Issue 4: June 9th
The Afro-American Historical Society Museum, Election roundup, and cheap eats.
Hello! I hope you’re staying cool this week! Here’s another newsletter, this one featuring a JC museum you may not have heard of, the best election round-up I can manage, and some Cheap Eats. I hope you enjoy!
The Afro-American Historical Society Museum
With all the talk of the Centre Pompidou opening an outpost in Jersey City, I was inspired to make a trip I’ve wanted to make for a very long time to a very different local museum. The Afro-American Historical Society Museum1 is located on the top floor of the Earl Morgan Branch/Greenville Library, and sounds fantastic. According to a 2019 article in NorthJersey.com:
There's a reproduction of a Jersey slave cabin. There's also a mockup of the kind of Jersey City apartment an ordinary African-American family might have had in the 1940s: washboard, cathedral radio, Victrola, clothes iron made of real iron, ice box that housed real ice. From such commonplace roots, extraordinary people emerged.
The museum is a treasure trove for scholars. There are back issues of The Crisis, The Pittsburgh Courier, and other important African-American publications. There are photos, posters, statues, drums, old street signs, examples of knitting and crochet, Civil War rifles shouldered by black regiments. One telling artifact: a pair of slave shackles inscribed with a West African pictograph. It reads: "Perform the impossible."
I’ve only ever been able to find out the history of Black Jersey City in little bits and pieces. For instance, I knew (because a plaque outside told me so) that Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at a church near where I live; but meanwhile, I didn’t realize that the street now named MLK Drive used to named for a couple of freed slave brothers who came here and profoundly changed the city for the better, nor did I know much about the history of that area in general:
In 1857 they [the Jackson brothers] laid out a lane (Jackson Lane) between the brother's houses, and during the Civil War the Jackson property became a safe house and critical link of the Underground Railroad. Jersey City was the last "station" on the Underground Railroad route through New Jersey. Tens of thousands of fugitive slaves arrived in Jersey City from several states, such as Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. From these states, they traveled north to the Delaware River where they crossed over to New Jersey and continued on a route to Jersey City. The Jackson brothers helped thousands of escaping slaves along a strip of land which would later be named "Jackson Avenue".
One hundred years later, in the 50's and 60's, Jackson and Monticello Avenues was the place to be. A cornucopia of small businesses lined the corridor satisfying a wide variety of needs, and providing a variety of entertainment venues for the local community. Whatever you wanted could be found at a local, friendly establishment on the avenue. Jackson Avenue was changed to King Drive after the death of the great civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
The Afro-American Historical Society Museum was started in the late 1970s. There’s very little available online about the history of the museum itself, other than it being established with funds from the local NAACP chapter and Monumental Baptist Church. By 1984, it was located at the library, and it received a resurgence of interest and energy during Mayor Glenn Cunningham’s administration. You can see the name of the museum proudly listed on the signposts installed during his term.
Several online sites list the museum as being open 10-5pm on Saturdays and “by appointment” other times (this isn’t an unusual practice for small museums to have limited hours — it’s just an unfortunate side effect of not having the funding to afford a full-time staff. In the case of this museum, it appears they only have one employee, the director Neal Brunson). I called the number listed to make an appointment, and it just rings and rings, with no one picking up and no voicemail.
After not getting anywhere with that, I reached out to the Earl Morgan Branch directly, and a very nice librarian called me back. She told me that the museum is only open on “certain Saturdays” (she wasn’t sure when the next one would be) and that the number I was calling and not getting any response from was the only way to contact the director. She said that there was really nothing else they could do, other than keep an eye out for when he might come in and try to convey the message to him that someone wanted to come and see the collection.
Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to criticize Mr. Brunson. There’s no way running this museum is his full-time job. The museum is clearly chronically underfunded, and his is most likely a volunteer position. It’s completely understandable that he can’t be available just whenever someone wants to come through and see the collection — most people with another job and a life wouldn’t be. But imagine what this museum could be: with just a tiny investment from the city (and/or private donors? we have had a whole slew of businesses and people with money moving into JC in the last ten years — they could pitch in too!), they could hire staff, host events and exhibitions, buy advertising, and build a robust audience. In a neighborhood that has little to draw in outside visitors, it could act as an economic engine to bring in people and support local businesses. Basically, it could do everything the Pompidou is being touted as doing (ok, on a smaller scale, but still), only for far cheaper and in a neighborhood desperate for investment2.
