The Civil Rights Hero That New Jersey Forgets

In a keynote speech at an event commemorating the history of the American Civil Rights Movement, Gloucester County NAACP President Loretta Winters called for the New Jersey Hall of Fame to recognize, induct, and celebrate the late local Civil Rights leader Irene Hill-Smith. In 2011, the County NAACP nominated Hill-Smith for that honor but the submission went down in defeat. The organization is now preparing to again nominate Hill-Smith, who was a life-long Gloucester County resident as well as a local and national civil rights figure.

“Irene Hill-Smith was a legendary community leader and civil rights icon on the local, state and national scene and we need to make sure that we continue to honor her memory and the the legacy of her work,” said Winters, who now holds the same NAACP position that Hill-Smith held from 1957 to 1963. “Every child should know what she did and why it matters. A hundred years from now, no one should be asking ‘Who was Irene Hill-Smith?’.”

Winter’s comments were part of presentations given by three New Jersey experts in African American history in a program focused on key events of the U.S. civil rights struggle. The evening of history and music at the Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Mullica Hill was titled “Rising Up Against Racism: Looking Back at 1964’s Summer of Decision.” It was co-sponsored by Governor Phil Murphy’s New Jersey Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Commission and the Gloucester County Historical Society. The event featured Winters along with Dr. Lourin Plant of Rowan University, Dr. James Elton Johnson, an independent scholar, and four musicians from Rowan’s Concert Choir: Dr. Alexander Timofeev, Andrew Moorer, Amber Miller, and Moses Possible.

“Everyone Needs a Hero”

The New Jersey Hall of Fame, whose slogan is “Everyone Needs a Hero,” was established in 2005 by the New Jersey State Legislature to “celebrate New Jersey’s rich history and the achievements of its citizens.” Its museum in East Rutherford is designed to showcase the “the accomplishments of individuals who have made a significant impact both locally and globally.” New Hall of Fame inductees are selected by a mixture of public votes cast online and the secret in-house votes of the Hall of Fame Commissioners.

“Irene Hill-Smith played a major role in one of the most historic, society-altering periods of our time,” said Winters. “She was an extraordinary person who is clearly one of the state’s most remarkable residents. She belongs in the New Jersey Hall of Fame and it’s up to us — the people in this room and beyond — to make sure she gets there.”

Irene Hill-Smith’s Story

The only girl in a family of eight children, Hill-Smith was born in Mullica Hill in 1925, and educated in the segregated one-room High Street school before going on to Glassboro High School, and then Virginia State University, a historical Black College/University (HBCU) outside of Petersburg, Virginia. As a young woman in 1957 she became involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and by 1963 — as Civil Rights unrest was rising across the country — she became the President of the Gloucester County NAACP.

Over three decades she held state and national NAACP positions including President of the New Jersey State Conference of the NAACP, a member of the National Board of the NAACP, National Vice President of the National NAACP, and member of the board of the NAACP Board’s National Housing Corporation. Those decades of service coincided with the most socially disruptive and violent period of political and street struggles of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement — and she was a major player as a national Civil Rights activist in the middle of all that.

She worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., collaborating on various civil rights campaigns and strategies. She was a participant in the White House Conference on Civil Rights, and was called by President Lyndon B. Johnson to help craft the Landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act. She chaired the New Jersey Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

A life-long resident of Gloucester County Hill-Smith was a local firebrand of civil rights protests, leading street protests and being jailed in Paulsboro and Woodbury, with the Woodbury incident resulting in a hip injury that caused her to limp for the rest of her life.

Threatened, Beaten, Jailed

In an era of extreme racial tension, Hill-Smith had crosses burned on her lawn, was threatened, beaten, and railed against. She worked to stop Klu Lux Klan meetings in Bridgeton and Cape May, and became essentially an undercover investigative reporter pretending to be a migrant worker as she gathered data on migrant worker mistreatment in Cumberland County. She was appointed to the New Jersey Martin Luther King Commission by Governor Richard J. Hughes, who had become her close confidant, and in 2006, won the first-ever Rosa Parks Award from the Burlington-Camden Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi African American fraternity for her long years of civil rights work.

In the 1990s she became a close associate of Rev. Leon Sullivan, a member of the board of General Motors, prominent civil rights figure in Philadlephia’s African American community who founded the Opportunities Industrialization Centers (OIC) that focused on fostering economic empowerment and opportunities for African Americans. He also played a crucial role in the fight against apartheid in South Africa and involved Hill-Smith in that effort and its aftermath in a number of trips to the annual African-American American Summits and international trade shows in South African and various other African countries. In this period, her role became that of an international advocate for civil rights.

One of the songs featured in the Mount Calvary Baptist Church event was Lift Every Voice to Sing, the official anthem of the NAACP and a traditional vocal of hope and resilience drawing its inspiration from the biblical story of the Exodus, symbolizing the journey from slavery to freedom.