R. Tripp Evans and Edward B. Cabral Marriage Equality Collection

R. Tripp Evans was born in Bethesda, Maryland in 1968, raised in Virginia, and moved to Rhode Island in the late 1990s. He is a graduate of University of Virginia and Yale University. Since 1997 he has taught in the Art and Art History Department at Wheaton College in Massachusetts and is an accomplished author. In 2010, he won a National Award for Arts Writing. Edward B. Cabral was born in São Miguel in the Azores in 1962. He was raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He has worked for the Providence Journal newspaper and for the nonprofit arts and community organization WaterFire Providence. Cabral and Evans married in 2014 and are both very active in the local arts and culture community of Providence.

In 2011, after intense community pressure, the Rhode Island Legislature passed a state statute creating civil unions for same-sex couples. On January 22, 2013, the House Judiciary Committee became the first legislative body in Rhode Island to advance the freedom for same-sex couples to marry when it moved the marriage bill to the House floor. The bill passed overwhelmingly in the House and Senate and Governor Lincoln Chafee signed the state’s marriage bill into law on May 2, 2013. Same-sex couples began marrying in Rhode Island on August 1, 2013. On June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the freedom to marry, ending marriage discrimination across the country.

Tripp Evans and Ed Cabral labored tirelessly to help ensure the passage of the RI Marriage Equality Act. Together, they testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the RI State House at least half a dozen times. They marched both at the State House and in Washington, D.C. in support of Marriage Equality. Evans and Cabral served as volunteer strategists for Marriage Equality Rhode Island (MERI) creating scoreboards for lawmakers' voting records and writing repeatedly to state representatives and senators, among other activities. Both gentlemen also operated phone banks for Rhode Islanders for Marriage Equality (RIME), which was headquartered in the Pearl Street Lofts in Providence, RI.

It was while they were holding their Join the Free States protest sign at the celebratory passage-into-law rally in 2013 (with "finally" added to "Join the Free States") that then Providence Mayor Angel Taveras offered to perform their marriage ceremony. The well-traveled protest sign is featured here in this collection. Mayor Taveras had previously officiated the couple’s Civil Union ceremony in 2011 in his office in City Hall. R. Tripp Evans and Edward B. Cabral were married on March 15, 2014, at the Providence Public Library.