HISTORICAL MEMORY: NAMING CITY STREETS
This summer it seemed like you couldn???t turn on a television or open a newspaper without reading about the debate over Confederate monuments and the larger issue of historical memory. Too often, the arguments focused on the false narrative that taking down a monument or renaming a building is about erasing history. It isn???t. We can no more erase the history of slavery then we can erase the history of winning World War Two.
Our past ??? our collective pride and shame??alike ??? will always be with us. Renaming public spaces is not about erasing history but about deciding who we honor as a society. We must decide what a sin against humanity should do to a person???s reputation, and whether our time is not better spent celebrating those who have been unfairly overlooked by history.
Providence now has the opportunity to recognize two people long overdue for celebration. City Councilor Sam Zurier has introduced a resolution to rename Magee Street ??? currently named for William Fairchild Magee, who was a slave trader and opium merchant ??? in honor of two of Providence???s most famous African-American residents, Christiana and Edward Bannister. This is an idea whose time has come. There are few people less deserving of honor than Magee and few people more deserving of recognition than the Bannisters.
Christiana Bannister, a businesswoman and philanthropist at a time when few women, and even fewer African-American women, could be either, owned salons in Boston and Providence. For elites in both cities, frequenting her establishments was all but required. She raised money for Civil War veterans and widows, and established the Bannister Nursing Home for elderly, indigent African-American women. It was Christiana???s financial success that enabled her husband Edward to pursue his career as an artist.
Edward Bannister remains one of America???s best landscape painters. There was no artistic training available for African Americans in the 1800s, but Edward taught himself to be an exceptional painter. As a young artist in Boston, he was a sought-after portrait painter. In Providence, he did his most famous work at his studio at??the bottom of College Hill, painting such local landscapes as Narragansett Bay.
At the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, which drew 10 million visitors (a huge number, considering the country had fewer than 37 million citizens at this time), Bannister???s painting ???Under the Oaks??? won a first-prize medal. When the judges learned his race, they tried to rescind the award until the other artists threatened to withdraw their works unless Bannister received what was rightfully his.
Christiana and Edward are the kind of trailblazers who deserve celebration. By honoring their accomplishments, Providence can make a clear statement about who deserves praise from our city.
The debate about the sins of slavery is too often only focused on states below the Mason-Dixon line. While it is convenient for the rest of the nation to believe slavery and racism were a uniquely Southern problem, it???s simply untrue. Here in Rhode Island, our ports and our civic leaders were an integral part of slavery in America.
Almost 60 percent of all American slave ships left from Rhode Island ports, carrying rum and other trade goods to Africa to be exchanged for slaves, who were then sold in the Caribbean and South America. That brutality is as much a part of Rhode Island history as the burning of the Gaspee.
We can never change our ancestors??? actions, but we can choose how we recognize them. One of the ways to atone for the failings of our past is to celebrate the people who, despite the obstacles put in their way, achieved incredible success. Christiana and Edward Bannister embody that ideal. They are exactly the kind of people who deserve to be recognized and celebrated, and renaming Magee Street in their honor should be a small part of that celebration.
Ray Rickman, of Providence, is executive director of Stages of Freedom and a local historian.