What we’ve got here is a cycle: with little money, they can’t do programming and outreach; without programming and outreach, they get little coverage in the press; with little coverage in the press, they get very few visitors, which leads to fewer and fewer donations. And this great Jersey City resource, which has been here for over 40 years, is seemingly left to die on the vine.
Election follow-up
I’m writing this on the morning of June 9th, the day after the election. And let’s just say that when your ballot looks like this:
…it’s not that surprising that voter turnout is like this:
Ok it’s a little depressing that when all the votes are tallied, it’s going to likely come in that about 10% of Jersey City voted this time, but in most districts (like mine) there was practically nothing to vote for. Almost every position was running unopposed. So it’s also really understandable turnout was so low.
As previously discussed in Issue 2, the only real race to watch (and it was only in some districts throughout the city) was for County Committee, as progressive Democrats tried to move in and take some spots away from hand-picked HCDO members. The Hudson County Clerk doesn’t list the results for that election on their site, so getting information as to who won and who lost has been hard. Also, because we’re talking about such small areas, and often a slim margin of votes, things like vote by mail really do come in and play a role in this — if it truly does come down to one or two votes (as many of these races will), it’s wise to wait a bit before declaring anything. So there’s quite a number of races we simply don’t know who won or lost even 24 hours after the election, and probably won’t know for a few days.
Last night, local reporter John Heinis tweeted tentatively calling the race at about twenty wins for the progressive candidates (out of 50+ seats that were being challenged), but was counting Joel Brooks — also a candidate for Ward B City Council — as a loss. But an hour after he posted that, he updated with this:
Just to be clear: Albert and Santiago are HCDO candidates and Brooks is with the progressive Democrats. What makes this race noteworthy is the sheer amount of resources the HCDO put into defeating him for County Committee. The Mayor personally came out at least two times over the last few weeks to campaign against Brooks, including yesterday when he’s reported to have spent several hours in the district talking to folks and drumming up interest in the HCDO candidates. This is unprecedented; as I’ve said over and over, this is a very low level position and for such intense interest to be taken in this race is really extraordinary. There’s no way he would be able to do this for all 50+ people running in this election, so there was something significant about this one — probably the fact that Brooks is an independent candidate for Council, and Fulop doesn’t want to give him even an inch.
Personally? I’m just going to be super honest: I really thought it would be a bloodbath for Brooks. I like him a lot, but a first time candidate vs. the political machine — I just didn’t see this ending well for him, and I’m shocked it’s as close as it is. I suspect he won’t pull through in the end, but those numbers — they’re much tighter than I ever would have thought they’d be and I find that really impressive. I’ll keep an eye on how this whole situation develops and update you when I can.
Cheap Eats: The Sweets Edition3
I was buying a tuna salad at City Cafe & Bakery when these caught my eye. I love anything almond-flavored or marzipan-y, so it was a no-brainer — of course I have to get one.
When I got home with it and decided to try oh you know, just a bite — I’ll save the rest for later (and we all know how that goes), I was really surprised. There wasn’t a knockout almond flavor; instead, what first struck me was that it was almost a polenta-like cake soaked in syrup, with a delicate almond touch. I googled around, and found this article that really explains it: it’s an Algerian specialty called Qalb El Louz, and the cake is semolina (explains why I thought of polenta). Making it is laborious and usually reserved special occasions like the end of Ramadan, which was a little while ago, making me wonder if this was leftover from that. It tasted perfectly fresh, though — so maybe not.
The recipe I linked describes a labor of love (and includes great lines like, “The Qalb El Louz will begin to sizzle and hiss, that’s normal”). It looks like it’s traditionally eaten with a cup of mint tea, but I suspect a good cup of coffee would be a nice foil to the sweetness as well. Should it be sold out by the time this gets posted, the bakery has a variety of other desserts more familiar to me, all of which looked delicious. ($3.95, City Cafe & Bakery, 2800 JFK Boulevard.)
