The Black hands that built this country are not entirely recognized for all their labor. The African people who came to America brought with them many cultural skills, including techniques of working soil, hunting, mining, and the forging of iron. Ringwood had the reputation of producing superior products, precisely due to this. And many of the African slaves’ customs, folklore and folkways remained part of the foundation of America.
Paterson, New Jersey, the first planned industrial city in the United States, was founded by Alexander Hamilton and established near the water power provided by the Great Falls. Hamilton envisioned a labor force that needed the colonies to be free from the British economic grip. On November 2, 1787, Hamilton founded the African Free School in order to educate slaves with viable skills to support them in their freedom. One of the early concerns of the S .U. M. was the H. V. Butler paper Co on the Passaic River raceway using water turbines to power the mill. The superintendent was a young black man from Trenton, NJ, Alfred Gibbs Campbell, who was hired to oversee the 12-building complex.
In 1804, New Jersey instituted the Gradual Emancipation Act. Although the law was supposed to be in full effect, slave sales and ownership transactions continued. Through the entire 19th century and even before the National 1863 Emancipation, the African slave person was distinct in their ways; while living around white people everything he touched was reinterpreted for his own use. He modified the language, food preparation, practice of medicine, and the religion of his forebears’ country. We see this in how Henry Hopper, former slave, became a manufacturer of hammers and axe handles, and how Samuel Walker became Chef Caterer, and Sam Armstrong, who came via the Underground Railroad once he was set free and established his own ice cream business on Marshall Street.
In the growth of industrial Paterson, the former African slaves were excluded from the workforce. The Cotton Boom passed them by, as did the construction of the Morris Canal, the locomotive industry, and the world-wide impact of silk production. They were excluded from hire even when employment was available and couldn’t even get in on the ground floor. The 1860 Paterson City directory confirms that they were relegated to stable boys, laborers, waiters, porters, coppers, sawyers, washerwomen, well diggers, and preachers. None of these jobs were involved with the textile industry of the time.
The first colored school in Paterson wouldn’t open till 1855, teaching only the basics. The Paterson Public School system didn’t desegregate the system until 1872. Thus the limited education still disqualified blacks from the mills whose owners only hired skilled workers, meaning immigrants.
The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments had little effect in Paterson to improve black employment. At the turn of the 20th century the Black population never exceeded 500 black people in a city of 105,000 residents. In spite of the power and might of Paterson’s industrial growth employment was limited to white immigrants, and even then certain whites were preferred.
In 1899 the tide was turning for black labor in Paterson’s textile industry. The Ashley and Bailey Company established a silk mill in Fayetteville NC, with a capacity of 15,000 spindles and 325 operatives. This is the only silk mill in the south that used Black labor exclusively. The superintendent himself was Black. The experiment with Black employees was a success for management. Ashley & Bailey Co. owned and operated 13 mills, and the products of all 13 were shipped to Paterson NJ, their National headquarters.
In 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded on 5th Ave in NYC. The Paterson African-American community came together to submit their application on June 11, 1915. The application is an important historical document. It gives a partial view of Paterson’s Black working middle class at the time which includes physicians, ministers, chauffeurs; tailors, masons, and caterers to name a few.