NJMML – Flagship: Remembering Seabrook Farms

NJ Monuments to Migration and Labor will take its “Flagship” Sailbus to Seabrook September 18, 2026. RSVP is requested at https://njmml.com/activities/flagship-remembering-seabrook-farms/.

Friday, September 18, 2026, 5-8PM. Upper Deerfield Pavilion, 26 Hoover Road, Seabrook, NJ 08302

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Join the Flagship, Monument Artist Immanuel Oni, Rutgers Professor and NJMML Project Director Andy Urban, and the NJMML team, for a special evening of programming that explores the history of Seabrook Farms, agricultural labor, and migration to South Jersey.

Flagship explores the stories and perspectives of the descendants of African American, Japanese American, and European workers who came to Seabrook Farms in the 1940s and 1950s, to labor in the processing plant and fields that the company maintained. On September 18, Oni will describe the process that when into gathering these stories and using them as the inspiration for the Sailbus. Oni will lead participants in hands-on “Legacy Flag” and “Crew Patch” arts’ activities, so that attendees can add their contributions to the Flagship and join in its collective commemoration of migrants, immigrants, and laborers in South Jersey.

Following Oni’s program, Andy Urban, Associate Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University, and Director of NJMML, will share research from his forthcoming book, Processing History: Labor, Capitalism, and Memory at Seabrook Farms (forthcoming, 2028), focused on the history of Orchard Center. Orchard Center was one of many migrant laborer camps that Seabrook Farms built and managed, enabling it to house thousands of farmworkers who could be employed on short notice during harvest season. Working as they travelled north, Black migrants from Florida and other Southern states arrived in South Jersey beginning in April, and remained until the end of November, when the final spinach crop was picked. Over time, Black migrants to Seabrook also established roots, with many becoming permanent members of the community. Urban will discuss the significance of Orchard Center and other sites of memory connected to Seabrook Farms, and what it means to commemorate and actively remember these places.

Finally, Betty Brown-Pitts and Gloria Kates, NJMML community project leaders and Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center docents, will discuss their own experiences growing up at Orchard Center, and the legacies they believe should be honored.

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The pavilion is located by the ball fields behind the Upper Deerfield Township municipal building at 1325 Highway 77, Seabrook, NJ 08302.

Funding has been made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State and the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners through the Cumberland County Cultural and Heritage Commission.