Black History Month @ the View
Clearview High School Celebrates Black History Month
Members of our Student Coalition prepared the exhibit above to honor contributions in music made by African American entertainers and composers in United States history. Students can use their cell phones to access the QR Codes to learn about each individual in the display.
Here are examples of what's on display throughout the halls of Clearview in honor of Black History Month.
Below are some examples of our teachers' lessons to honor and celebrate Black History Month within their classes.
Mr. Porter talks about James Baldwin with his AP Students:
James Baldwin was an American essayist, novelist, and playwright whose eloquence and passion on the subject of race in America made him an important voice, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the United States and, later, through much of western Europe.
Ms. Satterfield's students spotlight the Harlem Renaissance:
Ms. Satterfield's class completed a unit on Harlem Renaissance poetry. Her students spotlighted various poets and authors of color including but not limited to Maya Angelou.
The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a Black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art.
Mrs. Andruszka's classes analyzed music and poetry of social issues that African Americans brought to light:
The First Separate Battalion, New Jersey State Militia
In 1930 there were no African–Americans in the New Jersey National Guard, and the segregated U. S. Army did not have plans to authorize a black unit in the state. Prominent New Jersey African-American citizens, most notably William D. Nabors of Orange, petitioned their state legislators to create a state funded organization. In response, Assemblyman Frank S. Hargraves introduced a bill, and on April 16, 1930, both houses of the New Jersey legislature passed Chapter 149, Laws of 1930, authorizing the “organization and equipment of a battalion of Negro infantry” at state expense. On July 14, 1931, committees were established to organize the first companies of what came to be called the First Separate Battalion, New Jersey State Militia. Companies were raised in Newark, Atlantic City and Camden.[i]
Companies A and B were at Sea Girt for their annual field training on September 8, 1934, when the Morro Castle, a cruise ship returning to New York from Havana, caught fire offshore. As its control systems burned, the ship anchored two miles off Sea Girt in turbulent seas and desperate passengers and crew members tried to launch lifeboats and jumped overboard in efforts to save themselves from the flames. The disaster would prove to be the finest hour for many New Jersey shore residents, including Governor Moore, who was ending the season at his official summer residence in the National Guard camp. The governor boarded a Guard plane in the observer seat and flew out over the burning ship, dropping flares and smoke bombs and waving flags to guide rescue boats to survivors.[ii]
Before he soared aloft over the surf, Moore ordered the black militia to the beach to bolster local rescue efforts. The men of Companies A and B braved almost hurricane conditions, rescuing survivors and recovering bodies drifting to shore. Some of the officers, morticians in civilian life, established an improvised morgue in the National Guard camp, which soon held seventy-eight bodies.[iii]
Anxious relatives who appeared at Sea Girt to identify the dead were guided by the black soldiers, with nurses on hand for support. A reporter noted that when one man was overcome by grief on finding his younger brother among the dead “a Negro militiaman…left his post to comfort him, and to guide him to a secluded place where he might have an undisturbed rendezvous with grief.” The men of Companies A and B were subsequently cited by Governor Moore and the State Legislature for their “courage, courtesy, and sympathetic handling of a very gruesome duty” and the city commissioners of Atlantic City presented Company B with a bronze plaque “in recognition of its heroic and devoted services to the community, state and nation.”[iv]
The battalion also distinguished itself in other venues, winning numerous athletic and marksmanship trophies. Company A boasted the largest percentage of men to qualify in rifle marksmanship in the state, won the Enoch L. (“Nucky”) Johnson Trophy for shooting expertise six years out of nine, and took the battalion’s Combat Trophy in 1932 and 1933. In the National Guard 1940 “small bore” (.22 rim fire caliber) rifle match of 1940, six out of the highest ten scores were posted by men from Company C.[v]
In 1936 The Adjutant General persuaded the New Jersey state senate to re-designate the battalion as an adjunct unit of the New Jersey National Guard, and in May 1937 the “First Separate Battalion, New Jersey State Militia,” was renamed the “First Battalion, New Jersey Guard.” Although the battalion’s “acting commander and instructor” was always a white officer, Major Samuel Brown in 1940, all company officers were African-Americans, including former Essex Troop saddler Robert D. Trott, now a captain commanding Company A.[vi]
[i] Luzky, “History, 1st Battalion”
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] New York Times, September 10, 1934.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Luzky, “History, 1st Battalion ;” Historical and Pictorial Review.