Episode Details

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

In 1844, a Portuguese homeowner and militia veteran named Manuel Domingo walked into a Providence court to ask for the right to vote, only to be turned away for not being white. His refusal was not an isolated administrative error, but a reflection of a much deeper historical reality. For most of history, citizenship was not a universal birthright but a local, layered, and privileged condition, enforced through overlapping tests of property, race, religion, and gender. This episode examines how the boundary of political membership was drawn, defended, and redrawn in Rhode Island, from the 1663 colonial charter to the 1843 state constitution.

The story of Rhode Island reveals that the expansion of voting rights was never a simple march toward inclusion. The 1843 constitution eliminated the property qualification for native-born white men, but it simultaneously installed a strict racial barrier that disenfranchised free Black men who had previously voted. Through the experiences of excluded groups, including free Black residents who built alternative mutual aid societies, Irish immigrants who were taxed without representation, and women whose political agency was constrained by coverture, we see how the definition of "the people" was repeatedly renegotiated to suit those already in power.

I kept returning to one question while working on this episode: why do we so often imagine citizenship as a fixed legal status when its history is really a record of exclusion and contested boundaries? Understanding how communities have historically policed the line between insider and outsider offers a clearer, more honest picture of what political membership has actually meant, and how its older layers still shape our democratic institutions today.