Bordentown School Restoration Underway w/ Electrical Contractor John WHite

Primary Sources, Black History

Bordentown School -volunteers needed - restoration underway with volunteer electrical contractor John White! A museum on the once thriving black school's cam[us kknown as The Tuskegee of The North is John's Mission. The Bordentown school, was originally established in 1886 by Rev. W. A. Rice, a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, as a private institution under the name of New Brunswick Technical School. It was later called "The Ironsides Normal School." in honor of Commodore Stewart the benefactor of t Bordentown's Campus, his 350 acre estate . Reverend Walter A.S. Rice of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in New Brunswick founded the Bordentown School in 1876 as New Brunswick Technical Institute a privately supported educational entity. Reverend Rice’s mission was to educate African American students of both sexes and train them “in such industries as shall enable them to become self-supporting”. The school was founded just five years after the famous Tuskegee Institute in Alabama was formed. It was known as the Tuskegee of The North" The school relocated to Bordentown City in 1886, where it was shrewdly renamed and incorporated as the New Jersey Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth. The name change from Technical Institute to Manual Training was an insult to the founders and it was the beginning of the propaganda campaign against black educational institutions, as a continuation of slave labor. The donor of the property, Commander Stewart, the oldest enlistee in the Civil War and an Irish activist demanded in his will that his property be used for training purposes- the State of New Jersey believes they meet the requirements, insofar as they offer training courses to their detainees.