| projo.com | The Providence Journal

10.18.2001
Black on Benefit Street

A walk through a lesser-known side of Providence's Mile of History
BY KATHERINE IMBRIE
Journal Staff Writer

Providence's Benefit Street is often called the "Mile of History," and it has been the focus of countless historical tours ever since the Providence Preservation Society saved many of the street's lovely old houses from planned "urban renewal" efforts some 40 years ago. Back then, in the 1950s and '60s, many of the people who lived on Benefit were black, as it had been primarily a black neighborhood of the city for many decades.

This week, as the National Trust for Historic Preservation meets for its annual convention in Providence, part of its focus will be on the black history of Benefit Street from the 1700s to the 1900s. A one-hour candlelight walking tour of the street for trust members has been organized by the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society for tomorrow, highlighting houses and sites along the Mile of History that have particular relevance to the state's black history.

Although the tour is not open to the public, anyone can walk along Benefit at any time of day, and -- with a little bit of information about the street's black history -- do their own version of the tour.

Kicking out the Klan

The information presented here was gathered by tour organizers Bela Teixeira and Rosemary Santos. Teixeira is executive director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, and Santos is on the board of directors of the Heritage Harbor Museum.

Teixeira and Santos suggest starting a do-it-yourself tour of Benefit Street at the Old Arsenal, the Providence Marine Corps of Artillery building, 176 Benefit St. Built in 1840 by famed architect Russell Warren, the building looks unmistakably military with its turrets. The building figures in Benefit Street's black history as the site of an illegal meeting of the Ku Klux Klan on May 17, 1924.

Usually associated with the South, the Klan was active in Rhode Island during the 1920s. In 1924, it organized a meeting at the Arsenal that attracted some 200 men.

The group had no permit to meet on state property and had obtained entrance to the Arsenal by claiming it would hold a religious meeting. Later, Rhode Island's Gov. William S. Flynn denounced the Klan and forbade the group to use state property for meetings.

1st black regiment

Continuing north on the same side of Benefit, the tour proceeds to the Old State House, 150 Benefit St., which is now home to the Rhode Island Historical Preservation Commission. The building was "an Independence Hall, of sorts, for blacks in Rhode Island," says Santos. Here, at the time of the American Revolution in the late 1700s, there were intense debates between factions represented by Brown brothers John and Moses over the issue of slavery and a proposal by some slaveholders to free their slaves in order to let them serve as soldiers. Moses Brown, being a Quaker, was as opposed to slavery as John was in support of it.

Rhode Island's first black regiment was eventually raised in 1778, following this resolution by the Rhode Island General Assembly in February: "That every slave, so enlisting, shall, upon his passing muster before Col. Christopher Greene, be immediately discharged from the service of his master or mistress, and be absolutely free, as though he had never been encumbered with any kind of servitude or slavery."

Also in this building, in 1842, free black men won the right to vote in the aftermath of the Dorr Rebellion.

Underground Railroad

Just around the corner and down the hill from the Old State House is Meeting Street, where two buildings figure in Rhode Island's black history.

The Brick School, later known as the Meeting Street School and now the home of the Providence Preservation Society, is at 24 Meeting St. In the 1800s, it housed a school for black children that later became a school for children with disabilities. (The present Meeting Street School is in East Providence.)

Across the street is Shakespeare's Head, 21 Meeting St., also owned by the Providence Preservation Society. Built in 1772 as a print shop, the building is believed to have served as a hiding place for escaping Southern slaves on the Underground Railroad of the mid-1800s.

Prejudice in the pews

Taking another detour off Benefit Street, the tour continues to 17 Congdon St., the Congdon Street Baptist Church . Built in 1871, the church was an outgrowth of the African Union Meeting House, which had been started by black Baptists who were dissatisfied with the system of race-segregated seating at the First Baptist Church on North Main Street.

Returning to Benefit Street at the yellow Charles Shaw House, 132 Benefit St., the tour makes note that in the 1920s, this circa 1850 house served as the Providence home of the Prince Hall Masons. One of the country's oldest Masons' lodges, the all-black association was founded in 1797 by Prince Hall, a black Bostonian who had fought in the Revolution. Finding that blacks were not welcome in white Masons' lodges, Hall started a lodge in Boston that sparked brother lodges in Providence and Newport.

Across the street at 109 Benefit St. is the Sullivan Dorr House, built in 1810 for the prominent Dorr family. The Dorrs found themselves split politically during what later became known as the Dorr Rebellion of 1842, which challenged state government. During the Rebellion, the Rhode Island black community supported the state, and as a result were given the right to vote.

On the same side of the street is the Judge Staples House, 75 Benefit St., built around 1850. A small cemetery behind the house contains the graves of members of four black families who lived in the house from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Across the street in the graveyard behind St. John's Episcopal Cathedral is a slate tombstone from the 1700s memorializing "Three Respectable Black Persons, Phillis, Rose and Fannie Chace, Who Served in the Family of Sam'l Chace Esq."

A social club

On Halsey Street, just east of Benefit, the house at Number 18 is the site of the black IBA Lodge .

The Irreproachable Benevolent Association was founded in 1904 by black men who worked as cooks and waiters. The lodge eventually attracted black professionals, businessmen, and laborers, who used it as a social club and as a base for providing community services to blacks in the area.

The lodge survived into the 1980s.

For more information about the sites on this tour, or about the black history of Rhode Island in general, call the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society, 751-3490. The Society's headquarters is at 50 Aborn St., Providence, open to the public by appointment.

Read more on Rhode Island's black history at projo.com:

http://www.projo.com/seasonal/blackhistory/

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