It was called the “Tuskegee of the North,” although it was formally known as the New Jersey Industrial and Manual Training School for Colored Youth. Eventually, it was best known simply as the Bordentown School, a leader in black education from Reconstruction until the 1950s. Founded in 1876, the school was a boarding school for boys and girls. Bordentown could be mistaken for an elite private boarding school, but it was actually a co-educational public school operated by the State of New Jersey where students learned traditional academic subjects, along with essential skills in a variety of other industries.
