 Next slide please Development agency said that the family's had to move. They told us, well, we're gonna fix these houses up. We're gonna knock some of them down, we're gonna fix them up, and you're gonna be the first ones to come in. But better that we know we can afford these houses here. You know it gets me so mad. Now they call Fox Point the lower inside. I said this is not the lower inside, this is Fox Point. So, because of it to say 195 in the redevelopment, many families had to move out of this area. And if you meet any of them, and you ask them where are you from, there's only one response you will get from them. It is on from Fox Point. Even if they now live in East Providence, Kentucky, North Providence, or wherever they reside today, you can hear the pride that they have for the point. Good morning. Good afternoon and hello. My name is Rachel Robinson, and I am the director of preservation at the Providence Preservation Society. Today I'm joined by two members of a special immigrant community to share our story, an ongoing story of how preservationist and community leaders can work together to tell a more complete history. Our collaboration and work is based on preservation of intangible history. I am eager for you to meet and hear more from my partners, but first I will provide some context for those of you unfamiliar with the Ocean State. Next slide please. Rhode Island is located in southern New England, nestled between Connecticut and Massachusetts. Providence, the state capital, is located at the northern tip of the Narragansett Bay, where the Seaconk and Providence rivers meet. At this point is the east side neighborhood of Fox Point, the setting of today's story, and about 3400 miles from its origin. Next slide. Like many American cities, Providence has been shaped by two powerful federal forces of the mid-20th century, the Interstate Highway System and urban renewal. Both of these actions and others disturbed and displaced what was a thriving community of Cape Verdean immigrants who had occupied the Fox Point neighborhood since the late 19th century. In the center of the photograph on the left, in green, is the footprint and damage caused by I-195 tearing through the jewelry district downtown and Fox Point on the east side. More than a decade ago, I-195 was relocated south to the mouth of the Providence River. In contemporary urban planning, this is generally seen as an enviable accomplishment, but it does present new challenges as the land formerly occupied by the highway is now reimagined and redeveloped. This task is assigned to the quasi-state agency, the I-195 Redevelopment District Commission. Plans and construction are currently underway for the highlighted parcels. Those in the bottom portion of the diagram are located in Fox Point. In this latest renewal or iteration, how would the historical layers of this land be acknowledged, or will they? Next slide. Now I would like to introduce you to my organization, the Providence Preservation Society, or PPS. We are a textbook mid-century American preservation nonprofit founded during a period of innovative and radical preservation activity. Many of the tools we use today were created in this era, but their application has not always been equal or equitable. PPS was founded in 1956 to respond to the proposed demolition of a number of 18th and early 19th century houses on College Hill. Our mission states that we support and advocate for historic preservation, thoughtful design, and people-centered planning in Providence. PPS owns and is the custodian of two 18th century buildings in the College Hill neighborhood just north of Fox Point. Our buildings occupy the ancestral lands of the Narragansett and Wampanoag nations. On the left is the Old Brick Schoolhouse, 1769, with a long and multifaceted history and local education, including the first public school in Providence where free black children were educated. Shakespeare's Head, 1772 on the right, was a colonial residence and printing press. These two buildings were not removed during urban renewal or the building of the highway. Instead, they were among the first buildings in the city to be protected and designated with newly minted preservation tools. They are in the city's first local historic district established in 1960 and the National Historic Landmark District of 1970. Next slide. In our earliest days, PPS participated in the College Hill study, the first urban planning study in the country to use funding from what would become HUD for the purpose of preservation. While the study was pioneering in demonstrating that there is no inherent conflict between the growth of a city and historic preservation, the plan did not prescribe preservation equitably. A digital copy of this document can be found on our website and I invite you to take a look. By the time PPS reached its 60th anniversary in 2016, we decided to revisit the early, our early history and activity. Next slide. The outcome was an exhibition at the Providence Public Library juxtaposing images from the College Hill study with retrospective commentary by experts in the fields of planning, architecture, history and design. Dr. Claire Andre Watkins was specifically asked to participate to insert the Cape Verdean story