I'm seeing lots of people totally stunned by the fact that RI's official name is "The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." What could a tiny New England state have to do with slavery? Well, let's talk about RI and its history with slavery. https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1275584508990033920

(The "plantations" part of the name refers to the colony comprising the current cities of Providence and Warwick, as named by Roger Williams in the 1600s. Because the term *at the time* didn't refer to slavery, many argue that RI had no part in the slave trade. They're wrong.)

Throughout the 18th century, it's estimated that 60-90% of the American trade in African enslaved peoples was controlled by RI merchants. Records of enslaved Africans in RI go back as far as 1696, and RI merchants were a critical part of the Triangular Slave Trade.

The Brown family headed many slaving expeditions from 1736 through 1803. Do the Browns sound familiar? They have an Ivy League university named after them in Providence. The Browns continued slaving expeditions for years after RI banned participation in the slave trade in 1787.

By the 1770s, RI had a higher percentage of enslaved Africans than any other New England state, and many of the state's notable families—the Hazards, the Robinsons, the Stantons—profited from the slave trade, as well as using slave labor on their estates.

Slavery built Rhode Island, and it's naive to think that a tiny state in New England played no role. Many think that only southern states were involved, and that couldn't be further from the truth. RI voters rejected this name change in 2010. Let's hope this time is different.

(Various sources:
http://www.rihs.org/assetts/files/publications/2002_Fall.pdf
https://westerlylife.com/a-history-that-cannot-be-ignored-examining-slavery-in-rhode-island/
https://zilianblog.com/2018/05/02/colonial-rhode-island-dominates-north-american-slave-trade-in-18th-century/
https://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/exhibitions/jcbexhibit/Pages/exhibSlavery.html)