Video, Museum and Book Reviews

Video, Museum and Book Reviews

Edited by Alan Singer

The Price of Silence – The Forgotten Story of New Jersey’s Enslaved People

“New Jersey is known as the Garden State,” says author Beverly Mills in the two-part documentary The Price of Silence. “We’re known for our blueberries. We’re known for our corn. We’re known for our peaches. But we’re not known for the slaves that were here tilling the soil. We’re not known for the whole history of slavery connected to New Jersey and how slavery was the underpinning of much of the wealth of New Jersey.” Enslavement was prolific from the very founding of New Jersey in the 1600s as a colony and eventual manufacturing hub that supplied the Southern states with leather goods and other products. Its eye on production and profit created a demand for the cost-effective services of the enslaved, a demand that only grew as New Jersey developed into a major maritime port. What’s more, white slave owners at the time could receive the equivalent of land rebates based upon the number of enslaved working their land. “New Jersey was the last Northern state to even attempt to abolish slavery,” says Linda Caldwell Epps, Ph.D. and CEO of 1804 Consultants, in the film. Mills reports New Jersey “was probably the Northern state with the strongest sympathies towards the South. Because it was the Southern-most Northern state, it had a lucrative trade policy with the Southern states.” She remembers “I never learned about this in school. … If anything, we were taught to feel shame. And today…I feel nothing but pride and I feel empowered.”

• Part one of the documentary, “The Forgotten Story of New Jersey’s Enslaved People,” begins the series with the stunning fact that by the time New Jersey started the slow process of abolishing slavery in 1804, the state had 12,000 men, women, and children in bondage. The film reveals that New Jersey depended profoundly on enslaved people to drive agricultural and economic growth, was sympathetic to the South, and was the last of the Northeastern states to eliminate this heinous practice. https://www.pbs.org/video/price-of-silence-izsgr1/
• Part two, “The Lasting Impact of Slavery in New Jersey,” continues with New Jersey’s history of bondage and expounds on the fact that the African American community is still feeling the effects of slavery today due to disparities with the White community in median income, criminal justice, and healthcare.
• Part three, “The Search for Freedom in New Jersey,” examines the Black community’s Great Migration from the Jim Crow South to Newark, New Jersey, during the early years of the 20th century and tells the story through the eyes of descendants of individuals who made the Great Migration North and found life here to be a far cry from what they had hoped for.
  
  
• By telling these fascinating stories through the eyes of descendants of slavery and individuals who have lived through the heartbreaking events depicted in the films, the audience will most certainly be captivated and inspired to learn more.

The Hidden History of Slavery in New York

The Hidden History of Slavery in New York is an Emmy award-winning 30-minute documentary produced by Larry Epstein and narrated by Richard French, a student at Rye Country Day School. The film features EJI founder Bryan Stevenson. Larry Epstein, an Emmy award-winning journalist and documentary writer/producer, is available to speak at schools and colleges. He can be contacted at larryep13@gmail.com. The Hidden History of Slavery in New York is available on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUzlcZXBHAM

Harlem Urban Civil Rights Museum

The museum is set to open in Fall 2026 in an approximately 20,000-square-foot space within the Urban Justice League’s new 400,000-square-foot Manhattan headquarters at 117 West 125th St., across the street from the Studio Museum. The Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem presents the history of the Northern civil rights movement. It is a cultural institution that educates, inspires, and activates visitors through powerful storytelling, cultural engagement, and collective action. Rooted in history and in Harlem, it stands as a local anchor and a global destination for learning, reflection, and empowerment.