into the story of College Hill and Fox Point. This was the first critical step and not without discomfort and immense trust for PPS and the Cape Verdean community to begin to rebuild the layers of intangible history that had been erased when buildings were removed. Reflecting on three of the panels in the exhibition seen here on the far left, Claire notes importantly the reality that this study area included the footprint and heart of the Cape Verdean community and yet the Cape Verdeans are invisible in the document. Next slide, please. I invite you to take a moment to read Claire's own words. Next slide, please. The next step in our journey took place in 2017 during the PPS fall symposium. The event began with a screening of Claire's film Some Kind of Funny Puerto Rican, a Cape Verdean American story. Here you see Claire on the left with our PPS executive director, Brent Runyon. The theme of the symposium was Sites and Stories, Mapping a Preservation Ecosystem. The program included a conversation between Claire and Elihu Rubin, a professor from the Yale School of Architecture, moderated by local scholar Christina Bevilakwa to understand, I'm sorry, to consider urban displacement and its aftermath. This was another critical moment for our two groups. PPS asked the difficult questions of our own field of historic preservation, like how do we preserve stories of an erased landscape while asking Claire on behalf of her community to reflect on a painful past. Next slide. The 2019 Society of Architectural Historians hosted its annual conference in the creative capital, and as host city, Providence was the focus of the Saturday seminar. The topic was urban renewal, highway repairs and preservation, and I knew that it was imperative, though painful once again for the Fox Point Cape Verdean story to be part of the narrative. Claire agreed to participate by screening high neighbor. To see the land we were talking about through the eyes of a little girl who lived there. Next slide. Recently, two important things have happened. In 2021, PPS published our strategic plan entitled democratizing preservation, which is our bold commitment to making preservation more equitable and to put people first. Secondly, in January 2022, we announced our annual most endangered properties list with nominations received from the public each year. We've tried to make the list more dynamic by pushing the boundaries of what an endangered property can be and working constructively with property owners. This year, we worked closely with the Tocquatin Fox Point Cape Verdean community to embrace the idea of preserving a place when the buildings are gone, but the people and lived experience remain. Next slide. That's why we wanted to share with you our relationship built on trust, respect, humility, goodwill, good faith and an appreciation of and commitment to the telling of the full story. Our story of collaboration and daylighting is ongoing. We've come a long way and and is a very important word to us and we have more work to do. Now I gladly turn the program over to the two women, two women with whom I've had the pleasure of working so that they can share their story. Dr. Claire Andre Watkins and Glenis Ramos Mitchell. Thank you for the introduction, Rachel. Claire and I are excited about this historic collaboration with you and PPS on the 2022 most endangered property designation of the Tocquatin Fox Point Cape Verdean neighborhood. Historic for bringing to light the importance of preserving a people's lived history when their built environment no longer exists. The challenges to protect and insert into the stream of immigrant narratives, our most endangered property. The invisible stories and memories told by people who lived through the events of this overlooked and physically erased community. Claire and I now invite you and the past forward attendees to a digital exploration of the intangible cultural heritage of the vibrant Tocquatin Fox Point Cape Verdean community. Take it away, Claire. Thank you, Glenis. The Fox Point Cape Verdean story is one of the many narratives that intersect and overlap with Providence and Rhode Island's local and local history. The 2022 most endangered property designation begins a vital collaboration of FP, CVHP and speed media productions with Providence preservation to reconstitute emerging and complex narratives of shared spaces and memories. The MEP statement on the PPS website really captures the project in purpose and I quote, How do we capture the intangible surviving memory in generational trauma experienced by the people displaced from their neighborhood? PPS is proud to recognize the work of FP, CVHP and their team as they leverage 21st century digital technology to preserve, maintain and create a digital footprint of the living but physically erased history of Rhode Island's first Cape Verdean neighborhood. The awareness and production of intangible heritage challenge us as preservationists to widen the definition of place significance and to encourage the commemoration of the unseen. Back to you, Glenis. Next slide. The image on the right side of this slide is panel four of the College Hill Plan. The image on the left side is the logo of the Fox Point Cape Verdean Heritage Place