Flagship

“What if a monument is not a stationary object, but art that travels?”

Adorned with legacy flags that stakeholders created at community dialogues, Oni’s Flagship turns a repurposed school bus into a mobile museum, powered by the histories, remembrances, and connections to local places in the region that community members shared in discussions about labor, migration, and immigration.

From the outset, Oni had a unique challenge when tackling, at a conceptual level, what place-based commemoration meant to residents of South Jersey. Oyster farming and processing on the Delaware Bay, the growing and freezing of vegetables at Seabrook Farms, and glassmaking in Millville, took place in mainly rural areas removed from large population centers with central public spaces. Atlantic City, a hub for New Jersey’s shore-based tourism and service economy, is isolated from other parts of South Jersey.

Oni discovered that in the complex, intertwining histories of South Jersey, the themes of travel and transportation surfaced time and again. With this in mind, he “started just thinking about the modes of transportation across South Jersey as both a challenge, and also a sort of a shared experience amongst all the residents, both presently and historically.”

From there came the Sailbus.

Oni with the acquired school bus.

Flagship references the experiences of maritime laborers that seeded and harvested oysters on the Delaware Bay, working on the iconic schooners used in the trade. The installation also invokes the buses and trucks that transported thousands of migrant farmworkers to the region every spring and summer, and, on a daily basis, to farflung fields where they would do that day’s picking. Flagship brings whimsy and play to South Jersey’s immigrant and migrant communities, a necessary reclaiming of joy in the midst of sometimes difficult regional histories and experiences.

Design rendering of Flagship on a boardwalk.

From conversations about travel and vessels, Oni discovered that community stakeholders consider flags to be important symbols of cultural identity and preservation. Flagship displays flags that Oni created with community members at events throughout the region, and express project stakeholders’ deep sense of place. Titled “legacy flags,” these symbols capture the cultural traditions, lessons, and interpretations of the past that stakeholders want to pass on.

Flagship, in addition to referencing the vessels and vehicles at the front of a migratory fleet, also evokes, as Oni explains, “a flagship of people themselves, meaning the first to come of future generations.

”At Flagship’s foundation is the Sailbus, a former school bus that Oni has converted, through his collaboration with EVO Upfitting, into a work of public art and history capable of traveling across South Jersey and the state. Sailbus features an inflatable mast mechanism and sail that can be raised and flown from the deck (roof) of the bus. Designed by Oni and custom made by Pneuhaus, the sail beckons visitors to the installation.

When collaborating with community stakeholders to design their flags, Oni conducted interviews with stakeholders, where they were given the opportunity to elaborate on how the flags they were creating bear their legacies by describing the symbols they chose to include.. At the Sailbus, audio from these interviews greets visitors activated as they walk around the vehicle. Inside, longer interview segments are available to visitors as video installations mounted on seatbacks. (These videos can also be viewed as part of the Resources tab on this page.)

As Flagship travels to different sites, visitors can help decorate the Sailbus’s interior by adding their own historic images to maps. They’ll place archival images of South Jersey’s histories of migration and labor onto regional maps that line the bus’s ceiling, adding their own layer to the story.

Visitors are invited to share responses into what insights they believe these photographs offer into the state’s past, and what forms of commemoration might emerge from engagement with these histories. When Flagship moves on, ceiling displays will be photographed and featured on the NJMML website, creating a living, interactive archive of the process.

CONCEPT & DESIGN

Flag/Ship was the theme of community design series of engagement, as flags are:
a. Representative of the “first to come”
b. A form of identity and representation from different countries or states
c. Markers on ships and boats, with these communities all tied to migration and water

Preliminary design rendering of Flagship from the side and the front, with depictions of legacy flags in the windows.

