ABOUT

Truth & Repair began in 2023 with a one-year planning grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. During this initial phase, we organized our steering committee of New Jersey-based scholars, established connections with local cultural institutions, and developed a framework for undertaking cross-institutional, community-based historical research projects. During the summer of 2024, we launched a pilot program with 16 graduate and undergraduate research assistants from Rutgers University at Newark, New Brunswick, and Camden, Princeton University, St. Peter’s University, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Divided into three teams dispersed across the state, our students used qualitative and quantitative research methods to help cultural institutions, organizations, and advocacy groups develop history-based research projects. On September 28, 2024, the researchers presented their work at Princeton University to an audience of our community partners, university and community historians, local librarians and archivists, secondary and post-secondary educators, multimedia artists, and community activists. The results of their work included

 

• Digitized audio-recordings and accompanying transcripts from the New Jersey Southern Black Migration Oral History Project, a collection of oral histories from African Americans who settled in and around Trenton during the Great Migration, located at the New Jersey State Archives. 

• A compendium of health statistics culled from the annual reports of the New Jersey Board/Department of Health from 1877 to 2000.

• A digital repository of correspondences, newspaper articles, reports, pamphlets, photographs, and other materials related to the Carver Center and Shiloh Baptist Church, two institutions located in downtown Trenton with deep ties to the city’s African American community.

• Maps comparing disparate health outcomes for communities in Newark, Plainfield, and Jersey City.

 

On March 3, 2025, Truth & Repair was awarded a grant from the Foundation to implement our program. We are now in the process of developing projects for our Summer 2025 research cycle and convening an advisory board, so come back for updates!