Shortly after parking his car Monday morning, Ryan P. Haygood — replete in a navy suit he calls his “armor” — stood to take in the Perth Amboy marina.
He noticed, as a slight breeze made its way through, a cargo ship ambled by.
“This was one of the major ports into which enslaved Black people came,” Haygood, a civil rights lawyer and president of the non-profit New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, told NJ Advance Media on the morning of the federal Juneteenth holiday.
“It’s humbling to be here several hundreds years later, a man not in chains … to know that my ancestors arrived on these shores in chains,” Haygood said. “And it’s painful to know that too many people in our state don’t appreciate that story and the way that our whole state was shaped by the institution of slavery.”
The Newark-based nonprofit hopes to change that.
Three days after the state observed its third Juneteenth holiday on a different day, the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice met Monday at the port to launch the “New Jersey Reparations Council.” It comes about four years after state lawmakers introduced a bill (A938) that would create a state reparations task force. The measure has languished in the years since.
The New Jersey Reparations Council will craft a two-year study — accounting for the feedback of various stakeholders, officials, and groups — to better understand how the state’s generational wealth gap continues to plague Black families and hinders them through other forms of racial injustice.
Ryan Haygood speaks Monday at the launching of the Reparations Council organized by the New Jersey Institute of Social Justice at the Perth Amboy Ferry Slip to highlight the ongoing efforts to address the historic injustice faced by the Black community.
Juneteenth, sometimes called “Freedom Day” or the nation’s second Independence Day, celebrates the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States.
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The Emancipation Proclamation freed all of the South’s enslaved in 1863. However — as enforcement of it was unequal until the end of the Civil War in 1865 — some enslaved people were forced by Southern masters to continue to work on plantations.
Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, when Gen. Gordon Granger brought news of the Emancipation Proclamation to enslaved people in Galveston, Texas. Since Texas was a remote state, they were the last slaves to learn of their freedom.
Pointing to the need for more education on the history of enslaved people in the country, greater diversity in the U.S. Senate, and progress for Black women’s reproductive rights, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., attended Monday’s event, speaking fervently on issues he said have long roots in and outside of New Jersey.
“We call the questions,” Booker repeated, naming environmental justice, increased diversity and education among the issues his tenure in office has sought to put at the forefront.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker speaks at the launching of the Reparations Council at the Perth Amboy Ferry Slip on Monday.
“It is time to call the questions, to not accept the reality that we live in, but begin to challenge the fact that we still are a nation in the quest for justice, equality and inclusion,” Booker said to applause. “And it’s not just for some people, it’s for all peoples. It makes us all better. It makes America better.”
Booker recently also reignited the debate over whether the U.S. government owes a debt to the descendants of slaves in January.
READ MORE: Juneteenth needs to be a day for educating, not just celebrating | Calavia-Robertson
Jean-Pierre Brutus, senior counsel for the institute, will facilitate the New Jersey Reparations Council, which is expected to publish its findings on Juneteenth 2025.
The council’s principal co-chairs will be Taja-Nia Henderson, dean of Rutgers Graduate School-Newark, and Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a Harvard Kennedy School professor of history, race and public policy.
“From public school segregation, to inadequate funding for school, to the state’s criminal justice system … New Jersey has some work to do,” Henderson said Monday.
Many of the challenges Black residents face, including achieving wealth, are multi-generational, advocates also said.
In New Jersey, the median net worth for white families is eight times higher than that of Black families — a gap of about $300,000 — and five times higher than Latino families, according to the New Jersey Institute For Social Justice.
Nationwide, by comparison, the U.S. Black-white wealth gap is just over half that size at about $160,000, the organization found.
“In many respects, reparations is a logical extension of Juneteenth,” Leslie Wilson, a history professor and associate dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Montclair State University, said Monday.
“While people give thanks for being released from enslavement, there is always the question of what was lost,” Wilson added. “We now speak of generational wealth and the fact that many African Americans were denied generational wealth for over a century after the end of the Civil War. Reparations has been described as payment for what was lost in the years during enslavement as well as the years following the Civil War when African Americans were denied their civil and human rights.”
Brutus said talks on reparations in New Jersey will go beyond that. The council, he shared, will convene starting in September and consist of nine subcommittees looking at topics such as public education, segregation, public safety, environmental justice and home equity.
“Each of (the experts we’ve gathered) will make recommendations around how to repair the enduring harm from slavery,” Haygood said while speaking of the council’s mission.
That Monday’s news conference was being held at the Perth Amboy port was no mistake, noted Wilson.
The Montclair State University professor said recent and more developed histories reveal New Jersey was “well entrenched” in the slave trade and was the last northern state to end slavery.
Enslaved people born here before 1804 were still “property for life” under state law. New Jersey’s port cities, including Perth Amboy, played a critical role in the slave trade.
“We now know that North Jersey was involved in the exchange of human cargo and also keeping people in bondage. Perth Amboy was the largest slave port in the state,” Wilson said. “And the story of the Van Winkle’s, especially Judge Van Winkle, comes to light as he illegally sold slaves through Perth Amboy.”
State Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter, D-Bergen, among the primary sponsors of the Assembly bill which would form the state reparations task force, discussed that history Monday.
She also said that if the measure is not passed soon, more delays are expected at the start of 2024.
Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, and Senate President Nick Scutari, D-Middlesex, who decide which bills come up for a vote, could not be reached for comment Monday.
“While we cannot comment on pending legislation, the Murphy administration remains committed to advancing racial equity throughout our state by enacting critical initiatives and making targeted investments to address underlying inequities in areas such as housing, education, health, and the economy,” Christi Peace, a spokesperson for Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday after the press conference.
Those gathered, including Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Perth Amboy Mayor Helmin Caba, also said they supported the passage of “H.R. 40″ by Congress.
This bill would “examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the U.S. from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies,” according to the National African American Reparations Commission.
People gather at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Perth Amboy to participate in the celebration of Juneteenth on Monday.
Earlier in the day, U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. said Juneteenth was about “recognizing how today’s systemic inequities are still undergirded by the echoes of slavery, segregation, and racism.”
Murphy, a Democrat, said in a video Monday the state’s “Wealth Disparity Task Force,” is also charged with considering the needs of Black and Hispanic communities that make up large swaths of the state.
Peace said among other steps, Murphy’s FY2024 budget proposal includes funding to increase access to employee stock ownership and homeownership, reduce medical debt, eliminate public defender fees and reduce barriers to educational access.
The press conference came hours before a Juneteenth march starting at the Lincoln Memorial in Newark.
Giving a preview of the demonstration, People’s Organization for Progress’s founding chairman Lawrence Hamm, took to the mic in Perth Amboy, to echo fellow activists in demanding reparations.
“There must be compensation for the 250 years of stolen labor in this country. Stolen from our ancestors,” he said. “They stole us, they sold us, they owe us.”
NJ Advance Media staff writer Brent Johnson contributed to this report.
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Steven Rodas may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @stevenrodasnj.