A task-force’s recent study reveals systemic barriers keeping Black New Jerseyans trapped in a racial wealth gap, strengthening the case for reparations.
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim…The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism a sham, your humanity a base pretense, and your Christianity a lie.”
Excerpt derived from the 1852 Fourth of July speech by Black abolitionist, Fredrick Douglass.
Documented as far back as Douglass’ critique, the Fourth of July national holiday brings mixed feelings in Black Americans. Of which, struggle to reconcile that they live in a country where their well-being, history and contributions are still threatened, but now by sweeping executive orders. A million – some estimates at 40 million American-born – descendants of slavery call the U.S. home, but centuries of systemic barriers and racial inequalities remain prevalent.
In New Jersey alone, there exists “one of the largest, if not the largest, racial wealth gap in the country, that $643,000 [difference]. We are living in the world that slavery made, [but] we [also] want to live in the world that reparations made,” affirms Dr. Jean-Pierre Brutus, Ph.D, senior counsel of the New Jersey Institute of Social Justice (NJISJ) and convenor for the New Jersey Reparations Council.
Coinciding with this year’s Juneteenth, the New Jersey Reparations Council released a 229-page manual detailing the effects of slavery and race-based discrimination in the state.
According to Dr. Brutus, this project was exhaustive and collaborative, drawing on experts from various fields. Task forces were founded to examine the impact of anti-Black racism across key areas, including health equity, economic justice, higher education, and more.
As Dr. Brutus explains, “we have different subject matter areas, but they overlap, they intersect, they influence one another. They build up one another. And so you see the relationship between how segregation affects environmental justice, how spatial segregation affects school segregation, which has an impact on health outcomes and inequities.”
After two years of research, the Council has developed a list of policy proposals.
In regards to who will get reparations, the NJISJ lays out a two-prong plan for direct cash payments:
1) To descendants of the enslaved and free people who lived in New Jersey pre-Emancipation, and direct payments to all Black people in New Jersey who arrived post-Emancipation, including descendants of Great Migration Blacks and Black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa.
2) For post-slavery racial inequality–such as segregation, redlining, mass incarceration, and job discrimination, and creation of policies to remedy systemic disadvantages from perpetuation.
As the independence holiday draws near, therein lies a string of hope that justice and reconciliation can be realized for the descendants of the enslaved and the free who faced centuries-long obstacles rooted in state-sanctioned, anti-Black legislation.
New Jersey, the Northern slave state and its hidden Black history
Little is known about the state’s entanglement with slavery. A common misconception being that since it is located in the North, it was never a slave state. However, New Jersey not only had slavery, but was the last Northern state to abolish it. In fact, bondage was not outlawed there until January 23, 1866, ten months after the Civil War ended on April 9, 1865.
Indeed, anti-Black legislation was embedded early in the colonial era. For instance, NJ passed strict laws regarding the capture of fugitive slaves, and the ban on free Black people from owning property or firearms. This served to disenfranchise free Blacks from being able to vote and participate in public office.
Furthermore, the forced labor of Blacks built the wealth of many institutions, including colleges like Princeton and Rutgers. In 2016, Rutgers published Scarlet and Black, a three-volume collection exploring the history of Black involvement with the well-known university. Included, acknowledgments of the slaves that built it to recognition of prominent Black alumni such as Paul Robeson, the descendant of runaway slaves.
On top of that, even town names like Freehold, arose from property-owners, or “freeholders,” who often were slave owners. Cities like Newark served not only as bustling centers for the bondage-economy, but also centers of resistance. Due to the rural geography, various sites in Central and Southern New Jersey served as runaway slave sanctuaries along the Underground Railroad, with Quakers playing a big role in assistance.
In 1846, slavery was further solidified when the state government redefined the status of the enslaved as “apprentices for life,” under the justification that this would make ending slavery easier. However, it only strengthened the rights of slaveholders who delayed manumission until 1866.
After the Civil War came the failure of Reconstruction, which resulted in the Great Migration of Black Americans who moved from the South to Northern states, including New Jersey. All, in hopes of obtaining better opportunities and freedom from Jim Crow Apartheid.
