“Schools for the Colored”: Places, Words, Pictures

"Shortly after beginning the Small Towns project, I became aware of a small cemetery—known locally as the Boling Cemetery and named after the earliest African American settlers at the site, Henry and Grace Boling—near Stockton College in the town of Port Republic, New Jersey. Four of the five remaining headstones indicated that the interred were veterans of the Civil War and the U.S. Colored Troops. Information about the origins of the cemetery was difficult to find because there was no longer a black community at the location or in the town. My encounter with this neglected cemetery led to more formal research and genealogy as I attempted to reconstruct the story of the African American settlement that was once located at the far edge of Port Republic. The information I accumulated on Port Republic’s black community prompted experiments with various formats for my work."

White, Wendel A. “Schools for the Colored.” Buildings & Landscapes Vol 22, No 1 (Spring 2015): 63-89.