Photographs and documents in the exhibit trace the neighborhood from World War II through the present.
Maps and photographs on display detail the history of primarily African American neighborhoods in city, including the movement of the African American community from Lippitt Hill on the city’s East side to the South side, said City archivist Caleb Horton.
“[African American residents] were essentially removed when they did this Lippitt Hill renewal project, and a lot of them ended up in South Providence at the Roger Williams Housing Project because that was what was available at the time for affordable housing,” Horton explained.
Horton said the show highlights the local work of 1960’s activists. He said conditions in South Providence housing projects and the desegregation of local schools were among the major issues of the local movement.
“In the Civil Rights Movement we think of MLK, Jim Crow, but in the North it was a much more veiled, it’s really in the form of the fair housing movement and fair education,” Horton said.
The exhibit is open to the public until April 12th.
