Abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman was at the heart of Cape May’s Juneteenth Celebration yesterday. She was honored by the opening of a new museum about her life and legacy. Tubman had worked over the summer at the resorts in Cape May to fund her work in support of Black freedom. According to NPR:
She later came back through Cape May to shepherd nine escaped former slaves up to Canada.
The small museum in a restored 19th century parson’s house tells the story of Tubman, and also that of the once-vibrant African American community in Cape May. One wall is filled floor-to-ceiling with a list of all the Black-owned businesses in Cape May since the 1930s. The opposite wall features a timeline of Black activity in the town, from the founding of the first free Black community in the 1820s, to the first Black resort hotel – the Banneker House – in 1845, and up to today.
The museum board president Lynda Anderson-Towns said Cape May’s Black community is now not nearly as large as it was 50 or 100 years ago.
“The African American community has almost disappeared,” she said. “Many are not here anymore, and the world needs to know that story. We want to make sure it doesn’t disappear.”
Anderson-Towns sees the Harriet Tubman Museum as the first step toward building out a Black historic district in Cape May, by preserving the surrounding buildings that tell the story of the Black community.
“Our goal is to not just have the Harriet Tubman Museum to tour, but also the Stephen Smith house to tour, to talk about him as one of the wealthiest African Americans in 1800,” she said. “The historic Franklin Street School, which will be turned into a library, and then also the historic AME [church]. We want that full corner to be eventually our Freedom’s Corner.”
Elaine Moore-Wright came with her mother, Betty Eugenia Dozier Moore, from Williamstown, N.J. Longtime visitors to Cape May, they say the history is there, if you look.
“There’s always a piece of African American history,” said Moore-Wright. “But then there are certain places where it’s just all about African American history.”
“It’s been that way for a long time in Cape May, because they lived here every since there was a Cape May,” said Dozier Moore. “I used to come down here when I was a kid, and I’m 84 years old, so Cape May’s been having people of color here for a long time.”
You can read more about the museum here.