At Crema, I tried to order an iced matcha, but the mask I was wearing muffled my voice and the woman behind the counter misheard it as an iced mocha. They were swarmed with customers in the middle of a Wednesday and the order was multi-step and laborious, so there was absolutely no way I was going to complain and ask her to make me a new one. I took it and paid, and headed out on my 2 1/2 mile walk to the food pantry I volunteer at every other Wednesday (more on that at a later time).
I have not had a cup of coffee in about 20 years. I had an acupuncturist who told me to avoid it, which was a huge bummer because I love coffee. I mean, I love coffee, like so much. It was harder for me to give up coffee than it was to give up dairy and meat when I went vegan for nine years. And while over the years I’ve stolen a little sips here and there, this was without a doubt the most concentrated amount of coffee I’ve had in a very long time.
Oh it’s just one time. I’m sure it’s fine, I reasoned. It was absolutely delicious — the bitter coffee taste mixed with just a bit of chocolate, not too much to be sugary sweet or overwhelming, but just enough to linger for a second and then disappear. While it looked like one of those super sweet drinks that Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts might make, it tasted much more like a mature, cooler cousin to them — sweet, rich, but subtle. Kids wouldn’t like this, I reasoned, but grownups would. (Sure.) It wasn’t dessert-y as much as it was a dignified treat, I told myself. Much like the Qalb El Louz situation mentioned above, this too was supposed to be something I would take just a little of and space it out, maybe toss it if it got too much — but nope. It was gone by a block after I left Crema.
By the time I hit Danforth Avenue, I realized two things. One, I had made the walk in absolute record time, and two, the air all around me seemed to be sparkling and bright much more so than usual. I tweeted a gif of Godzilla screeching above a city skyline, but that wasn’t quite right — what I really wanted was a gif of a giant robot zapping people with laser beam eyes. I felt unstoppable. The relentless heat had nothing on me. I stopped at a pizzeria and wolfed down a slice while walking. The houses on Greenville Avenue winked at me, and the street signs seemed especially meaningful. I yelled a nervous hello! at a man I don’t know, who was walking on the opposite side of the street to me and completely minding his own business. I am now going on hour six since drinking that wonderful drink, and as my foot taps against my chair as I type this, I can assure you I have a long night ahead — but worth it. ($3.95, I think? This afternoon is a blur but I think that’s what it cost. Crema, 1 Duncan Avenue, at Bergen. Also, I’ve been going there for years and everything I’ve had there has been wonderful, they are a terrific neighborhood staple, and under normal circumstances I really recommend their avocado toast.)
Community calendar
At Canco Park on Thursday, 6/10, there is a screening of the kids’ film Sing at sunset. Leading up to the sun going down and starting at 6pm, there is a “pre-show” featuring “Reena Rock kicking off a season of OPEN STAGE events with the JCPL! Check the Canco Park Instagram account for further info.
Sunday, June 13th, the WSCA Farmers Market at Lincoln Park is back! Including vendors Scale Fish Market, 3 Paws Kitchen, Simply Done Food Truck, and The Cottage. 10-3pm, enter near St. Al’s.
This museum is referred to as a number of different names in different places; on the city’s own page for it, it is referred to as both the Afro-American Historical Society Museum and the African-American Museum on the same page. Because the majority of sites seem to refer to it as the Afro-American Historical Society Museum, that’s the name I’m going with here.
Please know that I’m not trying to make the argument that “because the Afro-American Historical Society Museum is underfunded, therefore the Pompidou is bad and we shouldn’t do it” — not at all. Jersey City is big enough that we could, conceivably, support both institutions; we could also support numerous other local arts institutions (and pay for our schools, and do violence reduction outreach, and build affordable housing, and all the other things I am absolutely desperate for this city to do), all at the same time. But it takes a reorganization of our values and priorities. The way things are set up now — no, we can’t afford to do all these things at once, not without property taxes skyrocketing. But the Jersey City municipal budget is currently $658million dollars. There’s a lot of room to move within that number. And, of course, a lot still remains to be seen as to where the funding for the Pompidou is coming from, how the Arts Referendum tax gets distributed, and many other moving parts.
Yeah, I know. Should’ve gone with “Cheap Sweets.”