Project, FP, CVHP. First, I'll talk about FP, CVHP launched in 2007 and incorporated as a 501C3 nonprofit in 2014. The Fox Point Cape Verdean Heritage Place Project is a volunteer community based research initiative created by the descendants of the Cape Verdean founding families of the Takwat neighborhood. The organization aims to document and preserve the legacy of the Cape Verdean community of Fox Point. Our team includes educators, linguists, librarians, curators, digital archivists, historians, community elders and select institutional partners. We've been working for over 15 years to preserve this story. Now, turning it over to you, Claire, to talk about the logo. Thanks, Glenis. The significance of our logo on the left is critically important to our cultural identity. The ship is a packet. The flag of the islands of Cape Verde are on the sails, as well as the stars and banners of the U.S. flag. I draw your attention, though, particularly to the shadow. The reflection is not of the packet, but of the skyline of the city of Providence. It is the shadow, the layer of the absent narrative of intangible memory that our team is digitally reconstituting and inserting into the timeline. This concept is illustrated in the image on the right, also where panel four is flipped on the right without color. It's a mirror image. The mirror image stripped of color represents, metaphorically, the absent voices in that built space that are erased. In this slide, and all slides that you'll see in this presentation, our lived history is a shadow. Metamorphically and purposefully juxtaposed and inserted into the optic of empowered history and institutions. Or, to put it another way, our project transforms infill into historic fabric to use the language of preservation. Next slide. Back to you, Glenis. We are pleased with this pro-no-feature story. It gets it right. And I quote, 300 families, 172 homes, and 32 businesses were displaced, two schools were demolished. This Takwat neighborhood was continuously Cape Verdean, culturally, linguistically, religiously, and socioeconomically intact. The article captures the story of our community's heart, pain, grief, hope, and the trauma of the impact of I-95. A story recognizable to those who lived it and now is accessible to new audiences and future generations. We always were a neighborhood that mattered. We mattered until we didn't. Next slide. The core institutions of the Cape Verdean community stretched along South Main Street and a power street which ran off South Main Street. Every Cape Verdean family in Fox Point had someone who belonged to the San Antonio Association, a dues-paying, beneficent organization incorporated in 1934. The Boys Club opened in 1910 and was the home away from home, but generations of boys from the point. Most men belonged to local 1329 of the International Longshoremen's Association, the ILA. The union created in 1933 predominantly by Cape Verdeans. Longshoremen unloaded lumber and scrap iron from ships coming into the port of Providence. The number of gangs working the ship depended on the type of carvel. Local 1329 provided a critical stream of economic stability to the community. Old-timers like to say, local 1329 was the table that fed the community, quote Stevie Benton. The men worked the boats and our mothers, aunts and cousins worked mostly as domestics or doing piecework in the jewelry district. Linus. Claire, your stories evoke such warm memories of the active life of our Takwatin community. Thank you for sharing and talking up these wonderful and tangible memories. Next slide. Linus and I are descendants of the first community of Cape Verdeans and Rhode Island, who settled in the Takwatin neighborhood, and are the first people of sub-Saharan Africa to immigrate voluntarily to the United States. The Cape Verde Islands were uninhabited prior to discovery in 1462. We are a mix of Africans, Portuguese, and other European voyagers to the islands. In the 16th of the 19th century, Cape Verde was the transatlantic crossroad for the global slave trade, including slave ships from Rhode Island, and later as a stop for the whaling ships from Nantucket and Bedford, Massachusetts, who stopped by the islands to pick up supplies and crew. In the early 20th century, Cape Verdeans, fleeing harsh colonial rule and famine and drought cycles, arrived at New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island ports. They came on packets, like in our logo, owned by Cape Verdeans that traveled back and forth between New England and Cape Verde carrying passengers and carvel. The story of our Takwatin community begins with Antonio Zequino, the founder of the packet trade who was born in Brava in 1851. His image is on the right from his great-granddaughter. He was a whaler and seasonal architectural migrant worker traveling back and forth between Brava and New England to work on the cranberry bogs of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In 1890, he bought the Nellie Mae in Newport, Rhode Island, during a severe drought and famine in Brava. He returned to Brava in 1892, bringing his family and others on the Nellie Mae to New England, stopping at various points on Cape Cod and continuing up the bay to the port of Providence, Rhode Island. He