Towards America's Promise of Equality

On Memorial Day, we commemorate the sacrifice of our veterans and their families. This Memorial Day, as New Jersey marks the 250th anniversary of American independence, we are called to honor not only the sacrifice of Black veterans — but the debt this state still owes them.

Black New Jerseyans fought in every conflict from the Revolutionary War to the present. They served under Washington's Continental Army on the very ground Somerset County now calls the Crossroads of the American Revolution.

By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men (10% of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war. Black women, who could not formally join the Army, served as nurses, spies, and scouts, the most famous scout being Harriet Tubman. [More information is available at archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war]

More than 350,000 African Americans served during World War I, and 1.2 million served in World War II. They stormed the beaches and jungles. They came home decorated. And then they were turned away.

The GI Bill — the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 — was the most powerful wealth-building law in American history. For white veterans, it created the suburban middle class: low-cost mortgages, college tuition, business loans. For Black veterans in New Jersey and across the nation, banks refused their applications. Universities denied their admissions. The VA deferred to local segregation. The benefit was earned in uniform. It was refused at the front door.

The consequences are not ancient history. The $643,000 racial wealth gap documented in New Jersey today is, in substantial part, the compounded return on a benefit that was earned and withheld — passed down not as equity and education, but as its absence. The veterans kept their end of the covenant. The state did not keep its end.

In 2026 — the year New Jersey has committed to centering “the intertwined histories of freedom and the African American experience” — we have the opportunity and the obligation to act. The New Jersey Reparations Task Force Bill, A1665/S2838, currently before the legislature, would create a commission to study this history, document its ongoing consequences, and recommend evidence-based repair. It does not write a check. It opens the ledger — the one this state helped fill and has never agreed to examine.

As residents of Basking Ridge, we call on our neighbors, our legislators, and our fellow New Jerseyans to support A1665/S2838. Not as an act of politics. As an act of honor. Because honoring soldiers means honoring the full covenant of their service — not only in ceremony, but in legislation.