The Great Migration and the Making of Black Englewood

Between the early twentieth century and World War II, Englewood, New Jersey was transformed by the Great Migration, the mass movement of African Americans out of the South and into northern communities. Although historians often focus on destinations such as Harlem, Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, smaller suburban cities like Englewood became equally important sites of Black migration, institution building, and political transformation.

A significant portion of Englewood’s Black population traced its roots to South Carolina, particularly Marlboro County and the town of Bennettsville. These migration patterns developed through networks of family, church affiliation, labor recruitment, and personal relationships that connected southern Black communities directly to Bergen County. By the 1920s and 1930s, Englewood and Bennettsville existed as linked communities within a larger migration corridor stretching from the rural South to the urban North.

Leaving the South

African Americans left South Carolina and the broader South for many reasons. Jim Crow segregation denied Black southerners equal political rights, educational opportunity, economic mobility, and physical security. Sharecropping, racial violence, debt peonage, and chronic underinvestment in Black communities created conditions that pushed thousands northward.

At the same time, northern communities offered opportunities unavailable in much of the South. Expanding suburbs such as Englewood required domestic workers, chauffeurs, laborers, gardeners, cooks, and service employees to support affluent white households. Rail connections and established family networks made migration increasingly accessible.

Some of the earliest migration links developed when wealthy Englewood families brought Black domestic workers north from South Carolina during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Those workers communicated opportunities back home, encouraging relatives, neighbors, and church members to migrate as well. Over time, these chain migrations dramatically expanded Englewood’s Black population and gave the city a distinctly southern Black character rooted in communities such as Bennettsville.

For many migrants, Englewood represented more than economic opportunity. It offered access to voting rights, public education, civic participation, and the possibility of building independent Black institutions beyond the constraints of southern racial control.

The Creation of “Texas”

The promise of the North, however, quickly collided with the realities of segregation and racial inequality.

As Black migration increased, African Americans became concentrated in a neighborhood east of the railroad tracks and north of Palisade Avenue, commonly referred to as “Texas.” The neighborhood emerged as one of the clearest examples of de facto segregation in Bergen County during the early twentieth century.

White political leaders, real estate interests, and local newspapers frequently portrayed Texas as a social problem rather than as the product of discriminatory housing systems. African Americans were largely excluded from many residential sections of the city while overcrowded housing conditions intensified within the Fourth Ward. Substandard infrastructure, deteriorating housing stock, unequal municipal investment, and discriminatory real estate practices reinforced segregation.

Urban renewal and demolition campaigns disproportionately targeted Black neighborhoods without addressing the structural inequities that had created those conditions in the first place. Restrictive housing patterns ensured that Black residents remained concentrated within limited geographic areas even as Englewood promoted itself as an affluent and progressive suburban community.

Texas became both a symbol of racial exclusion and a center of Black community life. Within its boundaries, migrants built churches, social networks, businesses, political organizations, and mutual aid systems that helped families navigate the uncertainties of northern urban life.

South Carolina Connections

The migration of African Americans into Englewood followed highly organized social and familial patterns. Bennettsville, South Carolina emerged as one of the strongest points of connection to Englewood, producing a migration stream that endured for decades.

Migrants rarely arrived in isolation. Families settled near relatives, attended familiar churches, and entered employment networks already established by earlier arrivals. Southern traditions, religious practices, kinship structures, and community ties were carried north and recreated in Bergen County.

By the 1920s and 1930s, local officials openly acknowledged the strong relationship between Englewood and Black communities in South Carolina. These migration networks became so extensive that white residents increasingly viewed Black southern migration as a political and demographic force capable of reshaping the city itself.

The Great Depression intensified these tensions. As unemployment rose, Black migrants were increasingly scapegoated for economic hardship and public relief expenditures. Public debates emerged over the continued arrival of families from South Carolina, particularly from Bennettsville. Beneath these debates lay deeper white anxieties about demographic change, political power, labor competition, and access to municipal resources.

At the same time, migration continued because conditions in the South remained oppressive and because family and community networks in Englewood provided migrants with a degree of support and opportunity unavailable elsewhere.

William Butler and Black Political Awakening

By the 1930s, Englewood’s Black population had developed an increasingly organized and assertive political consciousness.

For decades, most African American voters had remained loyal to the Republican Party because of its historical association with Abraham Lincoln and emancipation. However, many Black residents began openly questioning whether either political party genuinely represented their interests. African Americans increasingly demanded access to patronage jobs, municipal appointments, public employment, housing protections, and political influence.

One of the most prominent voices in this political awakening was William Butler, a leading Black political figure and president of the Colored Democratic Club of Englewood. Butler openly challenged both Republican and Democratic leaders for exploiting Black voters while failing to provide meaningful economic or political advancement.

His criticisms reflected a broader national transformation occurring within Black America during the Depression era. Across the country, African Americans increasingly shifted away from automatic party loyalty and toward a more militant demand for concrete political results.

In Englewood, this political awakening emerged directly from the realities of segregation, unequal employment opportunities, inadequate housing, and the persistent marginalization of Black residents within city government. Black political leaders argued that African Americans were essential to local elections yet remained excluded from the benefits of political power.

This growing activism laid the groundwork for the more organized civil rights struggles that would emerge in later decades.

Building Institutions and Community

Despite discrimination and segregation, African Americans in Englewood built a vibrant and highly organized community infrastructure.

Churches became the central institutional foundation of Black Englewood. Congregations such as Bethany Presbyterian Church served not only religious functions, but also political, educational, and social ones. Churches hosted civic meetings, educational lectures, veterans organizations, social welfare programs, and political gatherings that helped stabilize migrant families adjusting to northern life.

Black women played especially important leadership roles in this institutional development. Women organized voter associations, social service federations, civic improvement campaigns, educational programs, and child welfare initiatives. Following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, Black women rapidly mobilized to expand political participation and voter education within the city.

Their activism reflected the broader tradition of Black clubwomen across the United States who viewed education, civic engagement, mutual aid, and racial uplift as essential tools of community advancement.

At the same time, African Americans in Englewood developed recreational and cultural institutions that fostered community pride and cohesion. Black baseball teams competed throughout Bergen County during the era of segregated athletics, while social clubs and community forums created spaces for public life outside the constraints of white-controlled institutions.

Black veterans returning from World War I organized their own American Legion post, asserting both citizenship and racial dignity at a moment when Black servicemen across the country faced renewed discrimination despite their military service.

Together, these institutions created a durable foundation for Black life in Englewood and helped migrants recreate the community structures disrupted by migration from the South.

A Northern City Built on Southern Roots

The history of Black Englewood during the Great Migration demonstrates that suburban northern communities were central—not peripheral—to African American history.

Migrants from South Carolina and the broader South did not simply relocate to Englewood; they reshaped the city’s political culture, civic institutions, labor force, and social landscape. They transformed a northern suburb into a community deeply influenced by southern Black traditions, institutions, and networks.

At the same time, the segregation and discrimination they encountered revealed that the North was never free from racism. Although northern segregation operated differently from Jim Crow South Carolina, it nevertheless shaped where African Americans could live, work, and exercise political power.

Out of these conditions emerged a resilient and organized Black community whose institutions and activism laid the foundation for later struggles for educational equality, school desegregation, and civil rights in Englewood during the mid-twentieth century.

The Great Migration did not simply bring African Americans to Englewood. It created modern Black Englewood.