and his family settled in the Takwatin neighborhood, where he bought a home on 110 industry. Subsequently, the Nellie Mae returned to Brava, where Antonio Pueblo rallied others to buy old whaling schooners. These became the fleet of the packet trade carrying passengers, mail, cargo, and remittances back and forth between New England and Cape Verde. Next slide. As noted in this Providence Journal article, Takwatin was a thriving, contiguous community of generational Cape Verdean families. A stable, long-standing, seafaring community of mostly long-term renters and some owners. This slide inserts the missing layer of our community's intangible memory into the language of slum clearance construction of I-95 in the College Hill Plan. This is the right side of the slide. Of the 300 families noted by the Providence Journal article, 10 lived in tenements between Planet Power and South Main Street. My parents were in their home for close to 35 years. There were two families in the house, upstairs and downstairs. Both families were relatives to two other families down the street, upstairs and downstairs. A street over on Power Street were three families who were relatives to our families and the others on South Main Street. As Eunice said, we were a contiguous community of kinship and families. Eunice, I turn it back over to you. Next slide. This wrinkle photo taken in the power of their home on 88 Pike Street is of my maternal grandparents, Rosalia and Antonia Alves. This respected couple, affectionately called in Creole, Mamai and Papai, meaning mother and father, were pillars of the Fox Point Cape Verdean community. The Alves family of 16 children was the largest and one of the oldest Cape Verdean families in Fox Point. All 16 children were born and raised in Fox Point and went on to live and raise their children in the Fox Point Cape Verdean neighborhood. In honor of the great legacy of the Alves family, the city of Providence in 1998 officially renamed Pike Street Alve Way. If the walls of 88 Pike Street could speak, the incredible memory of that space would be full of laughter, sounds of Creole, and the mouth-watering aroma of our favorite dishes. Calderas of Kanja and Kachuk or Manchu, staples of every Cape Verdean home. Next slide. Their house on 88 Pike Street served as the first home for many immigrants arriving on packets at the nearby docks of the Port of Providence. It was always a celebration when the packets arrived. I remember the excitement of our whole family as we rushed to the dock to welcome home returning relatives, meet new rivals, and get news from the old country. The packets remained in port for weeks. Each day was a celebration on the pier as crew and community mingled, sang and danced to the violins, and guitars playing beloved Creole music. If those docks could speak, they also would share memories of sorrow, of nostalgia, for the old country, and for the loved ones who stayed. This feeling of missing the old country is most beautifully expressed in Cape Verdean music, particularly the morna. A morna is a soulful song, traditionally slow, sad, and melancholic, with violins, lots of strings instruments. Their longing for the old country and the name of the morna now fit together. We'll now play for you Lembranza, which is a morna meaning nostalgia in English. When I look at this slide, the picture of the Ernestina and the Madeleine, I think of our grandparents' voyage to America and the Lembranzas, the memories, the nostalgia that traveled with them. I think of our grandparents' voyage to America and the Madeleine, the memories, the nostalgia that traveled with them. We'll now play for you Lembranza, which is a morna meaning nostalgia in English. We'll now play for you Lembranza, which is a morna meaning nostalgia in English. Sacraments is a terror of God. A city with a star in the sky. With a morbid mind, without power. There are many castles with the color of the sky. Without anyone to know, there is no way. We'll now play for you Lembranza, which is a morna meaning nostalgia in English. We'll now play for you Lembranza, which is a morna meaning nostalgia in English. Without anyone to know, there is no way. There are many castles with the color of the sky. We'll now play for you Lembranza, which is a morna meaning nostalgia in English. Sacraments is a morna meaning nostalgia in English. Next slide. At this juncture of the presentation, I'd like to formally introduce Dr. Clare Andrade Watkins, our Fox Point K Verde Inheritage Place project director, our historian, and our storyteller, our griot. She is transforming our intangible assets into unforgettable stories of us and by us. Thank you, Glenis. Listening to Flash and Vicki, sing Lembranza, Glenis, I think of you and I when we learned to dance Creole music. And we stood on our father's shoes in the dances in the San Antonio and learned to dance the two-step. All of us. These are the memories. And the greatest asset for me as a storyteller is, you know, telling your own story. My lived history begins in the community where I was born and raised. My father, the first born in America, was the eldest of seven. My mother, Celestina Gertrude Silva, was born on May 7th, 1891, in Salgue, on the island of Bovista. Grandpa, Antonio