Located in the heart of Newark, a remarkable monument celebrates Harriet Tubman and the Newark Black Liberation Movement. In June 2020, following the protests that took place after the murder of George Floyd, the city of Newark decided proactively to remove Christopher Columbus’ statue and, as Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka said, “erect a monument that spurs us into our future story of exemplary strength and solidity.” The monument committee chose the design of the multidisciplinary designer and the founder of Studio Cooke John Architecture and Design, Nina Cooke John, named it “Shadow of a Face,” based on Robert Hayden’s 1962 poem “Runagate Runagate,” which references Tubman, and dedicated it on March 9th, 2023, (a day before the annual Harriet Tubman Day) in the Harriet Tubman Square. The 25-foot-tall monument consists of a large open circle that presents on one wall a mosaic of tiles created by Newark residents; the other wall showcases key milestones of Tubman’s life and the Underground Railroad in Newark. On the other side of the tile wall is a large-scale portrait of Tubman, placed at the visitor’s eye level. The singer, actor, and Newark native Queen Latifah narrates the audio installation. Harriet Tubman was born into slavery between 1815 and 1825 on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. In 1849, she escaped to Pennsylvania and became free. Soon after, Tubman risked her freedom and returned 19 more times to Maryland as a conductor of the Underground Railroad to free tens of people, including her family. To finance the rescue expeditions and to financially support the former slaves on their first days as free people, she worked as a domestic and cook. In the early 1850s, Tubman worked during the summers in Cape May, New Jersey. During the civil war, she served in the Union Army as a cook, nurse, spy, and scout, leading an armed expedition that freed hundreds of enslaved people. After the war, she retired to her home in Auburn, New York, advocated for women’s suffrage, and co-established a home for elderly people, where she spent the last years before she died in 1913. The monument is the second tribute to the brave activist in New Jersey. The first took place in 2020 with the opening of the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May. The memorial stands near the Newark Museum of Art, and a statue of Rosa Parks is a mile away. Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and civil rights leader, is honored with a statue in the nearby Jersey City. Read more...

A statue of Margaret Bancroft resides at the heart of the new campus of the Bancroft School in Mount Laurel, overlooking the open grass area peacefully and proudly of what has become of the school she had established in 1883 that started with a single student. Margaret Bancroft (1854-1912) was born and raised in Philadelphia in a Quaker family. In 1883, at 29 years old, she left her teaching position in Philadelphia to establish the first private boarding school in the United States for multiply disabled children, “The Haddonfield School for the Mentally Deficient and Peculiarly Backward,” in Haddonfield. In the 19th century, developmentally disabled children could not attend regular schools, and there were no educational programs for them. Bancroft believed in equal education for all children and that with the right academic programs and a social-emotional environment, those children would nourish, develop, and thrive; she created a place and developed innovative methods to educate them. Over the years, the school grew into a nonprofit institution known as the Bancroft School. Bancroft was also one of the founders of the women’s club the Haddon Fortnightly in 1894. Until this day, the club is active. Judith Flicker created the statue. It stood at the entrance of Lullworth Hall in Kings Highway East, Haddonfield; when the school moved to its new campus at Mount Laurel, Bancroft’s statue moved with it. The statue depicts Bancroft sitting on a stool, confident and proud. A small child leans over her lap. There is ongoing fundraising to erect a copy of this statue in Haddonfield to commemorate her legacy in the same place she founded the school. Read more...