Subsequently, communities like Whitesboro were founded by Black people using the land purchased by members of the historically-Black Cape May AME Church and Colored Equitable Industrial Association leaders. Unfortunately, they were still met with hostility by white residents and remain in a struggle for autonomy amid gentrification.
While Black residents have long-worked to build self-sustaining communities, organizations like the Ku Klux Klan kept a reign of terror, actively curtailing Black progress. In urban areas, tensions culminated with events such as the 1967 race riots in Newark. The latter continues to have one of the highest racial disparities in arrests and incarceration, disproportionately affecting Black residents.
In spite of this, Black New Jerseyans contributed massively to the Garden State’s development, including the “Brain Center” of Black scientists and military officers employed at Fort Monmouth. Of these hidden figures were Thomas E. Daniels, Henry Tate, Dr. Walter McAfee, Colonel Alan Johnson, Mary Pinkett, and Emmet Paige, who all made significant impacts to the U.S. government and military.
Whitesboro leader Shirley Green at the town’s old train station stop. Green has been an advocate of preserving the history and town for decades. Photo credit: Kaia ShiversThe History of Reparations and the Road to Reconciliation
The fight for reparatory justice specifically for New Jersey goes back decades with Essex County Assemblyman Craig Stanley. In the early 2000s, he issued a “Racial Conciliation” bill to study the state’s history of slavery and discrimination against Black residents.
Not long after, Assemblyman William Payne propelled an act demanding that New Jersey officiate an apology for its role in the U.S. enslavement period. In turn, the state apologized in 2008. However, no steps were taken to further restitution attempts for centuries of injustice.
In the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd protests, chair of the NJ Black Legislative Caucus, Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter, introduced a NJ Reparations Task Force bill in 2022. This planted the seed for the NJISJ Reparations Council to take form in 2023.
“The idea of reparations – that Black folks should, you know, be repaired or remunerated or receive restitution for enslavement – actually precedes even the Civil War.” explained long-time activist, Larry Hamm. As founder and chairman for the People’s Organization for Progress, Hamm was a participant at the NJ Reparations Council panel in Newark.
“Forty acres and a mule,” a common symbol for Black American reparations, is a derivative from Special Field Order 15, signed on January 16, 1865 by General William T. Sherman. This was supposed to confiscate and redistribute 400,000 acres of federal land along the coast of Charleston, South Carolina–including the Sea Islands–to St. John’s River in Florida, to newly freed Black Americans. All, to increase Union efforts – and soldiers – during the Civil War.
This idea came about after Sherman and then-Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, met with Black ministers for a solution for emancipation months before the Civil War ended.
The bill “said that every freedman, or the family of freedmen who survived the Civil War, would receive 40 acres and $50,” explained Hamm. Though the mule was not originally included, it helped to process the land and create industry for the would-be, self-sustained farmers. He expounded, “if you had land, you had to have a way to plow the land.” Hence, sweetening the deal for recipients fresh from subjugation.
However, that promise was short-lived. Months after President Lincoln’s assassination, his successor and prolific racist Andrew Johnson reversed the order. By the fall of 1865, the land was returned to its previous white owners.
The Compromise of 1877 marked the end of Reconstruction and dashed hopes for a multiracial democracy, opening the door for segregation and discriminatory laws. It would take nearly a century before Black Americans gained federal civil rights protections through the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
While this appeared a defeat, the mantra “40 acres and a mule” echoed for centuries, emboldening future reparations movements amongst descendents of the enslaved.
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The call for reparations is happening across the country with municipalities to state governments and their legislatures also piquing interest. From Evanston, Illinois to the California Reparations Task Force, and even Capitol Hill with U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-M)’s H.R.40 bill, which served as a template for NJ’s Reparation’s Task Force.
“We know historically, when [B]lack people flourish, when [B]lack people are invested… that helps everyone in the United States. We saw that with Reconstruction… [with] civil rights,” articulated Dr. Brutus. “[A]t the center of the American experience, if you address the ills, the harms that come from slavery, then you can fundamentally transform American democracy.”
Updated: July 7, 2025 at 7:38 p.m.
