Honor Amistad, teach the truth, speak the truth, spread the truth
by Sari Alburtus, Shan Byrd, Muneerah Higgs, Tamar LaSure-Owens, Talena Lachelle Queen, Tariq Raheem, and Sundjata Sekou
“Why didn’t I know this history?”
The Dutch arrived in Bergen (now Jersey City) in 1660 with enslaved Africans. Although the area had been inhabited by the Lenni Lenape for thousands of years, the English claimed the colony for themselves in 1664. Enslaved Africans were brought to the colony that became New Jersey from West Africa and the Caribbean through ports in New York and Perth Amboy. Slavery in New Jersey became entrenched and white families with names like Berkeley, Carteret, Beverwyck, Morris, Livingston and Schuyler became wealthy and powerful.
By 1830, New Jersey was home to 67% of the entire enslaved northern population in the United States of America. New Jersey became known as the slave state of the North. New Jersey went on to become the last northern state to ratify the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery. The last 16 enslaved people in New Jersey were not freed until 1866—three years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
In order to address this historical injustice, Assemblywoman Shavonda E. Sumter has sponsored a bill in each session of the New Jersey Legislature since 2018 to establish the “New Jersey Reparations Task Force.” This task force would “research, write, and publish a report, providing a historical and current case for state-based reparations.” The report would also outline what reparations would look like in New Jersey. The Democrat-led New Jersey Legislature has neglected to move the bill.
Guess where I didn’t learn this history? I did not learn it in my New Jersey elementary, middle and high school classes or in the two universities I attended. I feel anger, sadness, and disappointment in our New Jersey educational journey because this history was erased and kept from us.
– Sundjata Sekou
Amistad Mandate: Every city has an Underground Railroad story
The Amistad Mandate became law in New Jersey in 2002. It calls for the history of African Americans to be taught from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Many teachers have participated in Amistad workshops. Some educators have researched and collaborated to actualize the Amistad mandate in their classrooms.
Many more educators are unaware of the mandate and were never trained on how to infuse New Jersey’s African American history into their content area. Consequently, many educators have found it difficult to implement the Amistad mandate.
The authors stand outside the Peter Mott House in Lawnside, one of many historic locations in Lawnside that students and educators can visit to learn more about our history.
The writers of this article organized and met with NJEA Executive Director Kevin Kelleher and Deputy Executive Director Denise Graff Policastro to impress upon them the importance of this work. The outgrowth of those meetings are Amistad immersive field trip experiences with an Underground Railroad theme designed to engage educators.
The Underground Railroad experience in New Jersey is an American story of survival and determination to obtain freedom. It’s a story of collaboration with Black and white abolitionists, who supported the network of safe houses and travel routes through their resources, time and expertise.
Participants in the Underground Railroad risked their lives to help African Americans to be free and found new ways to hide from slave catchers. The story is one of solidarity and security where places such as Lawnside, Paterson, Princeton, Newark and others became places where African Americans could enjoy some level of family, community, entrepreneurship, fellowship and freedom.
he authors learn more about the history contained in Mount Peace Cemetery with volunteer caretaker Neil Butler.
Lawnside – a special place along the Underground Railroad
In the late 1700s, an African American community called Snow Hill was founded. It is now known as Lawnside, a town born out of slavery. It was a secret hamlet for freedom seekers, freedmen and a station on the Underground Railroad.
This historic town has survived the dangers of the Underground Railroad, the horror of the Civil War, the abolition of slavery and the end of Reconstruction.
During the pre-Civil War period many freedom seekers escaped the brutality of slavery by fleeing north along the Underground Railroad. They found a safe place to live in this “settlement for free people of color,” according to the records of Snow Hill Church.
Lawnside’s favorable geographic features made it welcoming from the start. Its mixture of large and small trees standing close together with paths and long roads made it difficult to find. People built log cabins scattered in small clearings which were concealed from the roads. Sitting high on a hill, the town resembled a fort settlement.
“It was a perfect place of secrecy which concealed its inhabitants from the oppressors,” according to author Charles Smiley.
Among several of Lawnside’s historic sites, the Peter Mott House Underground Railroad Museum was the first to be nationally recognized. Rev. Mott used his home as a safe haven for freedom seekers. Other sites include Mount Pisgah African Methodist Episcopal Church, Mount Zion United Methodist Church, Mount Peace Cemetery and Lawnside School.
We find Black joy in what our community has accomplished, despite its past struggles. Lawnside’s contributions to American history are too valuable to be lost. Built on the belief in freedom, this history must never be forgotten. Without it, the history of America is inaccurate and incomplete.
You can arrange a school tour to the Mott House at petermotthouse.org/visit.
