At tonight’s City Council meeting, Council President Sabina Matos (Ward 15) proposed two resolutions around important issues to the community regarding race and the power of words on our community.
The first resolution, co-sponsored by Councilmen Goncalves (Ward 1), Correia (Ward 6), Igliozzi (Ward 7) and Councilwomen Miller (Ward 13) and Ryan (Ward 5), calls on the Rhode Island General Assembly to revisit the 2009 referendum to remove “Providence Plantations” from the State of Rhode Island’s official name.
“A lot has changed since 2009. Our Nation has had to mourn the loss of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and too many more black souls at the hands of police brutality and racially motivated violence,” stated Council President Sabina Matos.
Throughout the Nation, many states have acted by removing Confederate statues and memorials from their public spaces. While the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was not named this way in direct connection to slavery, the use of the word ‘plantation’ is insensitive to our Nation’s dark history of slavery.
“By changing Rhode Island’s official name, we are not forgetting our history; we are simply removing something that no longer represents the values and morals that our State should embody. The history is still there; we will never forget our role in the slavery and racist institutions that have plagued our country for so long. But it is time for us to make a change and move forward, with a name that better represents who we would like to be,” added Council President Matos.
“Without acknowledging and learning from our past, and without addressing those things within our control, we cannot move forward as a City or a Nation towards a more equitable and just future,” continued Council President Matos.
The second resolution urges Governor Gina Raimondo and the Rhode Island General Assembly to enact legislation authorizing the Rhode Island Department of Education to include African Heritage History in the K-12 curriculum in the 2021-2022 school years. In July of 2014, the 1696 Historical Commission was signed into law and formed in order to form a comprehensive African Heritage History curriculum for K-12 public school students.
Council President Matos continued, “African and African American heritage is inextricably woven with our State’s history and identity. Black Rhode Islanders have made innumerable contributions to our community despite facing unique suffering and hardship. It would be extremely beneficial for all Rhode Island students to have access to this rich history,”
The 1696 Commission created a curriculum with units covering the many eras of black history in Rhode Island from 1696 to current times. The goal of this curriculum is to not only design and implement an African and African American history curriculum, but also to equip teachers to work with an increasingly diverse student body, fully integrate the teaching of African American history into the curriculum on a year-round basis and to establish this curriculum as a necessary and long term part of the Rhode Island Department of Education’s curriculum.