Soldato de Maria Drague, was born November 8th, 1886, in Ponto Sol, San Tintão. Grandpa arrived first. They wrote a letter to Cape Verde requesting my grandmother's hand in marriage. The word was that he came from a good family. She arrived in 1915 on the Savoia. My mother, in the lower photograph, was one of ten, born in East Wareham, Massachusetts. Seraphine and Matilda Monteiro arrived from Brava on the SS Talisman on August 8th, 1908. Seraphine was born August 14th, 1874, in Poversão, San Tintão. Seraphine and Matilda was born August 1st, 1884, in the village of Matu, on the island of Brava. This was my universe, populated by childhood memories and stories about Brava, the island of flowers, the mountains of San Tintão, and the dunes, the dunes of Bovista. Our lives centered around family visits to grandparents and relatives in New Bedford and down the Cape, or Cape Vod. We were poor, but always sending barrels of food, clothes, and money back to our families in Cape Verde. Our wealth was and is each other, from cradle to grave. I had a happy childhood. Next slide. So, where is my story? It's absent. How do I find it? How do I tell it? How do I preserve it? Who does it have meaning and value for? What does critical engagement mean in that space? In shared spaces. And who owns it? This was the incentive to create Spia media productions in 1998. Spia and Clio, among the tons both in our community, means to see, to check out, to look at. As a Cape Verdean storyteller maker, I work with the community and leverage digital technology to create first voice images and soundscapes from one's influences and authentic archival source materials to create stories by us. In this slide on the right is a cherished handkerchief from Granny Monteiro that becomes my historic fabric. The embroidered floors evoke for me memories and stories of Brava, Iliad de Flores. The Cape Verdean morna, like Limpranza, that Gwynis and I grew up with. The mountains of Sintentown, the dunes of Boa Vista, Limpranza. This intentional aesthetic disrupts the narrative of erasure and the rubble of infill by juxtaposing and inserting layers of our lived experience, intangible memory, and Limpranza's and memories. Next slide. This slide evokes deep emotions for me. The marker reads, in recognition of the contributions of the Owls family by a grateful parish community, our Lady of the Rosary Church, Providence, Rhode Island. The house on 88 Pike Street was demolished in 2007. The brick from the house's foundation marks the end of an era of intangible lived history for the Owls family and the Fox Point Cape Verdean community. I'm going to talk about the brick held by Gwynis' mother and December 12, 2007, the date written on the brick. I was there on that date and I do not want to share my feelings about watching the demolition of the last house in Fox Point that said we were here. The prerogative and empowerment of intangible memory means that we have the right to say no. This is a memory that I will hold in my heart and share if I choose. But I will say how the brick that Dottie Owls is holding got saved. I asked the demolition crew to stop just before they picked up the stoop with the backhoe to drop it into the foundation and then fill it in. I reached down into the foundation and pulled up four bricks. I gave one to my cousin standing there with me and I kept one. I later delivered one to Dottie and the other to John Murphy who was the consulman at the time of urban renewal who helped my fight to save her home at ADA Pike Street. Gwynis, explain Sodaad as a prayer that we sing when it captures the pain and trauma of a moment like this. This morna of Sodaad meaning deep nostalgia, deep nostalgic longing evokes the pain of the images in the slide. Let us pause for a moment of reflection on the pain, the sorrow, and the trauma of the end of ADA Pike Street as a physical space of memory. Next slide. Cecilia Dottie Ramos, my mother, is the sole living sibling of the 16 Owls children. She recently turned 93 years wiser on September 16 and is our library and resource for documenting the area where the Fox Point Cape Verdean community lived. Dottie is one of the only remaining first generation Elders born and raised in the point or down the point. Her amazing memory is our intangible gold in our digital reconstitution of the top-watton neighborhood. Next slide. A leading question though is who are Cape Verdeans? I remember my mother's exasperation during my rebellious teen years during the Black Power Movement telling me over and over again, we are Indians. Really, mommy? Like Pocahontas? Really? Smarty pants, right? Decades later, I learned indeed we were Indians on my maternal grandmother's side from Brava. Indian as in Goa, a small Portuguese colony in India who had goons who came and settled and worked in Cape Verde in Brava. Lost in translation is the invisible dual language reality growing up in my household. My parents spoke to each other, especially when they didn't want us to understand what they were talking about. They referred to it as a dialect. On the left is a 1991 event. Cape Verdeans, black or white drum roll, is an example of how we were perceived by the outside world. Lost in translation. Next slide. The title of my documentary