NJ Black Women Leaders
- Ella M. Rice (1863-1920)Ella M. Rice assumed leadership of the Colored Industrial School in New Brunswick, New Jersey after the unexpected death of her husband, Reverend Walter Allan Rice, in 1897. For nearly twenty-two years, Rice served as a principal of the co-educational boarding school for Black children. Supported by New Brunswick Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church and local community benefactors, she provided Black children with an education that enabled them to find employment and lead independent lives. The Colored and Industrial School was modeled after the Manual Training and Industrial School in Bordentown, New Jersey, which had been founded in 1886 by Reverend Rice and was subsequently acquired by the State of New Jersey in 1894.
- Florence Spearing Randolph (1866-1951)She was a minister for the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church who built her own church in Summit, New Jersey. She retired in 1946 after 21 years of active ministry in Wallace Chapel.
- Violet A. Johnson (1870-1939)Violet A. Johnson, originally from North Carolina, found employment as a domestic worker in Brooklyn, New York and relocated to Summit with her employer’s family in 1897. Involved with the Baptist Church’s missionary work and temperance activism, Violet Johnson sought an innovative means to confront the “woman question and the race problem.” Toward that end, she raised funds to establish the Fountain Baptist Church, an independent black church as a “woman’s church,” where domestic servants and other Black working women enjoyed a space separated from their work and an alternative to suburban isolation. Deeply rooted in her Christian faith, Violet Johnson went on to create a specific model of Christian womanhood, one born from her own background as a Black domestic worker, while maintaining her vision of social justice and grounded in Christian faith, working towards improving the lives of Black working women. Although not a school in a traditional sense, Johnson created a space of trust where informal learning was encouraged. For Black women working for white families, the “woman’s church” was a place for mentoring, information exchange, support and networking. See book "Black Women's Christian Activism" for more information.
Black Women's Christian Activism: Seeking Social Justice in a Northern Suburb by
The book 2017 Wilbur Non-Fiction Award Recipient Winner of the 2018 Author's Award in scholarly non-fiction, presented by the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance Winner, 2020 Kornitzer Book Prize, given by Drew University Examines the oft overlooked role of non-elite black women in the growth of northern suburbs and American Protestantism in the first half of the twentieth century When a domestic servant named Violet Johnson moved to the affluent white suburb of Summit, New Jersey in 1897, she became one of just barely a hundred black residents in the town of six thousand. In this avowedly liberal Protestant community, the very definition of "the suburbs" depended on observance of unmarked and fluctuating race and class barriers. But Johnson did not intend to accept the status quo. Establishing a Baptist church a year later, a seemingly moderate act that would have implications far beyond weekly worship, Johnson challenged assumptions of gender and race, advocating for a politics of civic righteousness that would grant African Americans an equal place in a Christian nation. Johnson's story is powerful, but she was just one among the many working-class activists integral to the budding days of the civil rights movement. Focusing on the strategies and organizational models church women employed in the fight for social justice, Adams tracks the intersections of politics and religion, race and gender, and place and space in a New York City suburb, a local example that offers new insights on northern racial oppression and civil rights protest. As this book makes clear, religion made a key difference in the lives and activism of ordinary black women who lived, worked, and worshiped on the margin during this tumultuous time.
Call Number: RUonlineISBN: 9781479814817
Davidson, Dave., Amber Edwards, and Ruby. Dee. 2010. A Place Out of Time the Bordentown School. United States: PBS Home Video.
Burkholder, Zoe. 2017. “‘Integrated Out of Existence’: African American Debates over School Integration Versus Separation at the Bordentown School in New Jersey, 1886-1955.” Journal of Social History 51 (1): 47–79. https://doi.org/10.1093/ish/shw091.
Biographical Sketch of Florence Spearing Randolph. n.d. Alexandria, VA: 2018.