Aging in Montclair (AIM) Saturday Social on March 26 at 4:00 p.m. will present Dr. Leslie Wilson, Montclair State University Professor History. Dr. Wilson will discuss the history of segregated education in New Jersey, particularly highlighting the differences between the northern and southern counties. While there were attempts to integrate our state’s public schools in the 1800s, there was also another movement to establish separate schools for African American children. Legislation passed in 1881 prohibited excluding any child from public school based on religion, nationality or color, and court cases from that era also impacted education for Black children. Dr. Wilson will delve into the issues surrounding these rulings and discuss why, despite New Jersey’s progressive legislative stance on desegregation, there is still much work to do in this area.
Dr. Leslie Wilson, Professor of History and Associate Dean in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at MSU, holds a Bachelor’s (History) and Master’s (Africana Studies) from Cornell University, and a Master’s and Doctorate (History) from the Graduate School of the City University of New York. His areas of interest and expertise include American education, African American life in the antebellum North, urban and suburban migration, and sustainability and technology in the 19th and 20th centuries. He has previously written about churches in New York City, Black suburban migration, and aspects of post-colonial Africa. He is currently writing about gentrification in New York City, environmental racism, and the plight of Blacks who settle in suburbia.
To attend, the community is invited to email AIM at aginginmontclairAIM@gmail.com or call (973) 707-5088 by March 24th to receive a zoom link.