WHO MAKES THE MAPS?

I use a question to  title this blog entry.
WHO MAKES the MAPS?
  And I can  follow it up with another.
WHO WRITES THE HISTORY BOOKS?

The winners --that  would be the answer to both questions.

Do you know this statement?

"treason never prospers
because if it does none dare call it treason."
By Sir John Harrington

Race riots are not new in American history--they are simply not mentioned.  The neighborhoods are  disappeared and the people who lived there are scattered. 

Here is David Brussat reminding us of two   disappeared places in Providence, Rhode Island.

Riots of Providence, 1824, 1831 by David Brussat The original photograph from my 2005 column on Hardscrabble and Snowtown. Here is my Feb. 24, 2005, column in the Providence Journal, headlined "Hardscrabble and Snowtown of yore": *** HARDSCRABBLE and Snowtown are old Providence neighborhoods that have fallen off the map. In 1824, Hardscrabble was a poor enclave of houses owned or rented mainly by free African-Americans along Olney's Lane (now Olney Street) and North Main Street. Before blacks moved in, the sparsely populated area was known as Stampers Hill or Addison Hollow. Later, it was called Constitution Hill, and then Lippitt Hill. Lippitt Hill, the city's oldest black neighborhood, was razed and its residents were dispersed, in 1962-68, to construct University Heights, an innovative shopping/residential complex designed by America's first major architect of malls, Victor Gruen. By 1831, Snowtown had arisen to the west of Hardscrabble, across the Blackstone Canal (the Moshassuck River), beneath the bluff of Smith Hill, possibly right where Waterplace Park and Providence Place are today. It's hard to know for sure. Snowtown isn't labeled on old maps, or precisely located in accounts of old history. It appeared and disappeared long before the State House was completed in 1901. By then, Snowtown, not to mention Hardscrabble, had been forgotten by, I daresay, as many citizens of Providence as possible. Why? Perhaps because they were the sites of two race riots. Their role in bringing about the town of Providence's incorporation as a city -- a step aimed chiefly to strengthen police power -- is described in the Winter 1972 issue of the Rhode Island Historical Society's quarterly, by Brown Prof. Howard Chudacoff and master's candidate Theodore Hirt. Quoting from a report of the trial that followed the Oct. 18, 1824, Hardscrabble riot, they write: "[S]ome blacks had tried to 'maintain the inside walk in their peregrination in town,' in obvious defiance of racial taboo, and the usual 'bickerings and hostilities' ended in a sort of 'battle royal.' The following night a large number of whites, incensed by the incident, assembled on [Weybosset] Bridge and 'after some consultation' invaded the black section known as Hard-Scrabble 'which they almost laid in ruins.' " The mob of about 50, cheered on by some 100 spectators, pulled down seven houses and heavily damaged four others. Nobody tried to stop them. Only two were convicted, of minor charges. Then  it was white people   destroying  the Black homes and  neighborhoods. We are now living through another period of   daily race riots and they are  taking place in   most American cities It is as if  a great violence that has  been seething  like an inactive volcano has finally   risen  to the surface and blown its  top. Maybe the  months long world wide pandemic  has generated the energy and now it has found  an outlet.   The pandemic has exposed so  many of the  inequities  of our  society.  Black people and poor  people and the  old, warehoused in   nursing homes and rehab  places,  have borne the brunt of the terrible  and deadly virus. Poor people often live in crowded  quarters.  They do not have private bedrooms  and baths .   They cannot maintain social  distance. And do recall that this most prosperous country   supposedly in the world still has not seen its way  to providing universal health care to all its citizens. So people simply cannot afford to seek medical help. That is the stark reality. WE have sown the wind with  injustice and racism and now we  are reaping the  whirlwind. MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON OUR  SOULS.