Rhode Island addressed its history of slavery on June 22, 2020 when Governor Gina Raimondo announced that the state’s official name—“Rhode Island and Providence Plantations”—would no longer appear on state documents. Instead, the state will just identify itself as “Rhode Island.” 

“Most of the general public in the U.S. has no understanding of the very long history of slavery in the northern colonies and the northern states,” says Christy Clark-Pujara, a professor of history and Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island.

“They don’t have a sense that slavery was integral to the building of New York City and places like Newport and Providence, that many of these cities had upwards of 20 percent of their populations enslaved…and that slavery lasted in the North well into the 1840s,” she says. “Some states, like New Jersey, never abolished slavery, so slavery legally ends there in 1865.”

Colonist Roger Williams coined Rhode Island’s longer name in the 17th century, at a time when the word “plantation” referred to a new settlement. The word evolved during the 19th century, becoming synonymous with the enslavement of Black people on large farms. This is the meaning it has today, and the main reason why activists have previously called for Rhode Island to take “plantation” out of its name.

Yet even in the 17th century sense, the word “plantation” signified European colonization, a violent practice intertwined with slavery, says Margaret Ellen Newell, a history professor at The Ohio State University and author of Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery.

“Slavery was a global market, it was a global phenomenon, and it was tied to colonization,” she says.