Black Family Displacement on the East Side Providence

Community Cultural Wealth. It is often missing from our conversations on what is wrought in displacement and the destruction of Black communities. Lippit Hill on the Eastside of Providence has a rich history and legacy. The Community Stories is one place where the Archive not only documents the history but is an ongoing site for continuing the dialogue, the conversation.  It starts from a position of value of the people, the places and their contributions. 

As we will discuss here and elsewhere in the archive, a large part of the purpose of the creation of this digital archive is to document the progressive push of Black families out of the East side. The documentation of how it fits into the larger segregatory processes of Providence and the structural racism of our society at large. The march of removal and displacement creates a process of erasure. 

To stop the erasure that continues to be done through urban renewal, studentification, eviction and gentrification, we have sought to create processes, a platform, for the community to claim and redirect the narrative, change the the narrative that it was okay to disrupt and destroy the community that had no value, a community that thwarted development and has nothing to offer but instead to create a process to acknowledge and preserve the community cultural wealth.

This archive is and other works are done to stop the erasure, to create a process of re-membering. We look to bring the community in to tell their history and tales through art, intergenerational storytelling, and oral histories. The archive documents what has been done thus and asks for continuous community dialogue and input. 

The archive is another process to turn what is considered anecdote to an accessible documented form. We continually create participatory processes to bring the community into the work, to tell the stories of Providence and here the Eastside of Providence.