THE STORY IS OFTEN TOLD of how racist Southern legislatures built democracies that excluded Black people and other people of color and women. What is less well known is that this history of exclusion also took root in the North, including very deeply in New Jersey. Indeed, New Jersey was the first Northern state to restrict the vote to white men. It opposed the Emancipation Proclamation[iv] and was the last Northern state to abolish slavery. And following the Civil War, New Jersey refused to ratify the Reconstruction Amendments.Read More…