Morven Museum and Gardens in Princeton

https://www.morven.org/exhibitions/five-independent-souls

Morven house in Princeton, NJ was home to Richard Stockon one the New Jersey’s signers of the Declaration of Independence and five early governors of New Jersey. Morven house’s current exhibit as part of the national celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is Five Independent Souls highlighting the lives of the five men from New Jersey who voted for independence including Richard Stockon. As wealthy lawyers, the first two generations of Stocktons at Morven enslaved men, women, and children on site. At the expense of the enslaved, the Stocktons lived a comfortable lifestyle and increased their wealth with forced labor. Like other signers of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Stockton held people in bondage while signing a document that declared “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The rhetoric of revolutionary America—freedom, equality, and liberty—was inescapably intertwined with the practice of slavery. In 1804, the State of New Jersey passed an act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, making it the last northern state to do so. Records indicate that by the time the third generation of Stocktons took ownership of Morven in 1840, enslaved people no longer lived on the property. At first, they were replaced by free African Americans, and then eventually by immigrants from Ireland and Germany. Morven house’s permanent exhibition is “Historic Morven: A Window into America’s Past.”

NY State Parks Launches ‘Enslavement to Freedom 1627-1827-2027’ Initiative

NY State Parks Launches ‘Enslavement to Freedom 1627-1827-2027’ Initiative

In 2027, New York State will recognize the 200th anniversary of the end of legalized slavery in the state (1827) and the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans enslaved in the former New Netherland colony (1627). The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation is working with partners across the state to share new research and resources that explore early Black American history in New York as part of its “Enslavement to Freedom: 1627-1827-2027” initiative. Collaborations include exhibition displays with the Office of General Services, educational resources with ConsidertheSourceNY.org, events and programs, and traveling exhibitions available for non-profit and educational organizations throughout the state. During this multi-year interpretive initiative, State Parks and relevant state historic sites are planning will develop exhibits, public programs, and other educational resources. These are expected to explore New York’s history with the institution of slavery and a pivotal period of transition for the Black community in early New York. It provides better context and understanding for later historic movements, like abolition and the Underground Railroad. State Parks is also inviting educational and nonprofit organizations to host one or more of the four available traveling banner exhibitions:

1) Poisonous Seeds: The Dutch and the Institution of Slavery in New York

2) Redefining the Family: One Descendant’s Journey into History

3) Another Face of War: Enslaved and Free Blacks in the Revolution and

4) Many and Varied Hands: The Work and Labor of the Enslaved.

Compact enough to be displayed in various environments, the traveling exhibitions tell stories from the past that center Black experience. “Enslavement to Freedom: 1627-1827-2027” resources and activities are expected to continue to be developed and shared with the public over the next several years. For up-to-date information about this and other Black history initiatives at State Parks, including how to request the “Enslavement to Freedom” traveling banner exhibitions, visit this website.

Manhattan’s Merchant’s House was an UGRR Safehouse

The Merchant House (https://merchantshouse.org/) at 29 East Fourth Street in New York City is a 19th century brick and marble landmark rowhouse that is now a museum. It was built in 1832 by hatter and merchant Joseph Brewster and sold to the Tredwell family three years later. An Underground Railroad safe space was recently discovered underneath the drawers of a second floor built-in dresser. A cut in the floorboards leads to an enclosed space about 2ft by 2ft with a ladder down to the ground floor. Brewster was a leading New York City abolitionist. There is evidence that he signed at least two antislavery petitions and played a prominent role in three antislavery churches. When a church was being constructed on Rivington Street, he had builders include a false floor there as well.

A Protest History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2025) by Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

The book chronicles the history of protest and resistance in America, from Indigenous peoples’ resistance to colonization through modern movements like Black Lives Matter and climate activism. It highlights both known and forgotten figures and movements.  Drawing on legal documents, archives, and personal accounts to show how dissent has shaped the nation, it argues that protest is a vital force for change. It is part of Beacon’s ReVisioning History series. Browne-Marshall expands the definition of protest beyond traditional marches and rallies. Acts of resistance include journalism, legal battles, boycotts, everyday defiance, and more. There are sections on abolitionist John Brown, who was executed for initiating the 1859 slave revolt at Harpers Ferry; labor organizer Mother Jones, who fought for the enforcement of the 8-hour workday; and civil rights activist Daisy Bates, who played a leading role in the 1957 Little Rock school integration crisis. Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is a writer, educator, legal advocate, and playwright. She is a professor of Constitutional Law and African Studies at John Jay College (CUNY). Her books include She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power, The Voting Rights War, and Race, Law, and American Society.

