Let’s Talk About Race (LTAR) is a series of programs that the Red Bank Public Library began over 5 years ago, in an effort to expand dialogue and understanding between people of various races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds that make up the Red Bank area community. In 2018, this program won the NJ State Library's Multicultural Award. Our Let's Talk About Race program has made the Library a leader in diversity education and positioned us in the forefront of this critical conversation.

Tinton Falls resident Connie Goddard, Ph.D., will present a program based on research for her book about manual training and industrial education programs, which flourished during the Progressive Era (1890=1920). One of the most distinctive was the Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth, a state-supported boarding school located in Bordentown. Such programs for Black students have long been a controversial subject, but they are seldom discussed in the context of similar programs for white students. Goddard’s study analyses the accomplishments of the Bordentown school and compares it to similar schools in New Jersey and elsewhere; further she considers Red Bank’s famed writer T. Thomas Fortune’s efforts to promote the Bordentown school.

Following a brief presentation on the history and contemporary implications of these schools, Goddard will actively seek comments about them from participants. Raised in Chicago with roots in the Dakotas, she is a widely published scholar and journalist; this project grew out of her 2005 dissertation at the University of Illinois in Chicago and her family’s experiences with another distinctive school manual training school in North Dakota.  

Please register using the form below the Zoom link will be sent to you in advance of the program. You must register by 5 pm on January 27th, 2021.