on the left, a postcard from the first iteration of my visual for the film, Some Kind of Funny Puerto Rican, came from my beau's brother who was a student at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. When he heard his brother had met a Cape Verdean girl from Providence, the Brown student replied, Cape Verdean? Oh, there are a lot of them around here. They have some kind of funny Puerto Rican. The spelling is the way that it was pronounced by the region the Brown student came from, hence the spelling in the title, deliberately porto. Throughout my life, I'm often asked about my race, my background, and I answer, I'm a black American of Cape Verdean heritage. In most cases, the response is Cape Verdean. What's that? In the United States, particularly in the Northeast, the usual response is, isn't that some kind of funny Puerto Rican? A perplexing thought considering that Puerto Rican speaks Spanish and Cape Verdean speaks Creole Portuguese, and there are several Cape Verdeans that live in the Northeast. But what's clear here is, in these responses, is that Cape Verdean was an overlooked, misunderstood, and generally unknown ethnic culture, absent from a proper place in Rhode Island's demographic history. On the right side of this slide, again, returning to the intentional juxtaposition of images of the past into the present, the image on the right is exit one, which was the main off-ramp of I-95 before it was taken down. And this off-ramp is at the intersection of South Main Street and Wickham Street, which was the heart of the Cape Verdean community, and now the site of a Trader Joe's that just opened this week. The ramp was a bullseye hit that severed the community, cut it in half, and left the shadow that's standing there on the highway. Urban blight slumps and substandard word terms created above our community and by inference, us. Next slide. A few weeks before the April 2005 work in progress screening of some kind of fun Puerto Rican at the Cable Car Cinema in Providence, Rhode Island, Deacon Charles Andre, my uncle, his wife Aunt Pat, Uncle Tony and Aunt Mary, came to a private screening at my home. After it ended, it was dead quiet. I broke into a sweat. Oh my God, they hated I thought. Then Uncle Charlie said, you got it right. You don't need to do one more time. We got time at the cable car in South Main Street for the work in progress screen of some kind of fun Puerto Rican. It was many elders first time returning to the neighborhood and especially painful for Uncle Charlie on Pat and the Marysio family. They've been evicted from the apartments above Mr Burns garage, which became cable car cinema. This was the critical moment for community buying the make or break moment for 20 years of work on the film. They loved it. From the audience suggestion, the title was expanded to include the Cape Verdean American story. That was the day that some kind of funny Puerto Rican Cape Verdean American story was born. Next slide. After the work in progress screening, our team scrambled to complete the film. In January 26 2006, some kind of funny Puerto Rican and Cape Verdean American story. Our story premiered at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts to a sold out crowd with people coming from all over the country who had supported the project over the 20 years. It was the first time our shadows became realities on the silver screen. A real legacy of intangible memories. The rest is the history and the foundation of our work. Next slide. In the fall of 2007, rolling out after the release of some kind of funny Puerto Rican Cape Verdean American story, we came together. Descendants of the founding Cape Verdean families of Fox Point, including local 1329 retirees, children and grandchildren, the founders of the San Antonio Association, boys and girls club alumni. And we created the ad hoc working group for the Fox Point project, which evolved into the Fox Point Cape Verdean heritage project. Our mission then and now is to document and preserve our community assets and tell our story. Next slide. The president of the San Antonio Association received a letter from Providence redevelopment agency in 1966. That was a notice of eviction by eminent domain. In turn, the San Antonio Association sent a letter to the tenants at 669 Wicked in Street, whom they had to displace. And I quote, as you already know, this property was bought by our organization. But perhaps you are not acquainted with our reasons. Our present property located at 27 power street Providence, Rhode Island is due to be condemned by the redevelopment agency. Therefore, it became necessary to relocate. Now that we have acquired this property at 669 Wicked in Street and Providence, Rhode Island. It is with sincere regret that we must ask the tenants on the first two floors to vacate these premises at their earliest convenience. The first two floors are necessary for club purposes. I remember going to some of the meetings with my grandmother, one of the founding members of the San Antonio Association. It was heartbreaking when a club was forced to close in the early 1980s due to a decline in membership because Cape Verdeans were being displaced and forced to move from Fox Point. That was a scary time for us as children