South Jersey is the most rural part of New Jersey, and the population is dispersed across multiple areas that each have different centers and regional orientations. Through partnerships with cultural and arts organizations in Atlantic City, Seabrook, Bivalve, and Millville, the project in South Jersey seeks to help strengthen connections and relationships across different communities in the region.
We will be organizing dialogues, events, and programming that explore the region’s long history of seasonal migration, involving Black, Italian, and Caribbean workers, for jobs in agriculture, oystering, and service industries catering to tourism on the Shore, and how these communities were established as more permanent over time – as has been the case with more recent immigrants to South Jersey as well.