ELEMENT LIST

1. Reflective color bus hull to reflect like glass, the people and surroundings sites.
2. Legacy Flags created by South Jersey residents and descendent communities. Window mounted. Sail when moving bus, and deployed when stationary.
3. Motion sensor speakers activate when people navigate around the bus and hear a wave of stories.
4. Sail deployed when bus stationary and activated at different events; rail rigging.
5. White roof to allow cool top for boarding deck. Hatch to board deck.6. Inflatable mast that collapses when the bus is in motion.

Preliminary design rendering of Flagship with details about the interior.

Preliminary design rendering of Flagship from the side and the front, with depictions of legacy flags in the windows.

Header photo courtesy of Mike Seda.

NJMML and its regional partners organized a series of community dialogues across the state in the spring and summer of 2025, including six across South Jersey. Dialogue facilitators, connected to the ancestor and immigrant communities whose histories were being explored, guided stakeholders in discussions about migration and labor in the region.

Bridgeton, May 2025.

Bridgeton, May 2025.

Seabrook, June 2025.

Atlantic City, August 2025.

Atlantic City, August 2025.

Atlantic City, August 2025.

Artwork made by participants during community dialogues in South Jersey; collected and archived by NJMML.

Water historically connected communities in South Jersey, serving as routes for travel and exchange. Migrants worked on the water. Water, and the ocean in Atlantic City and other shore places, attracted people for vacation and recreation, and encouraged the migration of workers to serve them.

Activities and conversations at the public dialogues highlight the diverse migration stories —from the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to Eastern European and Japanese communities that helped shape Seabrook as a “Global Village.”

Oni notes that what struck him the most “were so many hidden legacies and things that people just don't know about South Jersey in particular.” One example, of an intimate history hidden from sight, is the community members who came to Seabrook as children and who, at the dialogues, reminisced about the school as one of the few places where people felt equal because as one community participant stated, “we didn’t know we were different.” Even if the adults who labored at Seabrook Farms had more complicated experiences, Oni observes, memory also allows for more empowering alternatives.

Photos are from a public event unveiling the monument design in Atlantic City in March 2026. Captured by Immanuel Oni, Michael Cagno and Mike Seda.

Video Credit: Mike Seda, from the public event in Atlantic City in March 2026; Editing: Arlene Fernández.

Oni led a series of three public events in the winter and spring of 2025/2026 in South Jersey, during which he brainstormed with community stakeholders and received feedback on concept proposals. Silos were identified as a consistent regional challenge— specifically, limited coordination among organizations doing overlapping work, issues with transportation access, youth development, environmental concerns, and the need for stronger cultural exchange across towns.

Through this process, stakeholders envisioned a mobile monument representing their histories, identities, and legacies that could travel through main streets, boardwalks, festivals, parades, schools, and cultural celebrations, serving as both an educational tool and a site for celebration. The monument, Oni shares, also spotlights local industries, and their legacies shaping migration patterns and landscape: Bivalve’s oyster heritage, Atlantic City’s tourism and shore culture, and Millville and Wheaton Arts’ connections to the Maurice River and glassmaking.

Overall, participants expressed strong enthusiasm for a joyful, educational monument that preserves diverse migration stories, fosters connection across South Jersey, and remains adaptable, safe, and stewarded by the community over time.

Bivalde

Bivalde

Seabrook

Seabrook

Millville

Atlantic City

Roebling

Participants in the events also created engagement maps.

NJMML is excited to host a series of events and activities related to the unveiling of the monuments this summer and fall, and programs that will animate these installations even further!

Please see below for information about upcoming community engagement opportunities and the ribbon-cutting event for Flagship on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.

