While flipping through The Herald the other day, I stumbled upon the headline "Committee for Slavery and Justice hosts community discussion" (Oct. 20). I thought to myself, "Great, another vague article about a vague discussion about the steering committee's vague purpose." However, one remark in the article caught my attention.
Jay Lambert of Fall River, a neighboring Massachusetts town, made a brilliant point during the audience discussion. He stated, "(The committee) should be far more concerned with the real Rhode Island economy. Seven-year-old children working in mills, not slavery, supported Brown. As someone born and raised in this part of the country, I expect the work that this committee does to be accessible to the typical southeastern New Englander."
As a Rhode Islander, I can contest that Brown has never been a part of the larger Rhode Island community. The new Committee for Slavery and Justice is a fine example. Instead of using resources to study the history of Rhode Island, Brown decides to reflect solely upon itself and whether or not the University looks bad for having the namesake of a family that was involved in triangular trade.
The steering committee Web site states, "As an institution whose early benefactors included both slave traders and pioneering abolitionists, Brown has an intimate relationship to the history of American slavery." The committee does not even pretend to have a greater purpose by extending research to the history of the surrounding Rhode Island community. Thirty people attended the committee's discussion section the other day. Fifteen people are on the committee. Can the committee really believe it is interacting with the community?
In a special report put out by the University, Ricardo Howell writes that slaves were "almost certainly" used for farmwork and household labor by the Brown family, and that Nicholas Brown & Co. "apparently utilized some slave labor." And "at one time or another" ships owned by the Browns engaged in the triangular trade. Again, the University falls back upon vague wording to justify the steering committee. The report later states that Rhode Island College was renamed Brown University approximately 40 years after its founding by Nicholas Brown Jr., an alum of the college and active abolitionist.
The Brown family was the leading manufacturer of spermaceti candles in the late 1700s. The four brothers, John, Joseph, Moses and Nicholas, began their own business union - Nicholas Brown & Co. Prior to this, their father, James Brown, had overseen the launching of three slave ships from Providence.
After the death of his wife Anna in 1773, Moses Brown viewed himself as punished by God for his part in the slave trade. He became a famous abolitionist. His brother John remained a supporter of the slave trade. Consequently, he was the first to be tried under the 1794 Slave Trade Act, which his brother Moses and the Providence Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery had helped pass. John's nephew, Nicholas Jr., was the abolitionist member of the family who donated $5,000 to the University and became the namesake of Brown.
The ports of Newport and Bristol were notably active in the importation of slaves. Rhode Island ships transported 106,000 slaves. Great Britain, one of the three big slave-exporting nations (along with Portugal and Spain), purchased and sold an estimated 2.5 million African slaves. Howell writes, "Despite Rhode Island's involvement in the African slave trade, some historians conclude that molasses and rum fueled the profit-making engine that built the fortunes of Rhode Island merchants in the eighteenth century."
The birth of the American Industrial Revolution took place here in Rhode Island. Moses Brown funded Slater Mill, which, if you recall, was the first textile mill in the nation. It still stands on the Blackstone River, 10 minutes from my house and 15 minutes from your dorm. The mill began hiring children workers in 1790. The children, some as young as three years old, worked 13 to 14 hours per day. If they were not productive enough, they could be sent to the "whipping room."
As mills began springing up along the Blackstone River, Irish immigrants became their virtual indentured servants - forced to buy from mill-owned stores and live in mill-owned houses, accumulating further debt to the mill owners. In the 1820s, Irish immigrants constructed the Blackstone Canal. Later in the 19th century, owners began to recruit French Canadians. A very large percentage of Rhode Island residents are descendants of these immigrants.
Here is where Brown, slavery and the industrial revolution all tie together: On June 4 the Boston Phoenix reported, "To date, Brown University has not yet been targeted by slavery-reparations lawsuits. However, at least two suits have named FleetBank, since one of its predecessor institutions, Providence Bank, was founded by John Brown, its first president. In January one of the cases was dismissed, but another has recently been filed in New York against FleetBoston ... The litigation seeks $1 billion for the descendants of slaves."
The reason for Brown's creation of the Steering Committee on Justice and Slavery is to cover its rear end from lawsuits. If the committee directly links Brown to the slave trade, Brown opens itself up to reparations lawsuits similar to the ones against FleetBank. At the same time, slavery is a very sensitive issue, especially at a liberal Ivy League school. These conflicting factors alone will leave the steering committee unable to produce anything but vague, useless academic fluff.
Brown almost had students convinced that they formed this steering committee for our educational benefit, or for the promotion of racial discussions. However, if the University was sincerely concerned with the morality behind the profits of its founding fathers, it would also be investigating Moses Brown's connection to child labor and mill immigrant abuse.
They are not exploring this connection because they face no threat of lawsuit from present-day ancestors, and because it is not as politically correct. The steering committee is not a sincere academic exploration, but rather a politically motivated program to benefit Brown University - and not the state that surrounds it.
Laura Martin '06 is a biophysics concentrator.
