Historian Sherri Cummings Hired as Professor & RIBHS Community Engagement Director
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- Historian Sherri Cummings Hired as Professor & RIBHS Community Engagement Director
Along with her teaching appointment at ΒιΆΉΤ΄΄, Cummings will bring the history of the people of African heritage in Rhode Island into K-12 classrooms using primary sources from the R.I. Black Heritage Society collection.
Last year, ΒιΆΉΤ΄΄ partnered with the R.I. Black Heritage Society (RIBHS) to help preserve and manage their archives, which are now being stored in Building 8 on the East campus. Thousands of items β letters, photographs, quilts and other historical material β will need to be inventoried, cataloged and digitized, with the goal of sharing these archives with the Rhode Island community.
To that end, the college recently hired Sherri Cummings in a joint appointment as assistant professor of history and Africana studies and as historian and director of community engagement for the RIBHS.
Cummings completed her Ph.D. in history at Brown University in May 2022, specializing in Atlantic world history, early African American history and Africana intellectual history. Her joint appointment will allow her to teach a course at ΒιΆΉΤ΄΄ on βThe Black Experience in Rhode Islandβ and provide students with a rich reservoir of primary research material from the R.I. Black Heritage Society collection. She will also develop curriculum for K-12 schools in Rhode Island.
βRight now, weβre working on the website portal so that K-12 educators can click on a lesson plan and pull it into their curriculum,β Cummings says. βTeachers can also arrange a field trip to our building, where students can see these artifacts in person, some of which date back to the colonial era. We might have actors re-enact, for example, the life of a Black seamstress in Newport, and weβll have hands-on activities.β
Cummings emphasized that the impetus for housing this collection at ΒιΆΉΤ΄΄ and for developing programs for the community is so that not only ΒιΆΉΤ΄΄ students but all Rhode Islanders can come in and learn about their past. βUltimately, this is not Black history, this is our history β all of Rhode Islandβs history,β she says.
It was through the leadership of Theresa βSoniβ GuzmΓ‘n Stokes, executive director of the R.I. Black Heritage Society, that the organization was able to acquire funding from Senator Reed and the Papitto Opportunity Connection. This funding includes the creation of Cummingsβ professorship and two paid graduate assistantships dedicated to this work.
GuzmΓ‘n Stokes notes that βeven in the short time sheβs been here, Sherri has contributed greatly to the programming for the R.I. Black Heritage Society.β
The ΒιΆΉΤ΄΄ Foundation also manages two funds to support the collection. One supports the maintenance of and programming for the collection. The other fund, established by alumnus David Pollak β87 called the Bold Heritage Fund, supports research and programming around the accomplishments of Black women in Rhode Island.
βΒιΆΉΤ΄΄ and the ΒιΆΉΤ΄΄ Foundation are extremely pleased to house the R.I. Black Heritage Society collection and to share in the efforts of preserving and promoting it,β says Interim Vice President for College Advancement and Executive Director of the ΒιΆΉΤ΄΄ Foundation Clark Greene. βThis will be of great value to ΒιΆΉΤ΄΄ students and to the Rhode Island community as a whole.
βWe are grateful to Theresa GuzmΓ‘n Stokes and Kim Dumpson, former director of the Foundation, for their passion and commitment to making this happen. ΒιΆΉΤ΄΄ is a stronger institution for its rich diversity. This project, along with our recent federal designation as an Hispanic Serving Institution, reflect our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.β
Also, see: R.I. Black Heritage Societyβs Collection Finds New Home at ΒιΆΉΤ΄΄