or young adults or teenagers. It was even scarier watching our parents being scared. I remember when my father came running up the back stairs on the floor and she was saying, hey, hey, hey, hey, we're going to move, we're going to move. And he and my mother switched into home. You never forget seeing your parents cry. Ever preserving the history of the San Antonio Association is critical to the intangible history as a key institution of our most endangered property project. And this, I'm turning it over to you to introduce Teresa, who is one of the founding members of our team on FPCVHP. The next slide. Teresa is the daughter of Jenensino Mello, founder, president of the San Antonio Association, and his wife, Francis Mello. Teresa and her family lived on 27 Power Street upstairs from the club. Teresa experienced the family trauma of the forced move from Power Street to 669 Wicked Inn Street. She now is the treasurer of the Fox Point, Cape Verde Heritage Place project and part of the living history memory of the generational trauma of that displacement. The 75th anniversary in 2009 of the founding of the San Antonio Association was the kickoff of our movement to preserve the history and memory of the Cape Verde community. This procession through Fox Point down South Main Street is held annually on the first Sunday in June. In Teresa's words, as one of the children of San Antonio, she always likes to say, and it really kind of captures intangible memory, is that they know it as they saw it. We know it as we lived it. Community outrage over the absence of Cape Verde in history from the Providence Harbor Walk resulted in a special commission from Rydeck, Rhode Island Department of Transportation, under the direction of legendary William Bill Warner to create a panel on the history of the Fox Point Cape Verde community. A highlight of the finished piece was the poem written by Alberto Plerri, a first generation top one elder, historian and a bard of Fox Point. The footing of the sign and I remember when Bill called me and said, Claire, how do you want the sign footed is directly adjacent to and facing the location of the top lot neighborhood. The first Fox Point Cape Verde settlement where it all began. This is the proposed site in progress in advocacy for our commemorative park. In 2013, our team installed the gallery of memory, Masters of the Craft, a photo exited in Providence City Hall to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the founding of local 1329 of the ILA. In this video is a wonderful memory of that moment. This is a human rights and honor of the 80th anniversary of the founding of local 1329 of the International Law and Human Rights Association. Oh, say can you say The story of the Cape Verde was played is very much part of the story of Providence and the story of the immigrants in the United States. And it is certainly also the story of the Cape Verde community in America. 80 years ago, when those immigrants workers founded the local 1329 of the International Law and Human Rights Association, they must have done so with great pride. It gives me a profound respect for all the state and community and the same sense of pride that we are here today at the opening of this activity. In the end of Fox Point 20 years ago, pretty much shattered the community. And the goal of the Fox Point Cape Verde project is reconstituting and creating a sustainable legacy of one of the most important Cape Verde communities to diaspora. The vision of 1529 in order to give us some kind of a feeling to be there, to do the things that we did and what we did. And I'm now about 26, 27 years retired from there now. You know, it's a good life. I brought up a beautiful family, built a home, and I have nothing to complain about. God bless and bless and bless all the people I'm showing now. In this citation, in posthumous recognition of the life and achievement of Harold Fox, a true son of Fox Point, devoted husband and father, courageous Korean War veteran, congregate of the Sheldon Street Church, member of the Providence Boys' Club, and founding member of the Fox Point Cape Verde project. Claire, you have no sound. How about having no sound? Back to the top of this slide, okay? It means I'm not perfect. I'm working on it. The 60th anniversary of the College Hill Plan and PPS marked the anniversary of the birth of historic preservation and the death of our community. This exhibit at the Providence Public Library was the first formal acknowledgement of the historical accountability of PPS and the displacement of the Fox Point Cape Verde community and the first collaboration between PPS and the Cape Verde community. At the same time, the PPS exhibit was in the upstairs gallery of the Providence Public Library. It was directly above our exhibit on the ground floor. It was ironic that the upstairs exhibit of PPS included the 60th anniversary panels, which Rachel talked about earlier, which had panel four with my inserted narrative. While downstairs, we, the lived history of our community, of the displaced people upstairs were like struggling to advocate our intangible history. I hope I'm not the only one who sees the humor and irony of this historical juxtaposition. Next slide. The conversation hosted by