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Small Towns, Black Lives captures 13 years of discovery through the lens of photographer Wendel A. White. Through a personal contact, White became fascinated with the history of several small towns in southern New Jersey. White began his journey in the summer of 1989 in Whitesboro, New Jersey, a town founded by black entrepreneurs in the 19th century. Many of the longtime residents the photographer met were the descendents of families who had moved to Whitesboro to escape the race riots, unemployment, and oppression of post-Reconstruction North Carolina.

As White began to make more personal contacts in these historic African American communities, he began to expand his focus from portraits of residents to include historic sites. One of these sites, Port Republic cemetery, contains graves of Civil War veterans of the U.S. Colored Troops. The “rediscovery” of this site led White to do genealogical and archival research in order to find both inspiration and subject matter for his photography. He learned that the Port Republic site, for example, was once part of a black settlement in the area. Today, the settlement is gone, and the cemetery with its few headstones remains the only testament to its existence. Experiences such as this one compelled White to seek out more remnants of rural black settlements.

Through 40 black-and-white photographs, Small Towns, Black Lives, explores the fabric of small, historically African-American towns in southern New Jersey. White’s images take the audience on his journey of discovery of people, landscapes, and architecture connected to forgotten black communities.