Atlantic City, NJ

Flagship: Launch and Ribbon Cutting

August 1, 2026

11:00

to 15:00

Seabrook, NJ

Flagship: Remembering Seabrook Farms

September 18, 2026

17:00

to 20:00

Port Norris, NJ

Flagship: Second Friday Celebration at Bayshore Center at Bivalve

October 9, 2026

through October 10

In addition to the signature events listed above, a full schedule of where the Flagship will be making calls at port can be found below. New stops to be added in the future, so please check back here.
August 2 – September 18, Noyes Art Garage, Atlantic City
September 19 – 48 Blocks Festival, Atlantic City
September 23 – October 9, WheatonArts Center, Millville, NJ
- October 3-4 - NJMML project docents on site!
October 11 – 17, New Brunswick
- October 15-16 - Oni artist talks at NJMML conference

LEGACY FLAGS

In the process of creating the legacy flags that fly from the Sailbus, Oni spent time with project stakeholders learning about the stories, symbols, and images they chose to include. In the introductory video below, Oni addresses his approach to these collaborations, and why he wanted to feature legacy flags as part of the Sailbus.

IN THE ARCHIVES

Historical Photos of Labor and Migration in South Jersey

When thinking about labor, immigration, and migration in South Jersey, what does it mean to stare into the past?

As part of Flagship’s travel across the region, NJMML and Oni have prepared a photographic display that encourages visitors to the monument to engage with the above question. The sites that NJMML focused on in South Jersey possess layered histories of migration and work, which have been documented in archival photographs. While the photographers behind these images had different agendas and perspectives they wanted to show, here they are linked by the service they perform to help us visualize, one way in which public memory is constructed, what the past might have been like.

In what ways do these scenes of labor and migration that these photographs depict seem like staring at a different world, time, and universe?

In what ways do these images raise concerns and questions, and provoke emotional responses, rooted in present-day relevance?

Atlantic City

1. John W. Mosley, “Chicken Bone Beach, Photograph with life guard Marshall Wood aka Beetle,” 1950s, Temple University Libraries, John W. Mosley Photograph Collection.Chicken Bone Beach was the segregated beach area in Atlantic City, off Missouri Avenue, that Black locals and tourists were compelled to use until the late-1950s. Segregation extended to the beach’s workforce, and the employment of Black lifeguards who were refused hire elsewhere.

2. Stan Pontiere, “The Chamber wonders how many shoobies are visiting Atlantic City,” Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, July 26, 1978, George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Collection.Tourism has long been tied to seasonal work rhythms in Atlantic City and other shore towns, with service industries a major employer. The term “shoobie,” referenced in this image title, refers to day trippers who would come to the South Jersey shore, and pack lunches in shoe boxes.

Bivalve / Shellpile

3. Arthur Rothstein, “Shucking Oysters,” October 1938, Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).Oysters were farmed and harvested from the Delaware Bay, but also shucked and processed on site, before being shipped to markets. Although there are now automated oyster shucking machines, historically this was work that involved skill and honed technique – or potential injury to the shucker.

4. Arthur Rothstein, “Men playing cards in restaurant, Shellpile, New Jersey,” October 1938, Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).How workers spent their leisure time was a major concern in communities that hosted migrant laborers. Local residents often cited drinking and other forms of “vice” as problems that migrants brought with them, whether this was accurate or not. In this photograph, the cafe’s proprietor offers a strict warning about acceptable language.

Millville

5. Lewis Hine, “Sign on Company store, Wheaton Glass Works,” November 1909, National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
6. Hine, “Day scene. Wheaton Glass Works, Millville, N.J.,” November 1909, National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Millville, New Jersey was once famous for its glassmaking industries. For Lewis Hine, the social reformer, the use of child labor in the glass factories was an exploitative practice. In particular, he was concerned with the so-called “carrying in” boys who used asbestos shovels to transport glass objects to the annealing oven so that they could be fired a final time, and who often worked in crowded and tight spaces with “mold-holding” boys to maintain an object’s shape.

As the poet Carl Sandburg put it in 1904, in his poem Millville, “Down in southern New Jersey, they make glass. By day and by night, the fires burn on in Millville and bid the sand let in the light.” Sandburg described how,“

The ‘carryin’-in’ boys work nine and ten hours and get two dollars and a half and three dollars a week. Passing back and forth in the pale, weird light, these creatures are imps in both the modern and the old-time sense of the word. They are grimy, wiry, scrawny, stunted specimens, and in cuss-words and salacious talk, they know all that grown men know. In the use of the ever surviving, if not ever fitting, superlative, ‘damndest,’ they are past masters all.”

