The Meadowlands History Project

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Gethsemane Cemetery

        The Meadowlands Commission is honoring Black History Month with a weekly post on this blog. Today the topic is Gethsemane Cemetery in Little Ferry.

   Gethsemane Cemetery is located on an acre on a sandy hill just off Route 46 and Liberty Street.  The photo above is a view of the cemetery's entrance on Summit Place.

   It was set aside in 1860 as a burial ground for African-American residents of nearby Hackensack. The last burial took place in 1924.

    The site was entered onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 "because of the significant role it played in the enactment of New Jersey’s early civil rights legislation, as well as containing evidence of West African burial customs," according to the Bergen County  Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs.

    The county has been doing a major restoration of the cemetery, and it is currently closed to the public. Self-guided tours will be available when the work is completed.

    According to the agency, "Fewer than 50 gravestones remain, but the burials of more than  500 people have been documented.

    "They include Elizabeth Sutliff Dulfer who was born a slave  in  the late 1700s, freed in 1822, and died in 1880. She was one of the area's wealthiest businesswomen and landholders. [Dulfer owned clay beds that supplied clay to potteries from Philadelphia to Boston. Her clay company along the Hackensack River was said to be the second-largest in the nation.]

   "Two Civil War veterans, Peter Billings and Silas M. Carpenter, were also buried here."

     More on the cemetery here.

    Click "Continue reading ..." to learn more about the cemetery's role in early civil-rights legislation.

African-American Genealogy Program in Secaucus

     The Hudson County Genealogical Society is hosting a free African-American Genealogy Research program at the Secaucus Public Library on Saturday, Feb. 13, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The presentation will guide participants through available resources for researching African-American ancestry.

    The program is co-sponsored by the New Jersey Chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society. Program leader Michael Hait is a professional genealogist from Washington D.C. specializing in African-American research, Civil War research and Maryland research. For more information on the program, click here.

    The Secaucus Public Library is located at 1379 Paterson Plank Road and can be reached at 201-330-2083.

BLACK HISTORY WEDNESDAY: Ruby Dee, Kearny

                                                                                                            Photo credit: AT&T Archives.

   

The Meadowlands Commission is honoring Black History Month with a weekly post on this blog. Today the topic is  Ruby Dee -- pictured above working in Kearny. We would like to thank Tammy Marshall, librarian of the Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute, for her help in these Black History Month posts.

    Actress and civil rights champion Ruby Dee, who was born in Cleveland in 1924 and raised in Harlem, worked at the Western Electric Company’s Kearny Works during World War II, soldering wires on an assembly line.

   She graduated from Hunter College and got her first Broadway role in a play called "Jeb," about a black GI war hero. The star was Ossie Davis, whom she married two years later.  

   Both Davis and Dee were active in the Civil Rights Movement throughout their careers. Dee has been involved with the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

   Dee starred in "American Gangster," set in part in Bergen County, in 2007.

   For more information on Ruby Dee, click here.

   For more information on Kearny's Western Electric plant, click "Continue reading..."