The Lower East Side was home to Eastern European Jewish, Italian, and Greek immigrants, and served as a critical transition point for Black families during the First Wave of the Great Migration.

Victoria Earle Matthews and Maritcha Remond Lyons founded The White Rose Mission in New York City on February 11, 1897. The Mission was called The White Rose Home for Colored Working Girls and The White Rose Industrial Association. Its mission was to provide “refuge, shelter, and food” to Black women entering New York City from the Jim Crow states.

In 1834, fugitives hiding in wagons could take a route across the Meadowlands from Newark to Manhattan. By taking the Belleville Turnpike to Belleville, then crossing the Passaic River Bridge, a corduroy road causeway led to the Hackensack drawbridge and then into Paulus Hook (modern Jersey City). Paulus Hook had the world’s first steam ferry from Paulus Hook to the Mesier Docks on Cortland Street in Manhattan in 1812.

Because King’s Highway connected South Jersey directly to the northern parts of the state, it frequently brought freedom seekers into contact with Quaker abolitionist networks. Because New Jersey sat between Philadelphia and New York City and was close to the slave states of Delaware and Maryland, many Underground Railroad routes passed through the state.