New York City Monuments of Black Americans: A History and Guide (New York: The History Press, 2025) by David Felsen (Reprinted from New York Almanack, December 10, 2025)

“New York City got its first monument of a real Black American in 1946 when the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in the Bronx dedicated a bronze bust to Booker T. Washington,” David Felsen, a history teacher at Avenues: The World School, writes in the introduction to New York City Monuments of Black Americans: A History and Guide (History Press, 2025). He believes n“Behind every first is a story of triumph over adversity and exclusion.” A 2021 study of the nation’s monuments found that 50% of the top 50 most memorialized people enslaved other people and that only 10% of the top 50 most memorialized people are Black/Indigenous. Just six percent of the Top 50 nationwide are women. It wasn’t until 2007 that the city dedicated its first monument to a Black woman, Harriet Tubman. “At this time, when the media and academics were paying so much attention to problematic Confederate monuments and the white men on them, it seemed too little attention was being paid to the representation of Black people in monuments,” writes Felsen. “As a history teacher living in New York City, I began to wonder how many monuments of Black Americans there were in the city. Who was the first Black American honored, and when did it happen? Who were the artists, activists and civic leaders behind these monuments? Why did they get made? And what could they teach us about New York history, Black history, art history and American history?” According to Felsen, the first Black American represented on a monument in New York City is “a nameless, shoeless former slave help[ing] a Union widow to find her husband’s grave in the South” at the base of the 1876 Civil War Soldiers’ Monument in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Felsen’s new guide identifies and tells the stories of thirty statues and monuments of Black Americans in the city. It includes maps, and photos and a detailed history of each. This book provides a refreshing take on a subject that has been on the minds of many Americans.

Black Legacy: A History of New York’s African Americans (Seven Stories Press, New Edition, 2026)

by William Loren Katz

Discover the complete Black history of New York — from 1609 to the present — by the award-winning author of Breaking the Chains and Black Indians. For readers 12 and up. Includes a new intro and last chapter with insights on modern-day movements like Black Lives Matter, plus 50+ historical maps, illustrations, and photos. Essential for NY teachers, librarians and teens. From the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in New Amsterdam in 1609, to the Harlem Renaissance, to the impact of Black Lives Matter, here is a concise and newly updated history of Black Americans in New York for readers 12 and up. Black Legacy reasserts the essential work of teacher and historian William Loren Katz, who was committed to documenting and uplifting the stories of Black Americans’ courage and creativity, resilience and rebellion, especially for younger readers. A new introduction by award-winning journalist Herb Boyd gives context to Katz’s “full tableau of Black accomplishments and aspirations,” and a new chapter by historian Alan Singer and social studies teacher Imani Hinson brings the book up to the present day, considering the changing economic, cultural and political influences on Black New Yorkers. Black Legacy includes Black politicians and poets, abolitionists and athletes and activists, and the first Black children to attend public schools; Sojourner Truth, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois, Frederick Douglass, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and others who fought for Black freedom; Shirley Chisholm, Madame C.J. Walker, NY’s first Black mayor David Dinkins and many other businesspeople and politicians who brought dignity through their work toward equality; and the Black history of Seneca Village and Weeksville, the Savoy and Cotton clubs of the Jazz Age, Harlem Hospital where Martin Luther King Jr. nearly died, the African burial site at Trinity Church, and so much more. Written with economy and flair, Black Legacy is a fascinating read, a necessary teaching tool, and a great addition to the literature of the Black history of New York and of America. According to Haley Pessin, co-editor of Voices of a People’s History of the United States in the 21st Century: Documents of Hope and Resistance, “Dispelling the myth of Northern progressivism, Katz offers a far more compelling account of the bravery and perseverance through which Black people resisted their own subjugation and, in so doing, indelibly altered New York history. Katz reminds us that New York history is Black history, and Black history is the history of New York. This is a book that should be read by all New Yorkers.”

