonization so that people can get to understand the importance of the African continent and the African people and their cultural, economic, spiritual, educational contributions to the building of the Americas. And then we'll go forward into the present day. What's exciting about this work is that we're working very closely with the teachers. There's a professional teacher development component so that teachers are fully prepared to teach these units of instruction. I think the coolest aspect of this, maybe we can share this on your show, your next show, we know that young people today are social media learners, they may not necessarily pick up a book. So one of the things that we're developing is a website where it'll be free to any student in K to public schools or any teacher and they'll be able to go on to this website and we'll actually have links to videos. They'll feel like YouTube TikTok videos lasting from 30 seconds or a minute and a half and we'll introduce you to all the different aspects of history. And then at the end of that video, you can click on, it'll give you a big biography, lesson plans, it'll give you access to further content and information. It's going to be very interactive and very much tied to kids learning not only in the classroom, but if they're home or in the church or out with their friends, they can pick up their mobile phone and go right into the website. So we're very excited about this. It's been a lot of hard work. It's not cheap, but again, sometimes being the smallest state, we can be a little bit innovative and then scaled up so that other states might take word. But I want to be candid here. Our governor, our legislative leadership have been fully uniform behind this effort from the very beginning. In fact, this last winter, we had an entire exhibit on reparations at our state house for three months. And it included slave manacles, it included the hard history, but it also included the history of Africans surviving and creating some of the early communities and contributions to Rhode Island. So we're very well prepared to tell the truth because it's based upon the facts. It's historical content. It's what it is. Let me ask you something. I don't know if this was ever resolved, but one of my family members lives in Rhode Island, right? And I attention that there was a discussion about the official name of Rhode Island was really the plantations of Rhode Island or something. Is that true? Yeah. In 2020, 2021 is a part of the worldwide response of the George Floyd movement and such. Many people of Rhode Island decided that the term plantations, our official name was the state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Providence Plantations is basically everything, but where I live in Newport on a clinic island. But in any case, many people thought that the name plantations had would connote slavery, plantation slavery, when in fact, most of the slavery in New England, specifically in the Southern New England, was more urban based, was more urban seaport based. But in any case, people went to a vote and people decided to remove the name. My only caution was we're not asking for enough. We should be asking for so much more than removing names. We should be asking for jobs, access to education, access to home ownership. And thus, from that, I initiated the reparations process because I felt very passionately because of the George Floyd movement, because of the very good work of young people across the world, we now have people's attention and we now have to create a very measurable reinvestment plan and policy to have long-term benefits to people of color. And that's more than just removing names or taking down statues. I agree. Now, again, we're in a presidential election, a year of presidential election, and I'm not sure if you've had a chance to look at the 2025 plan, this touted plan. It's like 900 pages. Yes, I've read it. And 900 pages. I haven't looked at all 900 pages. I've looked at some of the basic tenets of the plan. What's your opinion on that and where should we move-- I mean, your plan is very progressive. Your research is solid. And then we both talked about the political realities of where things are and what you're feeling in terms of where we need to go. My only recommendation is that we as people of color and our allies should focus exclusively on building our future. Other plans may or may not be constitutional, may not be politically feasible. But if we're spending time worrying about those plans, it's taking us off the focus of building our own plans and building our own opportunities. Now, wait a minute. This is back up for a second. You talk about building our own plans and building our opportunities, but you're a historian. So you know, historically, when we did that, what the pushback of the system was, of what oppression was. So how do we do that? The difference was historically, and this is the critical difference. We didn't have the majority. We were always a very small minority. We were always at risk. When you talk about the black community of New England, you're talking about a very tiny population, and we were at risk, and we had to fight for any seat that we received in voting rights. My ancestor was the first black state representative in 1885 in Rhode Island. I own most of his records, his personal items. We've donated them and such. He would not see a counterpart for 40 years later, and then it trickled in. So everything he had to do, he did on his own, and I would have to tell you that was similar in most other New England states, free states, progressive states, New England states. Today, going forward, we have a larger minority majority. Our populations are changing, and as our populations grow, we have