A Trip to South Main Street and Tockwotten – Ed Iannuccilli

by Ed Iannnuccilli, contributing writer. Photos submitted.

Last week we made our way to South Main Street for an appointment in Providence. We ventured first to a neat coffee shop, Dave’s, where we each indulged in a bacon, cheese, and egg sandwich on an English muffin. But no fear, it is not our usual morning fare, and the bacon was crispy. There are days when ya gotta have bacon.

South Main Street is neat. It aligns along the base of College Hill and is known for its unique shops, restaurants, and the RISD Museum.

While we were sitting at the counter eating our treats, sipping the smooth, chocolate-flavored, nutty coffee, and listening to the reassuring chatter of nearby students, I gazed across the street at a colorful street sign, “Tockwotten Cape Verdean,” sitting handsomely above the South Main Street sign.

“I’ve seen that name, Tockwotten, for years and never gave it a thought. What’s it about?”

“It looks like you’ll need to do some homework, Ed”

Tockwotten is a Narragansett Indian name that means a steep ascent to be climbed. Tockwotten Hill, one of the seven hills of the city, is in the Fox Point neighborhood. It was used as an overlook of the harbor.

The area was once called Foxes Hill and is likely how the neighborhood, Fox Point, was named. The hill was later called Corkey Hill when it was a neighborhood with little squatter-type homes and pig pens. In the 1870s, the area was tidied up and reverted to its original native name.

The community is loaded with history, but the area, especially that of South Main Street, was disrupted. Many of the buildings once occupied by the early settlers are gone due to urban renewal, the Interstate Highway System, gentrification, and institutional expansion. Before the intrusion, the Fox Point area was home to businesses and families that stretched to the river. Long before, the Narragansett people occupied the land.

One hundred and thirty years ago, Cape Verdeans, the first Sub-Saharan African people to immigrate to Providence, began arriving in the Tockwotten neighborhood of Fox Point. It was a story that was drifting away and needed to be told.

Thus was born The Fox Point Cape Verdean Heritage Place Project (FPCVHP) incorporated in 2014, as an independent, community-based research initiative. They have worked for over fifteen years to insert Cape Verdean history into the narratives told about immigrants to Providence.

The effort has helped to capture the generational trauma experienced by the people displaced from their neighborhood. Fox Point is not the only neighborhood where this has happened. I was a student in Albany when the governor and mayor pushed through an effort to demolish a perfectly stable ethnic neighborhood to build monstrous government buildings.

We need to save old neighborhoods. It promotes cultural preservation. It preserves the character of a place. It supports and promotes local economic development. By embracing the past, it fosters community participation. Preservation becomes linked to resilience.

I was pleased to see the Tockwotten sign. Bravo historians. Bravo preservationists. Bravo the neighborhood.

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Ed Iannuccilli – edwrites.net