MISSION
Our Mission:
1. Eliminate drowning disparities by providing free, life-saving swimming lessons to youth of color, dismantling systemic barriers to water safety and physical well-being.
2. Cultivate future leaders by expanding Black youth’s access to cultural capital through immersive workshops and engagement with Rhode Island's arts and performance sectors.
3. Advance racial equity by producing arts and humanities programming that celebrates Black Rhode Island heritage, fostering community and cultural understanding across diverse audiences.
Our Background:
Founded in 2016, Stages of Freedom is an award-winning nonprofit dedicated to dismantling racial inequities in Rhode Island and centering the value of Black lives. We achieve this through six core pillars:
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Swim Empowerment: A multi-award-winning statewide initiative providing no-cost swimming lessons to Black youth—who face a drowning rate five times higher than their white peers—through partnerships with nine YMCAs.
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Youth Empowerment & Mentorship: Cultivating confidence through cultural workshops and events, including Bow Ties for Boys, Girls’ Tea Party, and Jazz is a Rainbow.
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Cultural Heritage: Producing programs that celebrate African American history to build bridges of understanding across racial divides.
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Social Enterprise: Operating a Museum of RI African American History and a nonprofit bookshop, with 100% of proceeds supporting the Swim Empowerment program.
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Environmental Justice: Expanding green equity through a dedicated tree-planting initiative in South Providence.
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Community Connection: Curating and disseminating Black history and local events through our daily digital newsletter, Connected.
The Stages of Freedom Story
The extraordinary experiences Ray Rickman and Robb Dimmick had running Cornerstone Books, a small independent shop—specifically their encounters with icons like James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, and Joseph Beam—served as the direct intellectual and emotional blueprint for what would eventually become Stages of Freedom.
Rather than treating those legendary 1980s lectures they hosted as isolated, nostalgic memories, Rickman and Dimmick transformed the core lessons of those encounters into a permanent, structured institutional mission.
1. From Commercial Book Dealers to Cultural Preservationists
At Cornerstone Books, Rickman and Dimmick realized that selling rare African American literature was only a temporary fix for a much larger systemic problem: the profound erasure of local Black history. When James Baldwin spoke at the First Baptist Church or when Joseph Beam read at Brown University, the intense community turnout proved that Rhode Island desperately hungered for spaces that validated Black identity.
When they founded Stages of Freedom as a non-profit organization in 2015, they shifted their focus from merely distributing books to building a permanent archive. They expanded their early research to unearth, map, and heavily promote, mark and preserve over historic African American legends, landmarks and legacies across Rhode Island.
2. Manifesting Maya Angelou’s Mandate
During her visit, Maya Angelou’s profound gesture of buying out the shop’s rare inventory of historical works by Black authors deeply impacted the founders. She didn’t just buy them to read; she bought them to honor the labor of preserving that history.
Stages of Freedom took this ethos and built an actual physical repository for it. During the pandemic, Rickman and Dimmick overhauled their downtown Providence storefront on Westminster Street, turning 80% of the space into the only dedicated African American Museum in Rhode Island. The museum proudly exhibited the overlooked triumphs of historical Black Rhode Islanders—ranging from the 19th-century operatic brilliance of Sissieretta Jones to the award-winning artistry of Edward Bannister to the entrepreneurial grit of Elleanor Eldridge.
3. Fulfilling Joseph Beam’s Call to "Save Black Lives"
The most poignant evolutionary link between the two ventures lies in their commitment to community survival. Hosting Joseph Beam during the height of the AIDS crisis taught Rickman and Dimmick that cultural organizing must address the immediate, material well-being of the community it serves.
Stages of Freedom beautifully honored this legacy by directly tying book sales to a literal life-saving mission. A massive portion of the proceeds generated from the modern Stages of Freedom bookstore and museum completely funded Swim Empowerment, a program that provides entirely free swimming lessons to Black youth across Rhode Island to combat the disproportionately high rates of drowning in BIPOC communities.
Through Stages of Freedom, Rickman and Dimmick successfully realized the ultimate dream of the 1980s Black literary renaissance: they built a self-sustaining ecosystem where Black history is openly celebrated, Black youth are actively kept safe, and the voices of the past are given a permanent stage.
Non-Discrimination Policy:
Adopted by the Board of Directors on June 30, 2016
Stages of Freedom does not and shall not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status, in any of its activities or operations. These activities include, but are not limited to, hiring and firing of staff, selection of volunteers and vendors, and provision of services. We are committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of our staff, clients, volunteers, subcontractors, vendors, and clients.
Stages of Freedom is an equal opportunity employer. We will not discriminate and will take affirmative action measures to ensure against discrimination in employment, recruitment, advertisements for employment, compensation, termination, upgrading, promotions, and other conditions of employment against any employee or job applicant on the bases of race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, veteran's status, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.