Conversations around the history of slavery had been pushed to the margins for many decades. Unfortunately, after … The state’s official name, “The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” appears on state documents. In other words, Rhode Island itself has as much culpability in the history of slavery as Providence Plantations. The use of the word “plantations” had nothing to do with, and predated, slavery in Rhode Island. Rhode Island should strip ‘Providence Plantations’ from its name ... economic forces and rising abolitionist sentiment had put an end to Rhode Island’s slave plantations. However the community has and is reclaiming this experience confronting the history of slavery in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations thanks to … Rhode Island and Providence Plantations has everything to do with slavery. PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS, RHODE ISLAND ANDPROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS, RHODE ISLAND AND. The ports of Providence and Newport were both major points in the slave trade triangle. From 1732-64, Rhode Islanders sent annually 18 ships, bearing 1,800 hogsheads of rum, to Africa to trade for slaves, earning £40,000 annually. Newport, the colony's leading slave port, took an estimated 59,070 slaves to America before the Revolution. For one thing, the law, which only applied to Providence and Warwick, banned lifetime ownership of slaves. Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo signed an executive order on Monday taking the 'first steps' to change the state's full name: 'The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.' But the order would shorten it to just “Rhode Island”. Voters will have a chance in 2010 to remove the reference to “Providence Plantations” as part of a referendum pushed by advocates who argue that the reference to “plantations” is insensitive to blacks and perpetuates a racist image. Vote YES! The Providence Plantations were the first white settlements in Rhode Island. The clergyman Roger Williams, banished by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay for propagating "new and dangerous opinions," founded the Providence Plantations in June 1636. Providence Plantation and Samuel Gorton’s town of Warwick joined in 1652 to pass America’s first anti-slavery ordinance. Williams bought a large tract of land from … As the debate about removing “and Providence Plantations” from the official state name rages across Rhode Island, the most common rebuttal to the claim that the phrase evokes the horrors of slavery is “slavery never came to Rhode Island.” Au, contraire: Rhode Island was unquestionably built on the backs of slaves and profits from the […] Bristol and Providence also prospered from it. 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