2018 CRCA Spring Expo: Student Research Projects Probe Unmapped Territory

For history majors Ana Perez ’18 and Jessica Rose ’18, the lack of information on significant portions of Rhode Island history is what​ ignited their research.

Perez unearthed the untold history of African American women suffragists in Rhode Island. She discovered that much of the information on Rhode Island suffragists had focused on white women and that the lack of​ information on African American women was so profound that she almost gave up on the project. 

However, her project was saved when the Providence Journal database was made available to the college through Adams Library. “I was able to find a number of articles on important groups of women who contributed tremendously not only to the fight for women’s suffrage but to bettering the lives of African Americans in general,” Perez said.

Most of these women were “upper-middle-class, elite and educated,” Perez noted, “and created clubs in Rhode Island to tackle the problems affecting black communities, not limited to suffrage. They helped with issues such as health, education, poverty and racial inequality.”

Perez was particularly excited when she came across Mary Dickinson, a successful dressmaker in Newport during the late 1800s and a member of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. “Mary​ recognized that she was very privileged and said, ‘Let me use my good fortune​ to help out my community.’ Dickinson founded the Colored Women’s League Club and the Colored Mothers Club of Rhode Island.”​

The latter provided daycare, offered mothers transportation to appointments and clothes for job interviews, among other assistance, Perez said. The club also taught classes on civil politics and civil history. When women achieved the right to vote in 1920, the club taught African American women how to vote, Perez said​. 

As a high school social studies teacher, Perez intends to continue to raise awareness around the “great history of African American women in Rhode Island.” She​ was born into a family of professors in the Dominican Republic. Her father taught math and her mom history, while her grandmother was the first woman president of a Dominican Republic college. This, she said, is another history of accomplishments by people of color that she is quite proud of.

Rose rescued another historical group from obscurity – the “second Klan” in Rhode Island.​

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RIC graduating senior Jessica Rose​ ’18

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Most Americans have heard of the Ku Klux Klan, but many aren’t aware that three different Klans emerged at different times in American history.  

“There’s the first Klan who emerged after the Reconstruction era – the hooded vigilantes, lynching and burning crosses. There was the Klan of the 1920s, during industrialization, who were not so much anti-black but anti-immigrant. And the third Klan, which most people are familiar with, who emerged during the Civil Rights era,” Rose said. 

Her research focused on the little-known second Klan. However, due to the lack of scholarly research on this group, Rose, like Perez, had to break new ground and retrieve​ much of her source material from the Providence Journal database.

She found that ​“d​uring the 1920s, Rhode Island had one of the highest number of foreign born and Catholic populations in the United States. ​Over 25 percent of the population was foreign born and just under 50 percent identified as Catholic.”

Rhode Island was also transforming from an agrarian society to an industrialized society and would later become one of the most industrialized states in the nation. Textile mills were opening and many French Canadian immigrants came to fill these jobs. “By the 1920s, Woonsocket was 70 percent French Canadian,” Rose said. 

“White Protestant Klan members didn’t like the fact that French Canadians were Catholic, still spoke French and wanted to form French schools,” she said. “I’m white, French Canadian and Catholic. If I lived in Rhode Island during that time, I would have been someone targeted by the Klan.” Though this fraternal organization was nonviolent, she said, they would threaten people, via letters, to get out of town.

Not unlike current attitudes toward recent immigrants, “People get very afraid when people come in and take jobs that they think they’re entitled to because they’re American,” she said. “The Klan was also afraid of the way the country was shifting toward industrialization, which meant that their farms might not be as lucrative or profitable.” 

According to her research, the Klan encouraged its members to become active in community and civic affairs and to push legislation to further their cause, “however, many of the individuals in political power at that time were French Canadian, Irish or Jewish,” which would eventually spell the demise of the second Klan. 

Rose also attributed the second Klan’s decline to their unpopularity among Rhode Islanders who felt that they were un-American. 

“Rhode Island is founded on the principles of religious tolerance and freedom as exhibited by its founder Roger Williams,” Rose said. “Rhode Island has always been a state open and welcome to people of all ethnic backgrounds and religions and it’s possible that Rhode Islanders opposed [the Klan’s] plan because it went against the principles that their state was founded on and has lived by since 1636.”

Like Perez, Rose intends to go on to teach secondary education social studies. She transferred from the University of Southern Maine to RIC, and noted, “I had the pleasure of working with THE most intelligent professors at Rhode Island College. I can’t say enough good things about the history faculty and department at RIC.”

Perez and Rose are only two of many avid scholars who shared their research with faculty, students and staff. ​​Posters encompassed education, business, social work, nursing and the liberal arts.

“A significant leap in learning occurs when someone presents their work to an audience, much like the adage, ‘You don’t really know something until you can explain it,’” said director of CRCA and Associate Professor of Biology Breea Govenar. “Many students also leave sharing that they are interested in pursuing additional research opportunities. I believe students are forever changed by realizing the power of their own voice.”