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(upbeat music) - Hi everyone.

Steve Adubato for Remember Them with my colleague our executive producer and co-anchor Jacqui Tricarico.

Jacqui, let's set this up.

We're talking about New Jersey's connection, New Jersey's role as it relates to the Underground Railroad, not actually a railroad but an incredibly important part of American history and the fight to abolish slavery, to free slaves who were in the South coming up North.

Three iconic figures that, excuse me three interviews that we do about so many important figures.

One of them being Harriet Tubman.

Talk about it.

- Yeah.

We have three really amazing women joining us to help us understand New Jersey's role in the Underground Railroad.

And those three people are Noelle Lorraine Williams, who is with the New Jersey Historical Commission.

We have Cindy Mullock with the Harriet Tubman Museum and Linda Shockley with the Lawnside Historical Society.

And they're helping us not just understand the Underground Railroad, but really delve into the people, the conductors as they were called that risked everything to help these enslaved people, over 100,000 it's said to be that they helped get through New Jersey to freedom elsewhere in the North.

And it's just a really powerful half hour all about New Jersey's role.

- You know, I don't think, well, I don't think, I know that we just don't appreciate, understand which is why Remember Them is so important and look for other places to find out about history not just of New Jersey and the nation but I don't think we understand enough about slavery and people are like, yeah, well that's in the past.

Yeah, okay, in the past, talk about and try to understand the heroic figures who fought not just for the end of slavery, we'll do something on the great Frederick Douglass, we've talked about Lincoln before, President at the time, but these people that Jacqui just talked about who these people we interview talk about people like Samuel Cornish people, Jacqui, don't know Samuel Cornish, he matters.

- Right?

And you, like you said, there is Harriet Tubman which is more well known name, but Peter Mott, the King Family, William Still, there's just so many families and people that put everything on the line.

And what an interesting part of all of this is most of this has been done through oral history oral tradition, right?

Because people weren't writing these things down in that time, number one, because even before that, a lot of.. - Wasn't it dangerous to even write it down?

- Completely dangerous.

But then also you have to factor in the fact that most of them didn't even know how to read and write.

So the oral tradition and the oral history is just so pivotal and so important when we're dissecting all this and learning more about the Underground Railroad and these really incredible people.

- So Jacqui teed this up really well.

It's not just about, it's about these people, Harriet Tubman being the most well-known but people really don't know how important she was and is.

But it is New Jersey's role in the Underground Railroad.

And why, excuse me, the Underground Railroad matters so much in American history for Jacqui, myself and the Remember Them team, three important interviews that talk a great deal about a part of American history that some people want to forget, but we remember.

- Remember Them is proud to be joined by Noelle Lorraine Williams, director of the African American History Program at the New Jersey Historical Commission.

You'll see that website up throughout the segment.

Noelle, thank you so much for joining us.

- Hi.

Thank you for welcoming us here today.

- Noelle, put in perspective again, we talked about New Jersey's role in the Underground Railroad.

Put that in perspective, but particularly as it relates to one person I've been reading about and we must remember who is Samuel Cornish.

Please put this in perspective for us so people can appreciate history that is frankly not taught enough, not known enough about.

- I mean, it's such an amazing opportunity that we have now in 2023 that we're really able to just highlight these African-American actors in black liberation.

In so many ways, their stories, like Samuel Cornish, you know people who fought very hard.

They created newspapers, they raised money, they fought for people in Newark, Manhattan, Delaware, and Philadelphia to help African-Americans get their rights during the 1800s.

And the Underground Railroad was a part of a larger strategy of black liberation.

- Now Cornish, Samuel Cornish, became co-editor of the country's first African-American newspaper.

How, Noelle, and why is that so... How did that happen and why is it so significant?

- I think in so many ways, African-Americans during the 1800s are often seen as kind of passive actors, right?

Even when we think about the Underground Railroad, it's often seen as a spontaneous action.

Rarely do people know about folks, like Reverend Samuel Cornish who help to fundraise for runaways and who also helped to provide other resources for them.

Even if we take that one step further, for folks to even conceive of African-Americans that were reading writing and communicating during this period about their communities, is so profound.

Though we often know of figures, like Frederick Douglass who came a little bit later after Samuel Cornish, with the various newspapers that he created.

