Slavery and Justice report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice Contents Introduction 3 University Steering Committee Slavery, the Slave Trade, on Slavery and Justice and Brown University 7 Brenda A. Allen Evelyn Hu-DeHart Confronting Historical Injustice: Associate Provost and Professor of History; Director of Institutional Director, Center for the Comparative Perspectives 32 Diversity Study of Race and Ethnicity in America Confronting Slavery’s Legacy: Paul Armstrong The Reparations Question 58 Professor of English Vanessa Huang ’06 A.B., Ethnic Studies Farid Azfar ’03 A.M. Slavery and Justice: Doctoral Candidate, Arlene R. Keizer Concluding Thoughts 80 Department of History Associate Professor of English and American Omer Bartov Recommendations 83 Civilization John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor Seth Magaziner ’06 Endnotes 88 of European History A.B., History B. Anthony Bogues Marion Orr Image Credits 106 Professor and Chair Fred Lippitt Professor of Africana Studies of Public Policy and Acknowledgments 106 Professor of Political Science James Campbell (Chair) and Urban Studies Associate Professor of American Civilization, Kerry Smith Africana Studies, and Associate Professor of History History and East Asian Studies Ross E. Cheit William Tucker ’04 Associate Professor A.B., Africana Studies of Political Science and and Public Policy Public Policy Michael Vorenberg Steven R. Cornish ’70 A.M. Associate Professor of History Associate Dean of the College Neta C. Crawford ’85 Adjunct Professor, Watson Institute for International Studies Introduction et us begin with a clock. public sites in Providence, including the Esek LIn 2003, Brown University President Ruth J. Hopkins Middle School, Esek Hopkins Park (which Simmons appointed a Steering Committee on includes a statue of him in naval uniform), and Slavery and Justice to investigate and issue a public Admiral Street, where his old house still stands. report on the University’s historical relationship to There is another aspect of Esek Hopkins’s slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. Since that story, unmentioned on any of the existing memori- time, the committee, which includes faculty, stu- als. In 1764, the year that the College of Rhode dents, and administrators, has met periodically in Island was founded, Hopkins sailed to West Africa an office on the second floor of Uni- in command of a slave ship, a one-hundred-ton versity Hall, the oldest building on the brigantine called the Sally. The Sally was owned by Brown campus. In the corner of Nicholas Brown and Company, a partnership of the office stands an antique clock. A four brothers, Nicholas, John, Joseph, and Moses silver plaque on the cabinet identifies Brown. Prominent Providence merchants, the it as “The Family Clock of Admiral Browns were also important benefactors of the col- Esek Hopkins.” Built in the 1750s by lege, playing a leading role in relocating the school a local craftsman, Samuel Rockwell, from its original home in Warren, Rhode Island, the clock was donated to Brown in to its current location in Providence. (In 1804, the 1850s by Hopkins’s granddaughter. the College of Rhode Island changed its name Such artifacts and heirlooms abound to Brown University, in recognition of a gift from on the campus, and it took several Nicholas’s son, Nicholas Jr.) There was nothing months for committee members to unusual about a slave ship departing from Rhode notice the clock or to recognize its Island. Rhode Islanders dominated the North significance. American share of the African slave trade, mount- Though less celebrated than ing over a thousand slaving voyages in the century his older brother Stephen, a colonial governor and before the abolition of the trade in 1807 (and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Esek scores more illegal voyages thereafter). The Sally’s Hopkins is a well-known figure in Rhode Island voyage was deadlier than most. At least 109 of the history. A Providence ship captain, he served as 196 Africans that Hopkins purchased on behalf of the first commander-in-chief of the United States the Browns perished, some in a failed insurrection, Navy during the American Revolution. After the the balance through disease, suicide, and starvation. war, he was elected to the state legislature. Like his The records of the venture, from the fitting out brother, he was a strong supporter of Brown, then of the ship in August 1764 to the sale of surviving known as the College of Rhode Island, serving as a member of the Board of Trustees from 1782 to 1802. His memory is enshrined today in several 3 introduction captives on the West Indian island of Antigua special opportunity to provide thoughtful inquiry.” fifteen months later, are housed in a