The Power of Quiet Courage (North Carolina Office of Archives, 2025) by Amy Nathan and Sarah Keys Evans; Illustrated by Jermaine Powell
Sarah Keys Evans wasn’t a person anyone thought would spend a night in a jail cell or change the world. But trouble came Sarah’s way in 1952 at a North Carolina bus station. Dressed in her Women’s Army Corps uniform, she was arrested for not moving to the back of a bus, three years before it happened to another Black woman, Rosa Parks. Sarah Keys Evans: The Power of Quiet Courage tells how Sarah stood up for what’s right and helped end that kind of unfairness. Others have now honored her by creating a monument that calls her a “Trailblazer for Justice.” Deborah Menkart wrote, “Sarah Key Evans’ story, along with many others who protested racism on public transportation in the 19th and 20th centuries, are omitted from most history books. Thankfully, Amy Nathan and Evans have broken that silence in a beautifully written book for upper elementary students. Readers learn that standing up for justice requires years’ worth of determination, patience, and courage. Evans was brave when she righteously refused to move on the bus, but there would have been no legal victory were it not for her continued bravery to pursue the case, to face lies about her actions, and to testify at hearings. As the book also makes clear, Evans’ family and attorney Dovey Johnson Roundtree provided crucial support. Evans’s story will inspire readers and offer a roadmap of the pitfalls and possibilities when pursuing justice.”

The Sewards of New York: A Biography of a Leading American Political Family (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press) by Thomas Slaughter

The Sewards of New York shines a light on one of the most important and fascinating political families of the nineteenth century. Through recently discovered family correspondence, Thomas P. Slaughter unveils the inner lives of the Seward family, tracing their joys and sorrows as the nation grappled with rapid expansion and deepening divisions on its path to the Civil War. William Henry Seward, the family’s most prominent member, was a state senator, governor, U.S. senator, and Secretary of State. Henry, as his family knew him, was often absent from their Auburn, NY, home, serving in Albany or Washington, DC, and remained connected to the family through the long letters numbering in the thousands that they exchanged. These writings reveal Henry as a son, brother, husband, and father, as much as they show him as a politician and statesman. His wife Frances is the hub around which this family story revolves. Slaughter explores the extended Auburn family during a half century of profound change in American homes, marriage, and childrearing. With an eye for the provocative and revealing, Slaughter takes us behind the curtain of the early Victorian era’s private sphere. The Sewards of New York paints a rich portrait of an extraordinary family that played a key role in nineteenth-century New York and national politics.

Women, Immigrants, and the Working-Class Battle in Little Falls, New York: The Textile Strike of 1912-1913 (New York: Algora Publishing) by J.N. Cheney

J.N. Cheney recounts the political and cultural origins that created the conditions for the strike including factors such as immigration law and the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. It carefully considers the plight of the primarily working-class immigrant women from Eastern and Southern Europe (mostly Italy, Poland and Slovakia) and their pursuit of better wages and improved working and living conditions.

The book details the horrific conditions they endured including dangerous, unsanitary factories, rampant tuberculosis, and dilapidated tenement housing, which were courageously exposed by nurse, social reformer, and suffragist M. Helen Schloss. When the workers in two Little Falls mills organized to improve their conditions with the help of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist Party of America, they were met with a brutal campaign of repression. This new research exposes the police violence, the suppression of free speech by local authorities, and the hostile media coverage that sought to demonize the strikers as dangerous agitators.

Jamie’s Decisions (TrueFiktion) by Joe Visconti

The graphic novel follows Jamie, a skilled laborer and formerly enslaved person in Virginia who found refuge in Syracuse, New York. His world is shattered when the federal government passes the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the U.S. Marshals capture his formerly enslaved friend, Jerry, under the law. Now, Jamie must decide whether to put his own freedom at risk to help the community save Jerry. This graphic novel focuses on the Jerry Rescue, an event that happened in Syracuse on October 1, 1851. A group of abolitionists forcibly liberated William “Jerry” Henry from U.S. custody after he was arrested under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Jamie’s Decisions explores the Jerry Rescue and the Syracuse abolitionist movement to highlight how community members – sometimes with different motives – can come together to seek justice for all.

