To the editor:

This is in furtherance of Stephan Brigidi’s May 26 letter referring to the upcoming public discussion (Sunday, June 12, 2-4 p.m., at Bristol’s Old State House) of our town’s Middle Passage Marker Project.

The national organization known as the Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project (MPCPMP), of which Bristol’s Port Markers Project Committee is an affiliate, was established in 2011. It is a logical outgrowth of The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Slave Route Project, initiated back in 1994 and rooted in UNESCO’s belief that ignorance or concealment of major historical events constitutes an obstacle to mutual understanding, reconciliation and cooperation among peoples.

As indicated on its excellent website (www.middlepassageproject.org), MPCPMP has identified at least 48 locations along our nation’s South and East coasts, from Texas to New Hampshire, and including Newport, Bristol, Warren and Providence RI, as “arrival sites” which were engaged in the slave trade. Through tireless efforts, MPCPMP and its affiliated local citizens’ committees and local nonprofits (and typically with the cooperation of local government) have erected at least 28 memorial markers. You need go no further than curbside at the Town Wharf on Water Street in neighboring Warren to view and read an excellent example of such a marker, as erected in 2019. And zoomable photographs of Warren’s as well as the other 27 erected markers can be viewed on the MPCPMP website, all of them unequivocal in acknowledging and describing their community’s involvement in the slave trade.

Stephen T. O’Neill
70 Ferry Road
Bristol