Lawnside, New Jersey

Lawnside, a small borough in Camden County, carries a distinction found nowhere else north of the Mason-Dixon Line: it is the only historically African American municipality that achieved independent self-governance in the northern United States. Its roots go to eighteen forty, when a white abolitionist named Ralph Smith purchased land and began selling affordable lots to free Black families and formerly enslaved people. The community called itself Free Haven, a name that made its purpose plain.

The Peter Mott House, built around eighteen forty-five, served as a documented station on the Underground Railroad, run by an African American conductor. Lawnside incorporated officially in nineteen twenty-six and has maintained its identity ever since. The borough marked its one-hundredth anniversary as a municipality in twenty twenty-six, a century of self-determination rooted in the quiet courage of the people who chose to build a free community here, just across the river from Philadelphia.