Groundbreaking city exhibit
Museum of Work and Culture hosts exhibit on history of Black Church.
WOONSOCKET – “Do Lord Remember Me,” a groundbreaking exhibit on the 250-year history of the Black Church in Rhode Island, opens Sunday at the Museum of Work and Culture.
The traveling exhibit – the latest by Stages of Freedom, a non–profit organization started by historian Ray Rickman and curator Robb Dimmick – opens tomorrow at 1 p.m. with opening remarks from Rickman and Dimmick.
The exhibit runs through Oct. 22 and is free and open to the public.
The exhibit features photographs, drawings and text that document the past 250 years of faith in Rhode Island’s black community. It premiered at the First Baptist Church in Providence earlier this month and after leaving Woonsocket will travel to Newport’s Redwood Library and Athenaeum on Oct. 24.
Rickman says the exhibit, funded by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities and the Rhode Island Council on the Arts, looks at the history of the church’s formation and function as the community’s moral compass, town hall, and promoter of artists, thinkers and doers.
“The Black churches were everything in those days and were really the foundation of the black community,” said Rickman, a leader in the promotion of African American history. “An exhibit like this has never been done and we hope it will provide an education on black culture for the entire population.”
The exhibit tells the story of American firsts, including the first Black Episcopal Church to send a black delegation to the Diocesan Convention; the first piece of sacred music by an African; and the first black man appointed a chaplain by President Lincoln.
It also shows how African ritual merged with European ceremony to form a powerhouse of freedom, service and survival. Astonishing accounts of burial rites, music, food ways, politics and pride show how African Americans forged a unique way out of slavery and religious restrictions to form houses of worship in Providence, South County, Newport, Bristol and Woonsocket. It also shows how national figures such as Ezra Stiles, Alexander Crummell, Rev. Samuel Proctor, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and Moses Brown emerged as major players in promoting, preserving and protecting basic civil rights in Rhode Island.
Visitors to the exhibit, for example, will discover that in 1764 Newport Gardner of Newport composed “Promise Anthem” for use in church and that it was the first written music by an African in the new world.
Or that in 1774, John Quamine and Bristol Yamma of Newport attended College of New Jersey to study as missionaries, being the first Africans to go to an American college.
Visitors will also learn that in 1842 Alexander Crummell, a black Anglican priest in Providence, wrote an impassioned petition that lead to enfranchisement of the black vote during the Dorr Rebellion.
The exhibit features Woonsocket’s own St. James Baptist Church, founded in 1953 under the leadership of Rev. James Wesley Hinson. Hinson met at the home of Henrietta Collins Johnson to discuss the possibility of organizing another Baptist Church in the city. A short time later, Hinson met at the home of Henry Spearman at 153 River Street. It was there that final plans were put into action to organize and build a little church in Woonsocket. The first service was held at 517 River Street, a rented union hall. To accommodate the congregation, 25 chairs were borrowed from a local funeral parlor. The congregation, which had grown to 56 members, worshipped there until 1955.
In 1955, the church moved into a new house of worship at 368 Prospect St., known as the Baker Estate, which was owned by a prominent Woonsocket lawyer. The church bought the building for $19,000 and the first worship service was held there on the first Sunday in February of 1955. In the latter part of 1956, Saint James started to experience growing pains and once again set forth on a mission to seek another house of worship to fulfill the needs of a steadily growing congregation.
On Jan. 19, 1957, the membership of Saint James Baptist Church purchased the Presbyterian Church located at 267 Blackstone St., which would be the congregation’s house of worship for 17 years.
Today, St. James Baptist Church is located at 340 Main St. under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Sammy C. Vaughan, who was called to serve as interim pastor in 1989 before being elected pastor on Feb. 23, 1991.
“Do Lord Remember Me” will be at the Museum of Work & Culture from Oct. 16–22; and for three weeks at the Redwood Library & Athenaeum, in Newport, starting Oct. 24. For more information, visit stagesoffreedom.org.