an opportunity to change policy, to redirect business investment. I mean, look what's going on in the Latino community today. The Latino community today are exercising their economic power simply by their numbers. But I would also suggest that many Latinos share an African heritage, their Afro-Caribbean, their Afro-Latino. And I always have to remind my Dominican friends, the only difference in the Dominican Republic in Boston is that our ancestors are an extra boat trip from Ghana. The Minnequins were enslaved and then colonized by the Spanish. And here in the United States in Boston, we were enslaved and colonized by the British. And now you have the Minnequins who happen to live in Roxbury or Boston or Providence. They should be joining together with black folks, because together we have a single interest of improving our lives. But a lot of the Latino communities have their own issues with colorism, which has not been dealt with. So we use a white, black binary, right, and it's a framework, and I agree that we have to broaden it. But isn't there colorism in the black community? There's always been colorism. There's no doubt. But I'm just saying we've dealt with it. I mean, we've recognized it. I'm not sure if Latino communities are recognizing because they can move forward as a solid block of Spanish people. I think the younger generation does. I think my kids' generation, my daughters' husbands from Haiti, my youngest daughters' partner is from South America. They see themselves through the lens of the world. They see themselves more a part of the diaspora than they've ever had before, and that's with technology and social media and access. So I feel positive. I feel hopeful that the next generation who will be the majority are going to make the right decisions for themselves and finally for people of color. Because again, this is the bottom line. The one thing we can't change, regardless of what you say or I say, in the next 30 years, the majority of the people in this country will be non-white. And that means the majority of the visitor, the business person, the customer, the student, the council member, everything that runs this government will be dictated by the majority of the people. We should be spending the next 30 years not worrying about why people hate us or why policy discriminated against us. We should be working on how to build a better society because we'll have the vote. I love the fact that your energy and your positivity, I absolutely love it. We've come down to and I'm putting in my reservation now to get you on for another show. Because we do have to carry this conversation forward, especially as we get closer to the presidential election. Because we're running out of time. I wanted to find out how you use your position and connections with the historical society to actually move that legislation forward. And so politically, I think listening, our viewing audience, and I'm listening, audience needs to hear that. Like, how does that look? What does that look like? And I share your optimism about the future. Part of it is I hope I'm still alive in 30 more years. I mean, that would be great for me. And I hope you are too. And I hope for those people who have been here this evening, thank you so much, Keith Stokes, for part two of this conversation, which has national implications. We started in Newport and we started in Providence because I saw just an amazing exhibit, which I hope ends up touring. Last show we talked about possibly touring or in some digital form, the African Americans in Newport exhibit. That was just awesome. And so two things, how does someone get in contact with you? And then is there an exhibit that's happening now that people can visit? You can contact me through the Royal and Black Heritage Society. In fact, the Royal and Black Heritage Society next month is a part of Emancipation Day because again, Juneteenth did not exist in New England. Most black folks in New England celebrated August 1st, Emancipation Day. So it was a part of Emancipation Day that took place well before the Civil War ended. The Royal and Black Heritage Society will have an exhibit on the evolution of the Black Church in Rhode Island. They'll have artifacts and exhibits and documents and furniture and physical items to talk about the evolution over four centuries of the Black Church in Rhode Island, which to be quite candid could easily be mimicked by Boston, Philadelphia, New York, because it's all the same people interacting. So we're quite excited about that and I'm just very honored to be able to play a small part in helping. A small part, but a big part in this program. So thank you, Mr. Stokes. I should call you Dr. Stokes. I feel like I just, or Reverend Stokes, I feel like you just took me to church. So thank you so much. And thank you to our viewing listening audience. You have just been, I mean, I'm full. This was a meal, then this was more than a six course meal with advertisers and dessert. And I hope to have him on again and thank you for being here this evening. Take care of yourselves and each other. I'm not complaining about the heat because I waited all winter for this. God bless you and see you next time. I have a problem every year around in the payday because the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for some reason has been treated as America's civil rights mascot. On this day, you'll have folks who would have never in their life marked with a greed with a motive with anything he believed in, one of the biggest biggest in the United States Congress. Here, if you ought to actually send out a Dr. King vote, the march has begun every day. We rise like the sun and flight till the battle is won. Can you get a footsteps listening? [BLANK_AUDIO]