A group convened by the university's president is studying that question and related historical issues that date back to the 1700s.

01:00 AM EST on Friday, March 5, 2004

BY JENNIFER D. JORDAN
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons, a slave descendant, has established a committee to examine the Ivy League school's ties to slavery and debate whether Brown has an obligation to make amends.

A Brown spokesman yesterday confirmed the group exists, but declined to elaborate. "There will be no announcement today by the university," Mark Nickel said.

However, an article in Brown's alumni magazine last summer offered more details. Simmons created the presidential committee last spring, according to the magazine. She appointed about 15 faculty members, students and administrators, including historians, political scientists and experts in the fields of African studies, American civilization and ethnic studies.

The group has met monthly since the fall.

The article says the committee, whose costs are covered by Simmons' office budget, plans to bring speakers to campus. Topics may include Rhode Island's and Brown's historical links to the slave trade in the 1700s and the issue of slave reparations.

The issue erupted at Brown in 2001, when right-wing speaker David Horowitz placed an advertisement in the Brown Daily Herald denouncing slave reparations. Students removed the newspapers in protest, and an intense debate about sensitivity, tolerance, and right to free speech consumed the campus. Horowitz spoke at Brown last fall without incident.

Just two months ago, a class-action lawsuit filed in 2002 demanding reparations from companies that benefited from slavery -- including Boston's Fleet Bank, which was once Providence Bank, founded by Providence merchant John Brown -- was dismissed from federal court in Chicago.

U.S. District Judge Charles R. Norgle found that the plaintiffs failed to prove that African-Americans today are being harmed by these corporations. Norgle also said it was not prudent for the court to decide broad social issues; legislative and executive branches of government have traditionally handled the issue of slave reparations. The plaintiffs, who are descendants of slaves, have until April 5 to file a new lawsuit.

THE UNIVERSITY seems to have struggled with its ambiguous slave past.

Its booklet, "A Short History," dutifully notes the namesake family's early connection to the college. Nicholas Brown, who was one of the 24 original incorporators in 1764, was a wealthy merchant whose family gave generously to the school, then called Rhode Island College.

The history notes that Nicholas' brother, John Brown, paid half the cost of the college's first library. When Nicholas' son, Nicholas Brown Jr., gave his alma mater $5,000 in 1804, the college changed its name to Brown -- forever tying the prominent family to the institution.

The 88-page history neglects to mention, however, that John Brown was a slave trader as well as a merchant, and that ships from his family trading company, Nicholas Brown & Co., were used to transport slaves. He left the family business in 1771; the company of four Brown brothers dissolved a few years later. (Their father, Capt. James Brown, had sent the family's first slave ship to Africa in 1736, according to a recent report by Brown University.)

It has been difficult to determine how much of the family's wealth was derived from the slave trade versus the rum and dry-goods trades. Historical evidence also indicates that slaves were used at the family's candle factory in Providence, its ironworks in Scituate, and to build Brown's University Hall, according to the university report.

The Brown family legacy now under review by Simmons' committee is complex, and one the family itself wrestled with more than 200 years ago.

John Brown continued to defend slavery until his death. Another brother, Moses Brown, and their nephew, Nicholas Brown Jr., however, became ardent abolitionists and worked to end slavery by pushing for a tougher prohibition against slave ships entering American ports. John Brown became the first Rhode Islander prosecuted under the federal Slave Trade Act of 1794 and had to forfeit his slave ship.