Summary
Summary
Summary
The history of blacks in southern New Jersey is a long and complicated one. New Jersey was home to some 11,000 African Americans at the time of the American Revolution, second among Northern states only to New York. Most were slaves, and New Jersey, in 1804, was the last of the Northern states to pass a gradual emancipation law. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, New Jersey's relationship to slavery and the plight of African American was ambiguous. On the one hand, Quakers in Southern New Jersey and free blacks throughout the state fought hard against human bondage and supported the Underground Railroad. On the other hand, New Jersey's economic connections to the American South were so important that it was said that Dixie walked in "Newark shoe leather." When the Civil War came, New Jersey sided with the North, but its allegiance to the cause wavered during the fighting. New Jersey was the only non-slave state to vote against Abraham Lincoln in 1864. After the Civil War, New Jersey refined a system of segregation and separation that kept blacks and whites apart in public spaces such as schools. While such a system mirrored what was developing in the American South, New Jersey did not play host to the kinds of mob violence and lynching that took place in the Southern states. African Americans in southern New Jersey complained more about the abuses of duly-appointed law officers than about the crimes of extralegal mobs.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, New Jersey's black communities swelled with immigrants from the South. Many were seeking to escape the violence and brutality of that region and take advantage of New Jersey's growing industrial economy. These new immigrants and their children, joined by native black Jerseyans, were vital members in the black struggle for freedom and equal rights that entered a new stage in the twentieth century. Black Jerseyans joined civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Congress on Racial Equality. They fought against discrimination both in and out of New Jersey, successfully integrating the state's schools, movie theaters, diners, and other public places while also making contributions to the national civil rights movement. The most consequential civil rights battle in New Jersey involved the struggle against residential segregation and unfair housing practices. It was a black man from Southern New Jersey, Willie James, whose case against the developer of the all-white Levittown inaugurated the decade of legal action that eventually guaranteed the housing rights of blacks in the United States. In the recent past, New Jersey blacks have confronted police misconduct and prejudice, raged in riotous anger over the slow pace of change, and demanded that schools not only integrate their student bodies but their curricula as well. In 2000, New Jersey became the first state to require the teaching of African American history with the passage of the Amistad bill.