Samuel Cornish and Charles Ray in Manhattan, they were the forerunners of this and their work in, you know, bringing people together, creating these written documents so people could pass them along, read them to each other.

So as we all know, lots of people weren't able to read during this period.

African-Americans, whites, other working class people.

People would often read the newspapers to one another and it served, but there were those who could read, those who could come together, those who did share information, and this was an opportunity for them.

- Whites fought against, did not want African-Americans to purchase and sell property, which is a huge part of this as well.

Please talk about that, Noelle.

- Yeah, I mean, one of the things with Samuel Cornish that's distinct in his practice is that he actually did purchase property.

So he purchased, after living in Manhattan, he actually moved to Belleville with-- - Belleville, New Jersey.

Growing up in Newark, we used to call it a suburb of Newark.

- Yes.

- It's not necessarily a suburb by certain standards, Samuel Cornish moved to Belleville with his wife and then later on he moved down the road to Newark.

He actually bought property in Belleville.

He bought property in Newark.

One of the goals, and he actually wrote about this a little, was to buy property and then sell it to other African-Americans.

This was a part of their larger.

Well, it was about wealth building, but it was also about this larger petition to get the vote back in New Jersey.

As you know, new Jersey's one of the few states where when the Constitution was written, actually people of color, and white women as well, and immigrants could actually vote when they initially wrote the Constitution, then that that was lost in the early 1800s.

So often the fight in New Jersey is a little different for women's suffrage and African-American suffrage because it's kind of like a reclamation.

Samuel Cornish believed that the purchase of land was essential to African-American liberation, and so he purchased property in New Jersey as well as New York.

- Real quick on this, Samuel Cornish also a preacher, correct?

- Yes, he's a reverend.

- The black church played a key role in the Underground Railroad in the abolitionist movement in the fight to end slavery.

Talk about that, please.

- Yeah, I mean recently, you may not know in 2022, actually at Rutgers University, the field was recently named Frederick Douglass Field.

Why?

Because there was an African-American church called Plane Street Colored Church that is now.

- What was it called?

- Plane Street Colored Church.

It was founded in the 1830s.

And Plane Street Colored Church is now recognized actually by the federal government as an underground railroad stop.

Samuel Cornish was one of the reverends and pastors there.

There are just notable figures who visited Plane Street Colored Church.

The field is named after Frederick Douglass because Frederick Douglass visited Plane Street Colored Church to give a speech there.

People like Henry Garnet visited there as well, as well as other folks who most people don't know about, but folks who study African-American abolition and underground railroad work know about.

Like Junius Morel, who's connected with the Weeksville community in Brooklyn.

- The King family.

- And the King family.

- The King family out of Newark, right?

- Yes.

And also, the Jacob King family actually lived only a few feet away from the church.

So actually if we look at the Frederick Douglass field, it's actually a community of African-American abolitionists that lived around the church.

- Can you gimme 20 seconds on the Heritage Trail?

What was it?

Why does it matter?

- Oh, okay.

So one of the things, like linking these various spots, these African-American churches throughout New Jersey that served as sites for the Underground Railroad.

All of these different places come together to support the Black Heritage Trail, the bill that the governor signed last year so that New Jersey community members can learn more about our history that spans from the late 1600s up to now.

- Noelle Lorraine Williams, you helped us so much, put things in perspective.

The director of the African American History Program at the New Jersey Historical Commission.

I cannot thank you so much for joining us on Remember Them.

Thank you.

- Oh sure.

Thank you for having us.

- You got it.

Wish you all the best.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- Remember Them is honored to be joined by Cindy Mullock, who is Executive Director of the Harriet Tubman Museum.

Cindy, good to see you.

- Great to see you, Steve.

- Harriet Tubman, known by many because she's Harriet Tubman, but what do people need to know and remember about Harriet Tubman, particularly as it relates to the Underground Railroad and New Jersey's connection to it?

- What an incredible American hero we have in Harriet Tubman, who sacrificed continuously.

She went back to Maryland after having escaped herself some 13 times to bring other members of her community up to freedom in the North.

So she spent her time in Cape May, shortly after she escaped herself.

We can document that she was in Cape May in the early 1850s.

She had just escaped from Maryland in 1849 on her journey to freedom that brought her through to Philadelphia where she met with a community of abolitionist activists, the Anti-Slavery Society there.

And that was likely her conduit to Cape May.

