OLD TOWN HALL MUSEUM

SPRING 2022 EXHIBIT

SCHOOLS FOR THE COLORED

BY WENDEL WHITE

Described as “surreal and haunting,” Wendel White’s photographs in Schools for the Colored document the buildings and landscapes of the segregated U.S. educational system in the decades before the civil rights movement in the Northern border states.  In his stark black-and-white imagery of both longstanding structures and crumbling and long-since-demolished buildings, White obscures the details of their surroundings into a hazy mantle of white.

In cases where the structures no longer stand, White inserts silhouettes of the schoolhouses that formerly occupied the sites. His aesthetic approach was inspired by sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois’ memory of attending school as a youth, recounted in his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk: “I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.” African-American schoolhouses in southern New Jersey and Pennsylvania are featured in the installation at Old Town Hall Museum.  

Complementing this installation is a small exhibit exploring the history of Mullica Hill's High Street School. In 1919 representatives of Mullica Hill’s Black community petitioned the Board of Education build a new neighborhood school to serve their community and provide employment for Black educators.  The community, whose history stretched back to the early 19th century, had built Mt. Calvary Baptist Church a decade earlier and was well-established in the 20th century.  The story of High Street School, unlike other segregated schools, was unique in that it was the result of community activism.  The exhibit explores the history of this unique institution.

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The Harrison Township Historical Society’s arts and history programs are made possible in part by funding from The Gloucester County Cultural and Heritage Commission at Rowan College of South Jersey, in partnership with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State and the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey Historical Commission/Department of State.