At the entrance to the park that bears her name stands a 9-foot-tall statue of the educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune. Bethune (1875-1955) was the 15th of 17 children born to former slaves in South Carolina and the first to attend school. Believing that equality in education is the foundation of equality in all other fields, she founded a school for black girls in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1904. The school started with six girls and achieved in 1941 a full college status as the Bethune-Cookman College. Over the years, she founded schools and organizations all over the country, promoting women’s rights, education, and equality. She served as the president of several of them, such as the National Association of Colored Women and the National Council of Negro Women. She was the Director of the Division of Negro Affairs and a member of the Black Cabinet under President Roosevelt. Her statue was the first statue of an African-American woman in the city and was unveiled on November 20, 2021. The artist, Alvin Pettit, visited many of her monuments. Noticing she was depicted mostly as an older woman, he decided to portray her as a young woman at the beginning of her activism journey. The sculpture presents a moment in her life when she held a book, and someone told her this book was not for her. It depicts her standing tall, a determined look on her face, gazing at the Bethune Community Center, located across the street, holding a book as if she is holding on to education. The plaque reads: DR. MARY McLEOD BETHUNE JULY 10TH, 1875 – MAY 18TH, 1955 EDUCATOR * STATEWOMEN * ACTIVIST * ENTREPRENEUR “IF WE HAVE THE COURAGE AND TENACITY OF OUR FOREBEARS WHO STOOD FIRMLY LIKE A ROCK AGAINST THE LASH OF SLAVERY, WE SHALL FIND A WAY TO DO FOR OUR DAY WHAT THEY DID FOR THEIRS.” DEDICATED BY THE CITY OF JERSEY CITY 2021 SCULPTOR: ALVIN D. PETTIT Three miles away from the Mary McLeod Bethune Park are Liberty Park and Statue Cruises Departure to visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Read more...

A large metal butterfly sits on top of a stone on the north side of Liberty Plaza, commemorating the Comfort Women of World War II. The plaque on the stone reads: “In memory of hundreds of thousands of women and girls from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, the Netherlands, and Indonesia who were forced into sexual slavery of the armed forces of imperial Japan before and during World War 2.” On August 4th, 2014, the dedication ceremony took place. Two survivors came from Korea and reviewed how their life was during and after the war. “We’re here to recover our stolen honor and dignity, which had been stolen by the Japanese government, and we can do this now while we’re still alive.” This Comfort Women memorial is one of four memorials dedicated to Comfort Women in NJ, located only miles apart in Fort Lee, Palisades Park, and Hackensack. Read more...

Comfort Women Memorial in Palisades Park, NJ, honors the hundred thousand Asian girls and women who were sex slaves during the second world war by the Japanese Imperial army. They were kidnapped from their homes in China, the Philippines, Korea, and even Japan. They were held in comfort stations in Japanese-occupied territories in the Pacific Rim in inhuman conditions suffering sexual violence daily. Most of these women did not survive to tell their stories and those who did, testify only years later. It is the first memorial honoring Comfort Women in New Jersey. Dedicated on October 23rd, 2010, in one of the parks in Palisades Park, and a few years later, relocated to stand at the entrance to the Palisades Park Library. The artist Steve Cavallo designed it after reading the victims’ testimonies. He created a bronze plaque on a large stone. A painting on the left side of the plaque depicts a girl curled on the ground, and a soldier is about to hit her. On the right is the information about the memorial – “In the memory of the more than 200,000 girls who were abducted by the armed forces of the government of imperial Japan 1930’s-1945 Known as “Comfort Women,” they endured human rights violations that no peoples should leave unrecognized. Let us never forget the horrors of crimes against humanity.” Comfort Women Memorials stand all over the world. In the US, you can find them in San Francisco, CA, Atlanta, GA, Fairfax, VA, Union City, NJ, Fort Lee, NJ, Southfield, Michigan, and more. Read more...

Rosa Parks memorial stands in the heart of the Essex Government Complex in Newark, New Jersey. It is the first and only statue of Parks in New Jersey, and she is the only woman honored with a statue in this Complex. Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was a civil rights activist who got famous when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man on December 1st, 1955. Her act sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, one of the founding events in US history against racial segregation in transportation. Parks devoted her life to fighting for the cause of equal rights. The statue was unveiled on October 1st, 2014, and was created by the Oregon artist, Thomas Jay Warren. The statue depicts Parks sitting on a bus seat, smiling, holding her purse. Her quote is inscribed on the seat next to her- “You must never be fearful of what you are doing when it is right.” More statues of Parks stand in – the US Capitol, Washington, DC, Montgomery, Alabama, Dallas, TX, and more. Read more...

