According to the United States Census of 2020, the percentage of Black or African American people in New Brunswick is currently 15.3% of the total population. However, three decades before in 1990, the Black population in New Brunswick was 29.6%, the highest percentage of New Brunswick’s total population since 1850, according to David Listokin, Dorothea Berkhout, and James W. Hughes in New Brunswick, New Jersey: The Decline and Revitalization of Urban America (2016). Listokin et al. also conclude that the influx of non-Black residents is connected to the decrease in New Brunswick’s Black population from 1990 to 2010. Both the influx of new Latino individuals and families, and a continued decrease in the resident Black community, have led to a decrease in both the total population and representative percentage of New Brunswick's Black community. Indeed, according to the United States Census of 2020, the Hispanic or Latino population in New Brunswick is now 45.7% of the city’s total population. However, Latinos were only 19.3% in 1990, and 49.9% in 2010, after Mexican migration began to increase significantly.

From 1890 to the beginning of World War I in 1914, a large number of rural Hungarians arrived in the United States and settled in industrial American cities. Many of these migrants planned to make enough money to return to Hungary. Following this first wave of immigration, additional migrants came to New Brunswick hearing of job availability from their already-arrived families. Johnson & Johnson and the United Cigar Company factories were the main employers at this time. Additionally, the presence of many Hungarian institutions made New Brunswick even more attractive. Hungarian migrants composed two-thirds of Johnson & Johnson factory employees in the 1910s. Most of the Hungarians working at Johnson & Johnson from this time remained in the area for their lifetime.

Paul Leroy Robeson (1898 – 1976) excelled as a scholar, athlete, singer and actor. Robeson used his fame as a performer to champion independence, freedom, and equality for all people. He advocated for racial equality in the United States, and for marginalized and oppressed people around the world. Despite being internationally renowned for his performances on stage and screen in the 1930s and 1940s, racial prejudice and anti-Communist paranoia in America ended his career. As a result, his name and accomplishments have largely been forgotten in America.

According to the 2020 Census, New Brunswick, New Jersey has one of the highest numbers of Latino residents in the state. Latinos are at least 45.7% of the total population in New Brunswick (55,708 people), up from 9.6% in the 1960s, prior to the first wave of Latino immigration from Caribbean nations including Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. The main reason for the rapid growth of the Latino population is transnational migration. This term refers to the process of the settlement of migrants in a new country who maintain strong ties with their country of origin through their social, political, and cultural systems.

The first Latino population in New Brunswick arrived in 1948 from Puerto Rico due to an economic crisis caused by a transition from a monocultural plantation economy of sugarcane to manufacturing for export after World War II. Under the “Operation Bootstrap” program, driven by US capital investment in the manufacturing of consumer goods, employment shifted from agriculture in rural areas to manufacturing in cities, which provided fewer job opportunities. Cubans immigrated to New Brunswick in the 1960s seeking to escape the island following Fidel Castro’s revolution. Immigration from the Dominican Republic also started in the 1960s with the assassination of dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, which was assisted by the CIA, and the political repression and economic upheaval that followed.

"Home is Where We Make It": Contextualizing Highland Park's Refugees and Asylees Mural

Katia Yoza-Mitsuishi

Pink native flowers and constellations from the area between Syria and Eritrea surround three portraits of local refugees and asylees. Drivers who enter Highland Park and passersby on the main street see this image every day in the town's most recently completed mural. "Home is Where We Make It," was installed at the end of April 2022 on the side of a commercial building, and painted by artist Amrisa Niranjan. The project is the result of the collaborative work between the Shelter Project (www.shelternj.org), coLAB Arts, and the Reformed Church of Highland Park-Affordable Housing Corporation (RCHP-AHC). According to the Shelter team, “The mural focuses on local refugee and asylee resettlement efforts over the last couple of years, and represents community conversations with service providers and clients from Interfaith-RISE (I-RISE) and D.I.R.E. at RCHP-AHC, and Black Community Watchline. The main focal point of the mural is the three portraits referencing refugees we spoke with, representing areas of Northeast Africa and the Middle East around the Red Sea."[1]