Every day, for two years straight, I made the drive from my hometown Hillsborough, New Jersey, to New Brunswick, New Jersey. The drive (5:30 every morning, for rowing practice) wasn’t particularly exhausting. But it was just long enough to give me a deep feeling of satisfaction in that I was a commuting, working, student-athlete grinding to get my bachelor’s degree. Even more satisfying was that I was somehow, if only for a couple of hours a day, beginning to get away from my hometown.
And yet, the truth is, while Hillsborough did not feel like my home at the time, it was always a home to me because I am white. There was nothing about my circumstances and experiences as a closeted queer that automatically absolved me from perpetuating racism. I didn’t even know it growing up, but in the 1920s, my hometown was surrounded on townships lines by Klaverns of The Ku Klux Klan.
I don’t believe I’m the first person from my town to see the New York Times articles nor the “Scarlet and Black” Rutgers database dedicated to the KKK’s presence in Somerset County. But what I do believe is that even if Hillsborough did not house a single member from the KKK, the town has a shameful, secret history of being a bystander to gatherings of hate – a history that I feel remains relevant to how the town operates even now.
For two years, I’d make my commute, never realizing the seemingly insignificant street names and landmarks I passed held the answers to the contradictions that had challenged my adolescence. Questions such as, why did high schools like Franklin High School have metal detectors before entering, but Hillsborough, 15 minutes away, did not? Questions that my Black peers inevitably found the answers to long before I ever even felt the need to do the research behind the history of my own prejudice.
The first irrefutable signs of the KKK’s presence in Somerset County date back to the Klan’s purchase of Alma White College in the community of Zarephath, which borders Hillsborough. On October 31, 1923, Harvard’s daily student newspaper, The Crimson published an article titled Klan Buys College Close To Princeton.
Bishop Alma White, the college’s president and head of the Pillar of Fire Church, intended to carry out “plans to stimulate intellectual interest in the work of the Klan among the undergraduates and to instill in them the principles of the Klan.” Meaning that as the KKK acquired the college, the Klan also gained White’s followers within the Church based in Zarephath, NJ. The Church itself is recounted as beginning in 1906 with this photo-documented by the Franklin Township Library.
The description of the photo states that “The Pillar of Fire (previously, The Pentecostal Union) Church, led by Alma White, settled in Weston in 1906 and renamed their community Zarephath. White was given the land by Caroline Van Neste Field Garretson, widow of Peter Workman Garretson.” So, the Pillar of Fire Church was given the opportunity to settle and grow for 17 years before handing its members over to the Klan. The growth of The Pillar of Fire is seen through the establishment of the Zarephath Bible Institute (ZBI) in 1906. Then came a steady climb toward the New Jersey State Department of Education, granting it the legal credibility of a university under the name of Alma White College in 1921.
In The Widow of Zarephath: A Church in the Making, Gertrude Melten Wolfram narrates her life as a member of early Zarephath. Her account of ZBI states that the first summer of 1906 in Zarephath, the area held fifty members. By September 1912, ZBI had opened a school with fifty enrolled students, five of whom were ready for high school. So, they grew their numbers quickly. To understand how much Zarephath developed before being purchased is to understand just how much the Pillar of Fire Church and Alma White expanded, disseminated, and legitimized the Klan.
I Learned My Hometown, In New Jersey, Welcomed The KKK
Source: Pinoy Daily News
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