Welcome to Snowtown: Exploring a Lost Neighborhood

Join The Snowtown Project collective to hear the first research team update on this lost 19th-century mixed-race Providence neighborhood.

Snowtown was a small, mixed-race neighborhood in mid-1800s Providence. It was the site of a racially motivated mob attack in the fall of 1831, but it was also home. It began as a kind of refuge for poor Black and white laborers but also became the home of waves of migrants and laborers, extra-legal entrepreneurs, and widowed mothers. By the end of the 19th century, the Snowtown community was displaced by the railroad construction and urban development, including the RI State House.

The Snowtown Project Research Team is working to recover the history of this diverse community. Please join us to hear a brief introduction to the team’s progress so far. We will discuss people, places, and memory as well as the artifacts excavated at the Snowtown site, with time for audience questions.

Speakers include Ted Coleman, Nkem Ike, Marco McWilliams, Joanne Pope Melish, Heather Olson, Traci Picard, Andrew Polta, and Sylvia Ann Soares.

Register at the link below.