What you probably didn’t learn in school is that New Jersey was once known as “the slave state of the North.” It was the last Northern state to ratify the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States. By 1830, New Jersey held 67% of the enslaved population living in the North, and the last 16 enslaved people in Bergen County were not freed until 1866—three years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Today, Bertrand F. Gibbs Elementary School in New Milford, Bergen County, sits atop a historic African American burial ground, a sobering reminder of this often-overlooked history.