Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) and WaterFire Providence have partnered to host civil rights activist Rosa Parks’ former home before residing permanently at another location in the U.S. chosen by artist Ryan Mendoza.
The home is currently on public display in Mendoza’s backyard in Berlin, Germany and has been there since 2016. It’s scheduled to premiere to the Brown community April 3.
“We were contacted by the artist [Mendoza] sometime last year about whether or not we were interested in hosting the house on its return, as a kind of homecoming before it went on to its permanent place in the United States. We said ‘yes, and let’s get the ball rolling,’” said Dr. Anthony Bogues, CSSJ director and professor of Africana Studies at Brown.
In a phone interview with Diverse, Bogues said Brown is among the first universities, and possibly the very first, to “begin to think about its relationship to the Atlantic Slave Trade,” under the leadership of Dr. Ruth Simmons, the former university president.
CSSJ released a report in 2006 highlighting the connection between Brown University and the slave trade and recommending the creation of a center focused on this relationship, which is how CSSJ came to be.
“The university has a recent history of trying to confront its past to think about what does that past mean for the present and future, and how that past should influence and shape questions of higher education in America,” Bogues said.
Parks’ home will reside in the WaterFire Art Center, owned by WaterFire Providence, which is a few minutes from Brown’s campus. The center is “an old industrial building turned into an art center” and will be open for free for the public to visit upon arrival, from Thursday to Sunday each week until the exhibition period ends in June.
