Data Life Cycle Event(s) Type: Digital exhibition Label: Struggle Without End: New Jersey and the Civi War Curator: Perrone, Fernanda. Project manager: Radick, Caryn. Funder: New Jersey Council for Humanities. Name: African Americans in New Jersey before the Civil War
Additional Detail(s)
Type: Exhibition case
Name: African Americans in New Jersey before the Civil War
Detail: A large and vibrant African-American community lived in New Jersey before the Civil War. On the eve of the conflict, the black population was 25, 336 out of a total of 646,699. Years after the abolition of slavery, African Americans still lacked legal and political rights. The new state constitution of 1844 restricted voting to white male citizens. African Americans in New Jersey also faced poverty, job discrimination, and racism. The Fugitive Slave Bill subjected escapees from the South to deportation. During the tense period leading up to the conflict, African-American community leaders emerged to play important roles in the abolition movement and the Underground Railroad
Additional Detail(s)
Type: Exhibition caption
Detail: In spite of fugitive slave laws, many African Americans escaped from the South to New Jersey by the network of safe houses, routes, and sympathizers that constituted the Underground Railroad. One "conductor" was William Still, the much younger brother of Peter Still. William Still was born in New Jersey in 1821. He moved to Philadelphia in 1844 and joined the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, where in a fourteen-year career, he assisted hundreds of runaway slaves. His experiences are recounted in The Underground Railroad (1876).
CollectionStruggle Without End: New Jersey and the Civil War
Organization NameRutgers University. Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University. Libraries. Special Collections
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