Group seeking to preserve Black heritage wants area incorporated as a municipality
BURLEIGH – Shirley Green was not born in Whitesboro, but her heart resides there.
Her birthplace was Newark, and she later settled in Plainfield; she and her husband subsequently moved to Cape May County, where she quickly became very involved in the community.
Now, as the founder and executive director of the Whitesboro Historical Foundation and Museum, she is one of the leaders of the Whitesboro Historic Preservation Project, designed to preserve the legacy and assure the future of the historically Black community.
The project committee also aims to make Whitesboro an incorporated municipality in New Jersey.
“The goal is to preserve our history that is being washed away and the gentrification, the wiping out the legend of George H. White and individual security,” she said of the project, started in 2023. “We want to be able to preserve and govern our own self.” White is the community’s namesake and one of the original investors in its founding.
Green said that in the early 1900s, Whitesboro developed into a thriving community, but now there are no new businesses and no new roads.
“It’s not progressing as a town,” she said.
Her own business, Tiffany’s Bean and Birds on Route 9, was the first new business in 50 years, she said, and it was shut down due to Covid. She is considering reopening the restaurant.
Green said Whitesboro includes the communities of Wildwood Junction, Wildwood Junction Heights, Wildwood Heights and the areas currently known as Burleigh and Mayville. She also included areas such as Goshen, Swainton and the Rio Grande section of Middle Township, as well as the area commonly known as Whitesboro, located between Indian Trail Road and Route 47 on the north and south and Route 9 and West Anna Street on the east and west.
Green said Whitesboro was a self-governing community upon its establishment, but it is no longer shown on New Jersey maps, one of the things the project hopes to rectify. She said the project committee, which has about 15 members, has reached out to legislators and to the office of Gov. Phil Murphy, and is petitioning to be incorporated.
“We met with Gov. Murphy about the African American program he does,” she said.
The petition on incorporation is circulating on preservewhitesboro.org. As of Aug. 2, the site had gathered 238 signatures toward a goal of 400.
The Town Act of 1895 allows any area with a population exceeding 5,000 to become incorporated through a petition and referendum process.
The issue with Whitesboro would be more akin to seceding from an existing municipality. In 2012 the Strathmere and Whale Beach sections of Upper Township attempted to secede and join Sea Isle City. An appeals court upheld Upper Township’s denial of the secession petition.
But Green doesn’t want the effort to reestablish Whitesboro as its own municipality to be seen as an act of aggression. “We’re trying to do this without being perceived as a threat to Middle Township,” she said.
“I just want everyone to know this is not a competition,” she said. “We just feel we can govern ourselves and be as neighborly and productive as adjoining towns. We know we would have to partner with surrounding towns and share fire departments, the police department …”
She also acknowledged that a project of this order will take time to get everything lined up to be successful.
Assemblyman Antwan McClellan of the First Legislative District, which includes Whitesboro, said on Aug. 2 that he has spoken to a couple of different people from Whitesboro regarding their effort.
“At this point there is nothing that the Legislature has been presented with to do,” McClellan said. “It’s just been conversation, and they will need to have conversation with the township and county before they bring it to us.”
McClellan said he doesn’t know where the group is in the process.
When asked about his feelings, he said, “I don’t have any personal feelings on it. I think they need to have conversations with Middle Township itself.”
Middle Township Mayor Christopher Leusner said he would not support Whitesboro’s leaving the township to form its own municipality. He said he had conversations with members of the project committee and said he would never agree with the initiative.
“However you would draw the lines, the tax bill would be astronomical,” Leusner said. “There would be significant tax increases in Whitesboro, and the rest of Middle Township would see increases in taxes.”
The mayor said the members of the committee are looking to form a municipal government in a time when municipal governments are trying to share services. Rather than strike out on its own, Leusner said, the residents of Whitesboro should understand that Middle Township values Whitesboro and is committed to the community, to having partnerships in the community, to expanding relations and preserving the history of Whitesboro.
“They need to understand this would not be good for anyone,” he said.
Green had questioned the absence of economic development in the Whitesboro area. In response, the mayor told the Herald that the Route 9 corridor has received a town center designation that allows for more development and creates the conditions for economic growth.
“We might be the only municipality in the county that went through that process,” he said.
Green and her husband, Audrey Eugene “Gene” Green, live in the Burleigh section of Middle Township, one of a number of communities where Black citizens were determined early last century to carve out a home for themselves and establish businesses to serve them.
Whitesboro was founded in 1901 in response to overt prejudice. In that year, for example, Marcus Scull, editor of the Cape May Herald (not to be confused with the Cape May County Herald, which was first published as the Avalon Herald on Aug. 17, 1967), printed an article calling for the removal of African American residents from the City of Cape May. According to a display Green prepared, Scull described in print “’lurid accounts’ of the Cape May City’s ‘colored population.’”
“Cape May has a very impressive history,” Green said, euphemistically speaking. “They don’t even know how interesting.”
She said other articles from the era describe white women being afraid to push their baby carriages down a sidewalk for fear of encountering Black people.
Such racism, Green said, prompted the establishment of Whitesboro. She said a group of Black investors got together and purchased a 2,000-acre tract in Middle Township from a man named Joseph Taylor. George White, the real estate broker for whom Whitesboro was named, was the biggest of a number of investors.
The preservation group’s website says that, ironically, the land was at one time owned by Aaron Leaming Jr. and Thomas Leaming Jr., whom it called the largest slave owners in Cape May County history.
A newspaper from Nov. 22, 1902, ran an article about the new settlement. A map used between 1879 to 1913 shows it as Wildwood Junction.
Individuals and families purchased lots; an ad for property in Wildwood Junction Heights asked $35 for a 50-by-100-foot lot. Purchasers could secure a lot with $3 down and payments of $1 per month.
Some of the original houses are still standing, including the Hill House, now the Whitesboro Historical Foundation and Museum at 2214 Route 9 south, where it has been located since 2001.
“It was the home of Levi Matthews Sr., who was the constable,” Green said.
Green’s historical display features names of some early residents of Whitesboro: Gibbs, Bates, Henderson, Mabry, Moore, Blank, Graham, Matthews and Spaulding. Her husband is a member of the Spaulding family.
Two social organizations aided in the development of Whitesboro as a predominantly Black community – the Grande United Order of Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization, and the women’s group the Household of Ruth #4845. The Odd Fellows held meetings on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the group donated land for members to be buried.
Green said that during the Civil War a Whitesboro resident, William DeVane, was recruited and survived the war; he died in 1918. She said historic graves have been found in an unmarked cemetery on Lena Street, toward the Garden State Parkway.
She said this is just some of the history of Whitesboro, and she has a lot more in the display she created, for which she was recently honored by Ramapo College, she said.
“It’s to educate people on the heritage of Whitesboro,” she said. “It’s not offensive, it’s educational.”
The preservation group’s website lists as partners and supporters the Whitesboro Historical Foundation and Museum, the Cape May County NAACP, Concerned Citizens of Whitesboro, the Elorm Ocansey Ministry Foundation, Be True Podcast and 4 Asbury Park CPC.
Green said there is room for a new municipality and the history it reflects in Cape May County. She said Whitesboro can fit a need in a diverse community and prove to be a benefit to all parts. As an African American community, Whitesboro is part of American history, she said.
“This is not to show all the wrongdoings, but to show the wrong and the right of how we got to here today,” she said.
Contact the reporter, Christopher South, at csouth@cmcherald.com or 609-886-8600, ext. 128.