Many of those abolitionist activists that she met with in Philadelphia were spending their summers in Cape May, Describe the journey, 'cause we're talking, there are no cars, there's no Google maps, there's no railroad per se, there's no railroad.

So the Underground Railroad was what?

- Precisely, so when we say the Underground Railroad, this is of course a metaphor.

Harriet Tubman had spent so much time in her life studying the landscape.

She had worked in the land and really knew how to navigate, had been taught a lot by her father about the waterways.

And so when she escaped, she initially escaped with her two brothers and they were gone for about two weeks, this was in September of 1849, and they decided to turn back.

So her initial mission, they aborted, they went back and turned around.

She later escaped on her own.

And so really she was so self-reliant.

She was reading the lands, following the stars, and making her own way up to freedom in the North.

- But there were safe houses.

They were places along the way because you couldn't, you weren't going all the way, going from Maryland or further South through the Eastern Seaboard up into New York.

I mean, there were all kinds of places where they stopped.

And what role did Harriet Tubman play in identifying people who cared enough, abolitionists, people who were against slavery and wanted to be part of this fight, which was dangerous to do?

- Very dangerous, absolutely.

So when she came to Philadelphia, she fell into this community.

She met with this community of abolitionists, the Anti-Slavery Society.

And they were a network, a very organized network.

So she met with abolitionists in Philadelphia, including William Still, who.

- Yeah, tell me, I'm sorry, tell me about William Still because we're gonna show some pictures as well.

I apologize for interrupting.

We're talking about Harriet Tubman, William Still, Stephen Smith, so many others we don't have time to mention.

But talk about William Still and Harriet Tubman's connection to him.

- William Still is often considered the father of the Underground Railroad.

He worked with the Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia.

He was originally born in New Jersey, so native son of New Jersey, moved to Philadelphia at a young adult age and spent the rest of his adult life there.

He was the chair of what they called the Vigilance Committee.

And this was the committee that would help all of these freedom-seekers who came to Philadelphia.

And you know, remember, these are refugees, right?

They are coming.

They don't have any connections.

They don't have a safety net.

They don't have a network.

They don't have family there.

It's their first time that they have been in the North.

They don't have work possibilities.

They don't, you know, they need to be sheltered.

They need to be clothed.

So the Anti-Slavery Society would take them in.

And William Still would do what we might consider an intake interview with them.

He would ask them any number of questions, dozens and dozens of questions about their backgrounds.

Where were you enslaved?

Who was your enslaver?

What was the relationship?

How were you treated?

What family did you leave behind?

How did you escape?

Who helped you along the way?

And he would take copious notes, volumes and volumes of notes of hundreds of people that he documented in this fashion, over 700.

- Where is that information?

Where is that information?

- So he stored all of this information in volumes and volumes of material.

And remember, we are in the time of the Fugitive Slave Act.

Much of this activity of aiding people who had escaped was considered illegal.

And so he guarded this information with his life.

Their offices were often subject to raids.

There were bounty hunters rampant in Philadelphia.

So sometimes he would hide these volumes even in a graveyard when he felt that their offices were under threat.

- Hmm, real quick, Stephen Smith, born into slavery, excuse me, 1795, prominent in Cape May, we talked about him before, part of the Anti-Slavery Society, became one of the richest men in the United States.

Talk about not only that wealth but how he used that wealth to fight against slavery and be a part of this movement with Harriet Tubman and William Still and so many other important, significant African-American heroes.

- Right, so Stephen Smith, often an unknown name to most people, is just one of the most incredible American heroes that you can think of.

Born into slavery, he works his way out, negotiates his own freedom, and creates his own lumber company.

And he's so successful in that lumber company that he becomes one of the richest Black men in the United States at that time.

So he turns around and he uses all of this wealth, all of this influence, all of this prominence to help found the Anti-Slavery Society as one of its elders, and then to help so many people set themselves up in life, reach freedom, and enjoy some of the capabilities that he himself was able to achieve.

- With Harriet Tubman, William Still, and Stephen Smith, and so many others who were part of this extraordinary, heroic anti-slavery movement, the Underground Railroad, what is the lesson we need to take from their heroism?

- So the lesson that we take from their heroism is this lifelong commitment that they had to helping their own communities, right?

And we have actually seen similar dedication in building the Harriet Tubman Museum.