Among the four Comfort Women Memorials in NJ, this one was the last to be dedicated on March 8th, 2013. The memorial stands in front of Bergen County Justice Center in Hackensack, next to other monuments commemorating international human rights violations – the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the Irish Great Hunger, and the African-American Slavery. The Comfort Women Memorial Committee commissioned it, a stone with a plaque honoring the Comfort Women’s story, not letting it become forgotten. The Comfort Women were hundreds of thousands of Asian girls and women abducted from their homes in South East Asia, and were forced into sex slavery by the Japanese imperial army during the second world war. They were held captive in comfort stations in inhuman conditions, suffered sexual violence daily. Most of them did not survive this brutality and horror to tell their stories, and those who did found the courage to testify only years later. There are Comfort Women’s memorials all over the world. In New Jersey, there are three more: Fort Lee, Palisades Park, and Union City. Read more...

This comfort Women memorial in Fort Lee’s Constitution Park was dedicated on May 23rd, 2018, by the Youth Council of Fort Lee, a student organization led by Korean-American high school students, who advocated for two years to create and fundraise the money to build it. The Youth Council goal was to “evoke memories of the Comfort Women and their strength, along with the strength that all other victims of war have displayed…. and serve as a beacon of hope for a better future avoiding these types of crimes against humanity on all fronts.” The memorial, designed by Euwan Kim, features a young woman cut into a circular stone. The artist wanted to express the gap this memorial fills when bringing the Comfort Women’s stories back into history. On the memorial’s pedestal, the poem by Gabriella Son is inscribed. Comfort Women is the name given to a hundred thousand Asian girls and women who were sex slaves during the second world war by the Japanese imperial army. They were abducted from their homes, kept in inhuman conditions, and suffered sexual violence daily. Most of these women did not survive to tell their stories, and those who did found the courage to testify only years later. There are Comfort Women’s memorials all over the world. In New Jersey, there are three more – in Hackensack, Palisades Park, and Union City. Read more...

In the middle of the parking lot of a shopping center in Woodridge, New Jersey, stands a bronze statue of Rosie the Riveter. On these grounds stood the Curtiss Wright facility, a large plant (occupied 1/3 of the size of Woodridge) that produced engines for bomber planes. During the second world war, more than 12000 employees, primarily women, worked day and night to manufacture the Wright Cyclone engines, which were essential to the forces in the front line. Rosie the Riveter is an icon for the strong, working women who achieve their goals and get things done. This name represents the women who supported the war effort by working at factories, filling the voids of the men who left to fight in the front line. The memorial was created in 2011 by the New Jersey artist John Giannotti. He depicted Rosie wearing her working clothes, the famous red with white polka-dot bandana, and an industrial gun in her hand. To her side lays her lunch box and coke bottle on a black granite stone, including information about the memorial. More Rosie the Riveter memorials can be found in Richmond, California, Flint, Michigan, and the Wharf in Washington, DC. Read more...

This small, medieval-style castle is a monument dedicated to the New Jersey Women’s Federation clubs who fought to preserve and create the Palisade Park at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. During the end of the 19th century, the demand for supplies for construction increased, and quarrying took place on palisades damaging the cliffs on the Hudson River. Women’s Federation clubs from the area gathered together, fighting to legislate the preservation of the Palisades and stop the destruction. A few years later, the Palisade Interstate Pak commission was formed. The Women’s club assisted with the fundraising to buy the land to preserve the park, cliffs, and the shores. Nowadays, Palisades Park is 12 miles long with over 30 miles long trails in a wild landscape. On April 30, 1929, the Women’s Federation Monument was dedicated, overlooking the scenery the women saved, honoring their contribution, setting all of us an example to fight for the right cause and cherish the nature we have. The monument is accessed via Forest View Trail, a few miles walk in the forest, close to the cliffs, along the Hudson River. This monument is one of the stops at the NJ women’s heritage trail. Read more...