New Jersey's Timbuctoo: A Free Black Community Before the Civil War (PB) (2027)

Explore the remarkable story of a Free Black community in antebellum New Jersey.

In the decades before the Civil War, Timbuctoo, a small Black community in southern New Jersey, stood as a powerful example of self-determination. When abductors targeted a Timbuctoo neighbor, the community united and drove the perpetrators off so forcefully that they fled "as if 'Old Satan' was after them." In 1834, residents founded the African Union School, codifying Black leadership in its deed, and the service of Timbuctoo's men in the United States Colored Troops further underscores the community's role in the struggle for freedom.

Drawing on newly transcribed records and rare images, Guy Weston, who descends from an 1829 settler, brings to life a community whose legacy of land, liberty, and Black self-governance still resonates today.