These are heroes that gave so much of themselves, sacrificed so much in order to make sure that other people had opportunities in their lives, that they could reach freedom, that they could set themselves up and be self-sustaining.

- Cindy Mullock, Executive Director of the Harriet Tubman Museum, we've had their website up.

Check the museum out and the important work they're doing.

Cindy, thank you so much for joining us on Remember Them.

- Thank you so much for having me on, Steve.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- Hi, I'm Jacqui Tricarico and joining me now is Linda Shockley, who is the president of the Lawnside Historical Society.

And, Linda, we've just spent this half-hour special really learning about the Underground Railroad and its significance here in New Jersey.

And one of the key conductors, as they were called in the Underground Railroad, was Peter Mott.

Can you tell us who Peter Mott was?

- Well, Peter Mott was an ordained minister.

He was associated with our Mount Pisgah African Methodist Episcopal Church.

And the local lore was that he took people in his wagon to the friends in Haddonfield and Morristown, which are two very strong Quaker abolitionist communities.

Some of those people wound up coming back to Lawnside and the State Historic Preservation Office identified Mott as being very significant and having a home where he sheltered people in a Black community, which is very rare.

- And the Peter Mott House is still standing today part of a historical site and part of the Lawnside Historical Society.

Tell us about the house and the significance of it still standing today and just being a place that people can come and learn more about Peter Mott and the Underground Railroad.

- Well, the house was dated to 1845 when Peter bought the property and built the house.

It's a two-story farm house.

And the State Historic Preservation Office said, once again.

it's a very rare example to have an African-American who owned a house of that size at that time.

So he was a very prosperous person.

The house was placed on the New Jersey and the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.

So that was the first property in this community that dates to colonial times that was placed on the National Register because of its association with Peter Mott and the Underground Railroad and the establishment of a community of free Black people.

- And the town of Lawnside, I know it's been renamed a couple of times, right?

It was called the Free Town, but the town of Lawnside itself, what has been the significance of that town here in New Jersey?

- Well, the significance of it in contemporary times is that it's the only incorporated African-American community north of the Mason-Dixon line, so by an act of state legislature in 1926, the Borough was established as a separate entity and it held its own elections in April of 1926.

So we had a mayor, a council, a tax collector, a borough clerk, and all of that.

So that's really significant, but it's also rooted in a place where many of the people who served in government were descendants of people who had taken their freedom and escaped to this community.

- When we're learning about Peter Mott, we don't have so much documentation, right, to talk about him and his family and their significance in all this.

But the oral history is just so important.

Talk about oral history when it comes to the Underground Railroad, because people were not writing things down.

Things weren't, you know, easily accessible because of fear of being caught and being prosecuted, really.

- Yeah.

So, that was one of the challenges in documenting this site and we're thankful for the folks who had done the research and had some information.

Once again, the oral traditions in Lawnside were so prevalent and so many people had these similar stories, not only about Peter, but about his wife, Elizabeth Ann, who helped feed the people and that women in the community came together.

And then there are other stories about people who came together to oppose bounty hunters and so-called slave catchers who came in this community trying to capture people.

So it was really a close-knit and significant community of people who were bound and determined that they should be free and others should be free too.

- And at the Lawnside Historical Society, education is such a crucial part of the work that you're doing there.

Talk to us about ways that you're educating people, not just in Lawnside, but all over New Jersey and also young people.

- Well, we participate on panels.

We're invited to speak at schools, and we do that.

We're having people come to the Peter Mott House once it's opened for rehabilitation.

We're fortunate that it's going to be restored and that completion date is probably in March.

But in the interim, we've been doing things outside on the lawn because of COVID.

We had an Underground Railroad camp for the first time, it was a long-held dream in June.

And so we're gonna do that again in the summer.

Invite students from fifth to eighth grade to come to the site and actually experience an Underground Railroad site and the stop.

- Wow, that's amazing.

And I know there's probably so many more things that people can log in, learn more, about what you all are doing there in Lawnside and specifically at the Peter Mott House itself.

Thank you so much, Linda, for sharing your wisdom about Peter Mott and the Underground Railroad.

And thank everyone for joining us for this really special half hour as we looked at New Jersey's role in the Underground Railroad.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Holy Name.

Choose New Jersey.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Newark Board of Education.

The North Ward Center.

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

And by Seton Hall University.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by ROI-NJ.