Capturing Somerville’s (NJ) African American History, One Correction At a Time

Capturing Somerville’s (NJ) African American History, One Correction At a Time

This article is part 2,  in a series of posts, which explores the challenges of using local publications to research your community.

The Publication:

Somerville As it Really Is (1909) is a trade publication describing the industry, educational institutions,  amenities, and history of Somerville. The publication is relied upon as a foundational history of Somerville's growth. The inclusion of the African American community is limited to two photos of Colored School and St. Thomas AME. 

The Omission

The article, on the educational institutions, referenced the segregated Somerville Colored Public School, No. 3, as one of the "three school buildings". The caption labeled the African American School photograph as the "Colored School'. 

The Clarification

A fuller history includes the advocacy and activism of the African American community which initially created its own educational institutions and later gained access to public schooling for their child. 

A Deeper Investigation

Prior to the Civil War,  African-American residents and congregants of the Lottery Field neighborhood mobilized and educated their children in a community school.   In the 1850s, the African American community absorbed the school's financial obligations when access to Somerville’s newly established public school was denied.  For the next 30 years, the community operated a separate school while pursuing equitable educational funding. 

The multi-year campaign for equitable funding included  a 1891 challenge of the town leadership’s routine decision to divert $550 of the $1000 of the “colored'' school's budget to the white school. At the time, their old church building,  housing the school,  “was a ‘rickety affair’ having a leaky roof, and broken shutters.”  That year, and in 1892, town residents voted down the African American community’s $4000 budget requests.  The budgetary misappropriations continued until 1894. The community’s public efforts,  along with the 1893 county superintendent’s report, revived the fight against the budgetary misappropriations. The official report cited the colored school’s overcrowding and routine underfinancing.  Under pressure, the Somerville school board , “authorized [$2,800] to purchase additional land adjoining, the colored school, to build an addition to the [existing] school-house.” 

The Colored School, No. 3 Somerville, NJ (1910), Raritan on-line http://www.raritan-online.com/robeson-colored.htm

The expanded structure  featured, “well- lighted rooms, with desks for 50 children in one room and 42 in the·other.”   The community run school was renamed The Somerville Colored School, No.2. (later called No. 3). The building [was] heated by a hot·air furnace.” The school remained in the building for the next 23 years, until 1918 when the Board of Education desegregated Somerville elementary schools.

Next Part 3: Publication analysis of History at Home, Jessie Havens (2000)

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