Sag Harbor in the Revolution (Sag Harbor Museum) edited by Zachary Studenroth 

Have you heard of the Battle of Sag Harbor, the heroic raid on the British fort that still lies beneath our feet in the Old Burying Ground? Or of the mass exodus to Connecticut from Sag Harbor in September 1776, when local residents escaped the British occupation? Or do you know how our village rebuilt its economy after the Revolutionary War? These and many other questions will be answered in “Sag Harbor in the Revolution,” a book that the Museum is publishing to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Thirteen authors, all distinguished historians or specialists in their fields, have been brought together to contribute new research on the subject of Sag Harbor’s role in the American Revolution.

Until the Last Gun is Silent (New York: Viking, 2026) by Matthew Delmont

The book is sub-titled “A Story of Patriotism, The Vietnam War, and the Fight to Save America’s Soul.” While over 300,000 African American young men and women were serving in Vietnam, African Americans stateside played an important role in the anti-war movement, despite facing severe criticism in the media, by government officials, and by prominent leaders of civil rights groups. Anti-war activists included the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, and Medal of Honor recipient Dwight “Skip” Johnson. Much of the book focuses on Coretta Scott King, who the author credits with convincing her husband to support the anti-war movement, and Johnson’s family and friends, who fought to have him receive full honors and his family to receive full benefits. Matthew Delmont is a Professor of History at Dartmouth College.

Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery (Chicago University Press, 2024) by Seth Rockman.

Rockman uses the exchange of products between the North and South to present a fuller picture of slavery as a national institution with economic ties binding different regions of the country. Examples include cloth and shoes manufactured in Massachusetts worn by enslaved Africans on Southern cotton plantations, tools like axes, hoes, and shovels manufactured in the North for sale to Southern planters, slave-produced commodities marketed by Northern companies, and a Northern ship construction industry building vessels to transport cotton to European markets. Seth Rockman is a Professor of History at Brown University.

Stitching Freedom: A True Story of Injustice, Defiance, and Hope in Angola Prison (New York: One Signal, 2025) by Gary Tyler with Ellen Bravo

This book is the memoir of Gary Tyler, written with the assistance of Ellen Bravo, an anti-racist activist involved in campaigns for fair trials and prison reform. In 1975, seventeen-year-old Gary Tyler was sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole at the notorious Angola Prison in Louisiana. Tyler, who is African American, was convicted of the murder of a white teenager by an all-white jury. His case was picked up by Amnesty International, and he was recommended for parole three times; each time the Governor of Louisiana rejected the recommendation. He spent four decades in prison for a crime he did not commit until he was released in 2016. While in prison Tyler took up quilting to remain sane, hence the book’s title Stitching Freedom.

Capitalism: A Global History (New York: Penguin 2025) by Sven Beckert

The text of this book is 1,087 pages. The total book with references, footnotes, and index is 1,325 pages. It is too heavy to hold so you can only read from it if it is positioned on your desk. For global history teachers, it acts more as a reference encyclopedia rather than a book, but it is an incredibly valuable reference. Beckert argues that no phenomenon has shaped human history as powerfully as capitalism. He believes capitalism shapes every facet of human existence including work, leisure, politics, values, and self-definition. Rather than centering the history of capitalism in Western Europe, Beckert examines islands of capitalism emerging all over the world starting about 1,000 AD with the development of trading centers, markets, and long distance merchants. The book starts at the port of Aden on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula and ends as globalization transforms rural, previously isolated regions of Southeast Asia. Along the way we learn how capitalism reshapes the world with the conquest of the Americas, the trans-Atlantic trade in human beings and slave-produced commodities, the Industrial Revolution, and a “neo-liberal age” of unfettered borders and instantaneous electronic transfers of capital around the globe. Key to the development of capitalism is the alliance of producers and traders with states that facilitate commerce and industry. This massive work draws on archives from six continents and countless countries. Sven Beckert is a Professor of History at Harvard University.