A historic house museum that showcases the local history and features photos and artifacts relating to the iron mining industry. The story of the house began in 1854 when an Irish immigrant built it. In 1879 he sold it for $300 to Bridget Smith (1835-1907), a young widow with two children who lost her husband, John, in an accident while working in the mines. During the 19th century, when New Jersey’s northwestern part was an iron mining area, the area was called Mine Hill and later Irishtown. In 1912, Jessie and Ida McConnell rented the house, and Ida lived there for 78 years. In 1993, Smith’s great-grandchildren donated the house to Mine Hill to preserve it as the Bridget Smith Homestead. The house was restored and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. The Ferromonte Historical Society manages the museum, holds guided tours, and organizes special events. The museum is part of the New Jersey Women’s Heritage Trail, along with the Women’s Federation Monument. Read more...

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...

Harriet Tubman Museum stands at the heart of the historic African-American community in Cape May. The building was the Howell House and was used to be the Macedonia Baptist Church’s parsonage facility. Several display rooms review the history of abolition in Cape May, the underground railroad stops in the area, and its historic African-American community. It bears the name of Harriet Tubman (1820-1913), a former slave who escaped slavery and became a conductor at the underground railroad, leading hundreds of enslaved people to their freedom. Tubman was one of the many enslaved African-Americans who arrived at Cape May to find their freedom and build a new life. They used to row in a boat across the Delaware Bay and stay in one of the safe houses of the underground railroad in Cape May. Tubman stayed in Cape May for several months (over two summers) in the early 1850s, working in hotels to fund her expeditions to rescue slaves in southern countries. The opening ceremony was held virtually due to Covid 19 pandemic on June 17th, 2020, two days before Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the emancipation of enslaved people in the US. The ribbon-cutting ceremony with the NJ Governor, Phil Murphy, was held on September 17th, 2020, and the museum was announced as the official Harriet Tubman Museum of New Jersey. Several display rooms in the museum are reviewing the history of slavery and abolition in the NJ area and Cape May. Artifacts of slavery, African art and history are on display. More things to do in the area: Wander Cape May streets, check out the old houses; each is in different colors with a lovely garden at the front. Visit the Washington Street Mall, where you will find lots of shopping and dining options. Go to the beach. Explore more about abolition in Cape May with the underground railroad trolley tour. Read more...