Providence Preservation with urban planners in 2017 that Rachel also talked about earlier was groundbreaking. For the first time, we were at the table to ask them these questions. What happened? What changed? What remained the same? But we are here pop-up installations, which created for sites and stories, inserted the array footprint into the shared spaces of overlapping history. And then the image on the left between me and Brent Runyon of Providence Preservation is an image of the elders taken at that 2005 working progress screening. We matter. Next slide. In 2008, 2018, the SPIA digital team presented the beta pilot project, Our Road, at the intentionally black, intentionally digital, the first African-American history, culture, and public humanities conference held at the University of Maryland College Hill. Our partners in the project are from the Providence Public Library, Emerson College, and the digital content is from the SPIA media documentary collection on canopy and educational streaming platform. Next slide. The narratives stories populating our timeline are first-voice narratives, inserting and disrupting the narrative about the end into the other layers of story, our lived experience. Teresa's memory of Mr. Burns Garage is one example of the project. Our Road, a mile of Fox Point Cape Verdean history, is a digital interactive timeline and working tour. Authentic, intangible history that is continuous and unbroken. It says we are here and we are working to create a sustainable legacy of our history in digital memory of the generations following. Next slide. We are also intentionally changing the power and equity in public engagement. My intervention reluctantly at the 2019 Society of Historical Architecture was an act of protest. Substituted the short film High Neighbor, a voice of lived memory as opposed to being a live talking head on a panel. Why do you still have your house and I don't? Are you listening? Or what are you hearing? Do you see me? Did you see me? Do you see me now? The takeaway is your memories are not my memories and our memories matter. Next slide. When we talk about a transatlantic legacy for Cape Verdean's from Fox Point, where I'm sitting has a real significant symbolically and historically. We're in Rhode Island, R-H-O-D-E, but this road, R-L-A-D, is a special place for us. One of our main roads was the sea, and behind me is the road that the packets arriving like behind me. The road, R-O-A-D, also is behind me, and it's the road that shaped our community, framed our community when we were here, and then displaced our community. And then on the other side is India Point Park, and that historically, India Point was the road that went from here across the Atlantic and made American history and American wealth. We're at the center and the heart of the Cape Verdean community. We're building a Fox Point Cape Verdean Memorial in India Point Park. It says we were here. It's our legacy, and it's at the center of our history where it all began. In 2013, the Fox Point Cape Verdean Heritage Place project at India Point Park became a 501-C3. One half of an acre of land located where the Cape Verdean community started over 100 years ago. We are inserting this layer of erased history into the timeline of Rhode Island. It truly is our Plymouth Rock in America. Next slide. What does most endangered property mean? What are our goals? For me, I want to first say thank you all for joining us in this presentation and letting us share our journey to preserve the intangible memory of our Cape Verdean Top Watan community. We are stitching our shadow to our lived memory in collaboration with institutional partners and stakeholders. We are here, and the past is the present. For me, for us as president of the Fox Point Cape Verdean Heritage Place project, being on the MEP list is an important step in creating a digital legacy that is authentic and accurate. The preservation of our story, the story of the Fox Point Cape Verdean Top Watan community, is essential to our future generations. And it is our story to tell. And to our friends who are helping us do it. Rachel? Thank you, Claire and Glennis, for sharing these personal and painful memories with all of us. Thank you also for sharing the joy and music and food of your families and memories in Fox Point. I would like to encourage all of my preservation colleagues watching this presentation to seek out ways to engage in the preservation of intangible history in your own communities. We all know that you do not have to look hard to find interesting stories, histories or people. What does take energy and time is reaching out and showing up. But I can tell you it's worth it, especially when friendships are forged and a more complete story is told. Thank you for listening today. See you later. We'll be back. We're intangible but we are here. Don't forget us. We won't let you. Now that you know who we are. Also, Kate, we have a good sense of humor. Thank you for sharing our humor with us. And thank you to our wonderful team that's worked so hard on this presentation and for Ronda and the whole team at Pass Forward for working with us over these long months to bring this to you today. Thank you and all the backstage heroes. We appreciate you.