Knowledge Tree
Providence
Facts (4)
Sources
Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Brown University slaveryandjusticereport.brown.edu 4 facts
accountMoses Brown wrote in a 1783 letter to Providence merchants John Clark and Joseph Nightingale that the memory of the slave ship Sally weighed heavy on his conscience and that he urged them not to send a ship to Africa, stating that if the Sally had never sailed, he would have been preserved from an evil that left the greatest stain upon his mind.
accountIn 1796, the Providence Abolition Society prosecuted Cyprian Sterry, a member of the College of Rhode Island's Board of Trustees and a prominent slave trader, for violating the 1794 federal law prohibiting the transport of enslaved people to foreign ports.
accountWhen abolitionist Wendell Phillips spoke at a Providence church in 1845, a large contingent of Brown University students heckled and abused him.
accountRichard James Arnold, a Brown University graduate (class of 1814) and member of a prominent anti-slavery family, lived a double life as a businessman in Providence and a plantation owner in Bryant Country, Georgia, where he held a large number of enslaved people.