Black New Jersey brings to life generations of courageous men and women who fought for freedom during slavery days and later battled racial discrimination. Extensively researched, it shines a light on New Jersey's unique African American history and reveals how the state's black citizens helped to shape the nation.

A history of blacks in New Jersey from the Colonial Period through the 1980s. Originally published by New Jersey Historical Commission in 1989 and published on the Web by the New Jersey State Library.

This project became available online in 1995 as "The Cemetery." The site was an attempt to provide access to my earliest artworks that addressed history, memory, and memorial within the African American community. In the late 1990's the web project evolved to include a wider range of works and the project title became "Small Towns, Black Lives." To coincide with a large survey exhibition and the publication of the book version of the project, I created the final version of the web project in 2002.

Focusing on the development of a single African American community in eastern New Jersey, Hodges examines the experience of slavery and freedom in the rural north. This unique social history addresses many long held assumptions about the experience of slavery and emancipation outside the south. For example, by tracing the process by which whites maintained "a durable architecture of oppression" and a rigid racial hierarchy, it challenges the notions that slavery was milder and that racial boundaries were more permeable in the north. Monmouth County, New Jersey, because of its rich African American heritage and equally well-preserved historical record, provides an outstanding opportunity to study the rural life of an entire community over the course of two centuries. Hodges weaves an intricate pattern of life and death, work and worship, from the earliest settlement to the end of the Civil War.