Talena Lachelle Queen stands inside the Peter Mott House, looking into the cellar where many people found refuge on their journey for freedom.
Paterson, the Underground Railroad and the historian
Paterson is a historically rich place. The National Park Service commemorated the Underground Railroad stop in Paterson with a statue of two of the prominent conductors: a white man named Josiah Huntoon and his friend, a free African American man, William Van Rensalier.
The site is nestled between two fast-food franchises across from Passaic County Community College. When the “Network to Freedom” was in operation, the site was a business owned and operated by Huntoon. Visitors to the historic site can see the statues, ring the Liberty Bell and read information about these two Underground Railroad conductors.
Van Rensalier was one of many free African Americans in Paterson during the time of enslavement. Others lived in a community known as the African Shore. The African Shore was built along the Passaic River. The site is unmarked and is part of Paterson’s oral history.
Among his many interests, Paterson’s local historian Jimmy Richardson, shares his knowledge of the city’s Underground Railroad site and the African Shore.
Richardson gave us a guided tour as part of our research for the NJEA Immersive Field Trip Experience on the Underground Railroad. Richardson is responsible for obtaining historical recognition for several sites in Paterson, including the Underground Railroad.
For more information about these sites visit nps.gov/pagr/index.htm.
To learn more about the history of enslaved persons and freedom, download Slavery at the Rivers Edge by Jimmy Richardson from nps.gov/pagr/index.htm.
To contact Great Falls National Historic Park, call 973-523-0370.
Mount Peace Cemetery is an important part of American history. At a time when Black people were not permitted to be buried in the same cemetery as white people, the cemetery was founded and became the final resting place for many area residents, as well as Black soldiers from across the country. Honored veterans, artists, professional athletes, labor leaders and many other Americans rest here.
Background knowledge for students prior to a trip
Field trips to museums and historical places are meant to be informative, engaging and exciting. It’s important for students and teachers to be prepared and knowledgeable about the museums and historical places they will visit prior to going.
Learning begins in the classroom with intentional lesson planning that allows time and brave spaces for students to further their intellectual development and understanding and to conduct research with their peers. These brave spaces allow students to process their emotions, to make mistakes, to become thinkers and problem solvers, and work together as a community.
Lessons on the Underground Railroad should include the history of slavery in New Jersey, Underground Railroad terminology and code words, primary sources, documentaries of slave narratives, and people to know such as William Still (the Father of the Underground Railroad), Harriet Tubman, David Ruggles and Quaker abolitionist Levi Coffin (the unofficial “President of the Underground Railroad”).
Students should also analyze interactive maps of Underground Railroad locations throughout New Jersey to gain a realistic account of the distance and sacrifice African Americans escaping to freedom endured. “New Jersey Underground Railroad Stops: Black History in the State of New Jersey,” by Maya Thomas and Shashuana Anderson is one such map. It can be found here.
Students need to be transported back in time to hear those stories of courage, perseverance, struggle and hope. Most importantly, when students investigate the vital role of Negro Spirituals in connection to the Underground Railroad, they will develop a profound sense of respect for our ancestors in their creative and unyielding pursuit for freedom.
Heritage Tourism: How to explore our state’s legacy of enslavement and the Underground Railroad
These immersive field trip experiences are a form of Heritage Tourism. Our fervent hope is that educators will embrace these opportunities to understand the history of New Jersey through a fact-based lens.
These visits have the potential to be invaluable tools for use within an equity-based curriculum. While we support each teacher’s journey through the truths exposed, and there are countless ways to experience them, the work of Dr. Gholdy Muhammad is a tool that can be used to organize the content for use in the classroom.
The culturally and historically responsive education model for teaching and learning (CHRE), based squarely on the work of Dr. Muhammad, guides educators through rich and deep content with some key questions to keep in mind:
- Identity – teaching students to know themselves and others. Ask yourself, “How will this help students learn about themselves and others?”
- Skills – teaching students the proficiencies needed across content areas. Ask yourself, “How will this build student skills in a given content area?”
- Intellectualism – teaching students new knowledge. Ask yourself, “How will this build student intellectual capacity?”
- Criticality – teaching students to understand and disrupt oppression. Ask yourself “How will this engage student thinking about power, equity and the disruption of oppression?”
- Joy – teaching students about the beauty and truth in humanity. Ask yourself “How can beauty, wellness, wholeness, solutions to problems and happiness be connected to this instructional lesson?”
We would like to thank NJEA Executive Director Kevin Kelleher and Deputy Executive Director Denise Graff Policastro for their support. We look forward to finishing writing curricula to support educators to teach African American/Black History in a across the curriculum in New Jersey classrooms according to the Amistad mandate.