library on the In her letter of charge and in a public statement Brown campus, though few have troubled to look following the announcement of the committee’s at them, at least until recently. appointment, the president stressed that the com- We shall return to the voyage of the Sally, an mittee would not determine whether or how episode of considerable significance in the lives Brown might pay monetary reparations, nor did of the Brown brothers, three of whom seem never she expect it to forge a consensus on the repara- again to have invested directly in transatlantic tions question. Its object, rather, was “to provide slaving voyages. But let us return first to the clock. factual information and critical perspectives to What should the University do with it, now that deepen understanding” and enrich debate on an we know more about its origins? Is it appropriate issue that had aroused great public passion but lit- to display it? Should we remove the plaque honor- tle constructive public dialogue.1 ing Esek Hopkins? Attach another plaque? We are obviously speaking metaphorically here, but the overview of activities underlying questions could not be more direct. How The steering committee has endeavored to fulfill are we, as members of the Brown community, as this charge. Members of the committee, assisted by Rhode Islanders, and as citizens and residents of the other Brown faculty as well as by undergraduate United States, to make sense of our complex his- and graduate student researchers, gathered infor- tory? How do we reconcile those elements of our mation about Brown’s past, drawing on both pub- past that are gracious and honorable with those lished sources and various historical archives. The that provoke grief and horror? What responsibilities, committee also sponsored more than thirty public if any, rest upon us in the present as inheritors of programs, including scholarly lectures, panel dis- this mixed legacy? The Brown University Steering cussions, forums, film screenings, and two inter- Committee on Slavery and Justice represents one national conferences exploring the experience of institution’s confrontation with these questions. other societies and institutions that have grappled with legacies of historical injustice. In all, we enter- the committee’s charge tained more than a hundred distinguished speak- The president’s charge to the steering committee ers, ranging from Professor John Hope Franklin, had two dimensions. Our primary task was to who discussed his tenure as chairman of One examine the University’s historical entanglement America, President Clinton’s short-lived national with slavery and the slave trade and to report our commission on race, to Beatrice Fernando, a slavery findings openly and truthfully. But we were also survivor from Sri Lanka, who spoke on the prob- asked to reflect on the meaning of this history in lem of human trafficking today. The committee is the present, on the complex historical, political, currently preparing a selection of these presenta- legal, and moral questions posed by any present- tions for publication in a scholarly anthology.2 day confrontation with past injustice. In particular, The steering committee also organized pro- the president asked the committee “to organize grams and activities beyond the University’s gates. academic events and activities that might help the Committee members addressed community nation and the Brown community think deeply, groups and participated in workshops for local seriously, and rigorously about the questions raised” teachers and students. A museum exhibition about by the national debate over reparations for slavery. the Sally, mounted by undergraduate research stu- Reparations, she noted, was a highly controversial subject, presenting “problems about which men and women of good will may ultimately disagree,” but it was also a subject on which Brown, in light of its own history, had “a special obligation and a 4 introduction dents working with the committee, is currently transatlantic slave trade and the appearance of a pop- touring public libraries across the state. The exhi- ular movement decrying the trade as criminal; the bition, “Navigating the Past: The Voyage of the birth of a new nation, dedicated to the proposition Slave Ship Sally, 1764-1765,” has also been exhib- that all people were created equal and endowed ited at the John Brown House, the historic home with certain inalienable rights, and the emergence of one of the ship’s owners, and at the Museum of racist ideologies insisting that people were not of Antigua and Barbuda in St. John’s, Antigua, the equally created or endowed; the gradual abolition of final destination of surviving captives from the slavery in the northern states and the rapid expan- ship. Members of the committee