Roebling

7. 1941 Strike in Roebling. Courtesy of the Roebling Museum. In Roebling, NJ, John A. Roebling’s Sons Company established a company town and industrial works that manufactured the cables and other steel materials necessary for building bridges around the United States and the world. In 1941, when workers struck, resisting the relentless pace of work at the factory that assembly lines demanded was a major point of contention, as signs on the picket line calling for slowdowns reveal.

Seabrook

8. John Collier Jr., “Jewish family who joined the migrants in harvesting the bean crop,” June 1942, Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).Seabrook Farms and other South Jersey growers relied on seasonal and day laborers from cities such as Philadelphia and Camden to pick crops when they ripened, on short notice. Farmworkers labored for piece rates and were paid based on how much they could pick in weight. Italians featured prominently in these seasonal labor migrations but so did other immigrant, like the Jewish immigrant family pictured here.

9. Collier Jr., “Truckload of Florida Migrants, Bridgeton, New Jersey. FSA (Farm Security Administration) agricultural workers' camp,” June 1942, Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).
10. Collier Jr., “The camp is governed by a council elected by the residents themselves,” June 1942, Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).In May 1942, the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a federal agency created during the New Deal, opened a migrant farmworkers’ camp on Big Oak Road, on property owned by Seabrook Farms. The camp accommodated a thousand residents who, following a seasonal schedule, moved up and down the Atlantic seaboard, working on different farms. Migrant farmworkers often travelled in buses, trucks, and other forms of transport that labor brokers arranged, like the vehicle pictured here, at a cost. Large growers like Seabrook Farms accepted the FSA camps, and the government intervention they represented, because they helped ensure that agricultural labor would be reliably available. Workers benefited from living conditions that tended to be better than in private camps run by employers. The FSA camp had well-maintained privies and shower facilities with hot water, and residents were charged only ten cents a week in rent - on top of having to contribute two hours of labor a week to the camp’s maintenance. FSA camps provided recreation, social services, and self-governance through camp councils.

11. “Changing Shifts after Ten Hours of Work,” Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center / New Jersey Digital Highway
12. “Watching Peas Being Filled into Lug Boxes at a Viner Station,” Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center / New Jersey Digital HighwaySeabrook Farms’ recruitment of Japanese American workers, who in late 1943 became eligible for release and resettlement from incarceration camps, came amid the company’s massive expansion during the Second World War, when price controls and rationing proved a boon to the frozen foods industry. By the autumn of 1946, the Nikkei population at Seabrook Farms - which included Japanese Americans as well as Japanese Peruvians paroled to the company after being interned in the United States - stood at 2,297 persons.In a February 1944 interview with the Bridgeton Evening News, shortly after Seabrook Farms had begun employing fifteen Japanese American men on a trial basis, Seabrook executives apologized for the fact that the company “had drawn heavily on the stream of Negro workers who come north from Florida each year” due to labor shortages, and for having to employ workers of a certain “type.” In the postwar period, Seabrook Farms would implement a racial division of labor in which Black workers were largely relegated to farm jobs and field work, with Japanese and white workers receiving unionized, factory positions. The work itself was usually repetitive, industrialized work, regardless of where it occurred.

NJMML is excited to host a series of events and activities related to the unveiling of the monuments this summer and fall, and programs that will animate these installations even further!

LEGACY FLAGS

IN THE ARCHIVES

Historical Photos of Labor and Migration in South Jersey

All Monuments

About NJMML

Regions being explored for NJMML

North

Central

South

Events

Monuments

Projects

Jury

Process

Resources

About

Team

North

Central

South

NJMML is supported by the MELLON FOUNDATION and RUTGERS UNIVERSITY