PROVIDENCE – From salons and funeral homes to catering and transportation companies, Black businesses in Rhode Island have a long – and often forgotten – history.
Stages of Freedom, a Providence-based nonprofit dedicated to serving the Black community through arts and the humanities, has been illuminating the stories of historic Black business owners in Rhode Island this month to more than 12,000 subscribers via a daily newsletter.
August is also National Black Business Month.
The newsletter called “Connected” was created during the COVID-19 pandemic and features a different theme each month. The newsletter was started to create a sense of community during the pandemic, especially given a lack of Black newspapers in Rhode Island, according to Robb Dimmick, who creates the daily newsletter and is program director at Stages of Freedom.
“Most people – sadly, both Black and white – do not understand the deep wellspring of African American presence in Rhode Island, which sadly goes back to enslavement, but out of slavery, come these brilliant people, particularly in Newport,” Dimmick said.
“These are extraordinary people who rise out of the depths of pain and loss,” he said. “So the next step is, how do they take their gifts and turn them into essentially businesses, and businesses, in many cases, enable those who are enslaved to buy their way out of enslavement.”
Dimmick publishes a new feature Monday through Friday, with stories coming from archival research and the knowledge that has come from working at Stages of Freedom for 40 years. Creating the newsletter is a “labor of love,” Dimmick said.
One feature highlighted Eleanor Morey, who launched a hairdressing and wig-making business at 154 Westminster St. in Providence with her husband John Allen Morey in the 1860s. Eleanor Morey created a hair dye and continued running the business after her husband’s death until the late 1890s. She died in 1920 and is buried with her husband in the North Burial Ground.
Dimmick says Stages of Freedom is looking to archive these stories digitally to help preserve the history of African Americans in Rhode Island. It operates a museum and bookshop at 10 Westminster St.
“One of the things that we're now going to pursue is basically archiving … these digital stories, [and] finding a way that they can be preserved and viewed by well beyond the 12,000 [readers] daily so that these stories live in sort of a virtual museum,” he said.
