black power 19th Century EXhibition
In 2021, The Newark Public Library received a project grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State for this exhibition. The library received a grant from PNC Foundation for their Black History Celebration.
The historical re-creation videos were funded by the 2020 City of Newark's Creative Catalyst Fund in partnership with Newark Arts.
The recreation photos of sites on the Rutgers Campus was funded by a Rutgers University - Newark American Studies Public Humanities grant.
Check out the Virtual Exhibition
CURATOR, RESEARCHER AND PROGRAM MANAGER
Noelle Lorraine Williams
SUPERVISING SCHOLAR | EXHIBITION
Dr. James Amemasor
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY - NEWARK AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM ADVISORS
Dr. Melissa Cooper, Dr. Mary Rizzo and Dr. Ruth Feldstein
THANK YOU TO PUBLIC AND INDEPENDENT ARCHIVES, ARCHIVISTS, LIBRARIANS AND COLLEAGUES
Old Newark.com
Newark Archives Project
Dr. James Amemasor
Beth Zak-Cohen
Tom Ankner
Greg Guderian
Dale Colston
Ingrid Betancourt
INSTITUTIONS
Newark Public Library Administration
Newark Public Library Charles F. Cummings New Jersey Information Center
Rutgers University American Studies Public Humanities
New Jersey State Archives
Presbyterian Historical Society
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
James Brown African American Room at The Newark Public Library
Thank you to the artists, MEDIA PRODUCTION CREW AND DESIGNERS
Kay the Kreator, Gold Standard Productions Team
Khali Raymond
Janėtza Maria Miranda
Sharon Davis
Special thanks to Grace Church in Newark and Reverend Brent Bates
Eula Lovett
Chris Thomas
Adrienne Wheeler
Jillian Rock
Linda Lobdell
Amanda Klein
Our Partners
Projects
Inspire! Newark's Underground Railroad and mapping slavery Exhibition
This pop-up exhibition Inspire! Newark's Underground Railroad at the Newark Public Library was curated on the occasion of the creation of the monument Shadow of a Face, A Harriet Tubman Monument by Nina Cooke John in March 2023.
The Harriet Tubman Monument was commissioned by the City of Newark and by the order of the Honorable Mayor Ras J. Baraka. fayemi shakur, Arts and Cultural Affairs Director for the City of Newark, oversaw the project. Many thanks to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for funding this exhibition.
Inspire! Newark’s Underground Railroad
Like Harriet Tubman, Newark’s Underground Railroad activists’ courageous fight against
slavery—despite entrenched interests in the institution in the city—inspired Black and
multiracial civil rights activism
A map of some of the countless streets, buildings, and people connected to slavery in Newark curated by Black Power! 19th Century by Noelle Lorraine Williams.
CURATOR
Noelle Lorraine Williams
Consultant
Dr. James Amemasor
THANK YOU TO PUBLIC AND INDEPENDENT ARCHIVES, ARCHIVISTS, LIBRARIANS AND COLLEAGUES
Old Newark.com
Newark Archives Project
Dr. James Amemasor
Contributing ARTISTS
Margie "Mia X" Johnson, Poet
Stafford Woods, Photographer
Jillian Rock, Photographer
John Matturi, Photographer
Cesar Melgar, Photographer
Tanisha Best, Photographer
COLLABORATORS
Nina Cooke John
City of Newark/fayemi shakur
Newark Public Library Administration
Newark Public Library Charles F. Cummings New Jersey Information Center
New Jersey State Archives
Presbyterian Historical Society
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
James Brown African American Room at The Newark Public Library
Projects
Newark Artist Collaboration - Westinghouse Site Intervention
Monumental Newark: Reimagined Sites of 19th Century Newark
Black Abolitionist Historical Monuments Reimagined
Located on what used to be known as Plane Street, where, in the nineteenth century, free and enslaved African Americans fought for their rights. Icons like Frederick Douglass delivered speeches to the Black community here, and Samuel Cornish, co-editor of the country’s first African American newspaper, worked as an activist and pastor. Hannah Mandeville, freed from her enslaver in Jersey City, moved to Newark to become a member and fundraiser at the Plane Street Colored Church on this street. Angelina Grimke, a legendary anti-slavery feminist, and author Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother, Charles Beecher, attended anti-slavery meetings only blocks away. Plane Street was the heart of the free Black community in Newark.
ARTIST
Noelle Lorraine Williams
CURATOR
Rebecca Jampol | Audible
Black Revolutionary Writers Fighting Colonialism: Queen Latifah, Samuel Cornish, and Amiri and Amina
INTRODUCTION
“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” - Writer Chinua Achebe’s recollection of an African Proverb
The 17th and 18th century colonization and enslavement of Native American and Black nations by Europeans is the foundation of Newark's history. Thankfully, Black revolutionary writers in Newark from the 1800s to today fought this attempt at the total control of Black lives.
Colonialism works by forcing underground the histories that fight its legitimacy. Recently, a former church site on the Rutgers-University Newark campus revealed hundreds of thousands of objects and dozens of graves paved over with concrete. This exhibition includes some of these artifacts. Can these violently disposed of objects tell the stories of other violently treated histories like Newark’s first Black liberation community?
Check out the exhibition page here .
CURATOR, RESEARCHER AND PROGRAM MANAGER
Noelle Lorraine Williams
THANK YOU Rutgers University -Newark Paul Robeson Galleries
Anonda Bell
Karen Bernard
Thank you to the artists, MEDIA PRODUCTION CREW AND DESIGNERS
Artists Reginald Blanding
Jerry Gant (1961 – 2018)
Marc Lorenc, Ph.D, Unstuck in Time Gaming
Stafford Woods
Noelle Lorraine Williams, Black Power! 19th Century
Our Partners
Exhibition REOPENS NOVEMBER 21!
Welcome! Stay! The Black Women of Nineteenth Century Newark.