A Rare Stained-Glass Window In Rhode Island Depicts a Black Jesus

It’s being called the “Equality Window” because the beautiful stained-glass depicts Jesus with dark skin, a Black person. And he is surrounded by two biblical women – sisters Mary and Martha who are also Black.

The art world started buzzing about the discovery several weeks ago after an historian spread the news. For years, the window had hung in St. Mark’s church in Warren, Rhode Island. But the church had been decommissioned and purchased by a couple who decided to renovate the Greek Revival structure for use as their personal home.

According to the art magazine Hyperallergic, for nearly 150 years the stained-glass window hung at St. Mark’s. It was commissioned in 1877 by Mary P. Carr who was a wealthy white widow and donated to the church in honor of two other wealthy white women in Warren’s Episcopalian Community – Ruth B. DeWolf and Hannah Gibbs. Ironically, DeWolf married a man whose family made its money from the slave trade. And both DeWolf and Gibbs contributed to the American Colonization Society which advocated for formerly enslaved people’s return to Africa, an effort criticized by abolitionists including Frederick Douglass.

The window was commissioned in 1877 which is the same year some powerful Washington politicians brokered the “Compromise of 1877” to settle the disputed 1876 presidential election by awarding the White House to Rutherford B. Hayes. In exchange, the unwritten deal ended Reconstruction by removing federal troops from the South.

The rare stained-glass window will most likely end up in an art institution’s collection.