Sari Alburtus is an NJREA member who retired from the Howell Township School Disrict. Shan Byrd is a teacher in New Brunswick. Muneerah Higgs is an NJREA member who retired from the Lawnside School District. Tamar LaSure-Owens is a teacher in Pleasantville. Talena Lachelle Queen is a teacher in Paterson. Tariq Raheem and Sundjata Sekou are teachers in Irvington.
Connecting the past to the present
NJREA member and Lawnside historian, Muneerah Higgs shared a story about a formerly incarcerated young African American man who had attended a workshop about Lawnside and Juneteenth. He was captivated by the rich history of resilience and resistance he learned about the town, which is revered for its protection of freedom seeking humans.
Hearing the story led me to believe the young man was able to connect with a greater sense of himself, an identity that could not be caged, guilted or oppressed.
Why? Because on some level he understood that there were once people who walked on the very same land as he, who refused to be regulated to servitude, who were bold enough to aspire to a higher purpose, and who quite possibly shared a common ancestry with him.
My hope is that the young man continues his quest for learning the history of the African experience in and before America. It leads me to imagine what advantages he might have had if he had been given the opportunity to know the whole truth about the fortitude of his ancestors. The town’s history speaks to their intelligence, ingenuity, perseverance and joy!
– Shan Byrd
Learn more about Lawnside at the NJEA Convention
Lawnside holds a unique place in the state’s history as the only incorporated African American municipality. The Lawnside Historical Society promotes the borough’s heritage founded by free Black people and fugitives from slavery.
The society restored the Peter Mott House Underground Railroad Museum, named for the local preacher and Underground Railroad agent, and has offered paid tours to families, school groups and scholars for more than 22 years.
Online and in-person lectures, book talks, workshops, and Underground Railroad summer camps fulfill the society’s mission. The young docent program launched this fall trains middle and high school students as tour guides while teaching them local history and the stories of ancestors. The society is completing projects in digitizing oral histories, records and archival photographs documenting the community’s past during the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression and World War II through the Civil Rights Movement.
“This history has been my passion for decades in the classroom,” says Muneerah Higgs, history educator and NJREA member. “We have a responsibility to ensure students and the community learn it, appreciate and share it.”
Higgs brings her special knowledge to curriculum development and presentations on multiple topics. She is also a member of the UGRR Immersive Experience Writers Group, which is available for presentations.
Learn more from Higgs and other society members at the NJEA Convention Booth 1543 on the Exhibit Hall floor.
Arrange a school tour to the Mott House at petermotthouse.org/visit.
Hipp, Pride and FAST grants
Do not allow cost concerns to provent you from immersing yourself and your students in this history. Many sites related to the Underground Railroad and slavery in New Jersey are free or low-cost. Learning about these sites fits in well with the Amistad mandate and should be a priority in district-funded field trips. Accessing district budget funds enables you to plan trips this school year.
In addition, you can seek grant funding from various sources. The NJEA Frederick L. Hipp Foundation for Excellence in Education provides $500 to $10,000 grants for educators, including both certificated staff and ESPs. Grant applications are due March 1, 2024, for the 2024-25 school year. Go to njea.org/hipp for details and an application.
Grants to local associations for programs involving families and communities are available though the NJEA Families and Schools Work Together for Children (FAST) and the NJEA Pride in Public Education program. Visit njea.org/pride.
Exploring African American history in New Jersey through immersive field trips
Below is a recap of the two main sites explored is this article, as well as resources to find other locations throughout the state.
Lawnside
Lawnside School
mhiggs33@comcast.net
Mount Peace Cemetary
mtpeacecemeteryassociation.org
Mount Pisgah AME Church
mtpisgahlawnside.org
Peter Mott House
petermotthouse.org
Middletown
Marlpit Hall
monmouthhistory.org/historic-houses
monmouthhistory.org/audio-tour-marlpit-hall
Newark
Harriet Tubman Square
visitharriettubmansquare.com/for-students-educators
Mapping Slavery in Newark
Highlights the streets and buildings connected to slavery in Newark.
bit.ly/slavery-map-newarknj
New Jersey
New Jersey Historical Commission
African Americans in Colonial New Jersey
https:bit.ly/colonial-nj-aa-history
New Jersey Underground Railroad Stops: Black History in the State of New Jersey
by Maya Thomas and Shashuana Anderson
bit.ly/ur-stops-nj
Paterson
National Park Service
nps.gov/pagr/index.htm
Slavery at the Rivers Edge by Jimmy Richardson
bit.ly/slavery-richardson.
Princeton
Albert E. Hinds Memorial Walking Tour: African American Life in Princeton
princetonhistory.org/tour