Background, history led Villas woman to passion
VILLAS — She didn’t appreciate the history she was experiencing as a child, but as Crystal Hines matured she understood the gravity of meeting relatives of abolitionist William Still, a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Seeds were planted that led her to become a storyteller.
A third-generation native of Wildwood through her mother’s side, Hines’ stepfather was a descendant of William Still. Her mother and stepfather spent a lot of time educating their children on African-American history and culture, about inventors and authors and professionals in sports and the arts.
Another family member supported that as well.
“My aunt, as an African-American, but also as a deeper complexion African-American, would oftentimes give us more information than what we even have been given from our parents,” Hines said.
Between her aunt and her parents, that early education “started our journey with Harriet Tubman and William Still and the Underground Railroad.”
It’s no wonder that Hines, who now lives in the Villas section of Lower Township, is a poet and storyteller who does performances of “The Harriet Tubman Experience” (one is scheduled for 1 p.m. Feb. 15 at the Ocean City Community Center) and gives tours at the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May.
When Hines was a child, her family would go to the Peter Mott House in Lawnside, the historic home of Peter and Eliza Mott that was a station on the Underground Railroad where the couple would house escaped slaves en route to freedom in Canada in the mid-1800s. (The Peter Mott House has been in the news lately because the state wants to widen the New Jersey Turnpike, potentially endangering the 1845 structure.)
Hines and her family would go to reunions, where they were meeting family members who used to visit them in Wildwood and were direct descendants of Still.
“We didn’t know the weight of William Still until we went to the family reunion. And then we got the the detailed information of who William Still really was in the Underground Railroad,” she said. “I did not appreciate it then. I recognized what we were doing when I was older.”
She recalls going to another family reunion when she was 19 or 20.
“We met all these people and we have all these phenomenal pictures. And I still to this day have those pictures of us being in the forefront of all of these wonderful, remarkable people who happen to be descendants of Mr. William Still. And them all getting together and telling the history.
“And this was where I got to really become enthralled with the history of our our people,” Hines said.
She also began putting it in context with growing up in Wildwood, where her family lived for well over a half-century.
When she was young, there was a vibrant diverse community “where everyone knew everybody” and it was tough to misbehave because her mom would find out.
“We also learned a lot about family and community and we were really involved in the community church-wise …. Even if my mom or my dad had to work, I would go to church by myself because that was our upbringing. I primarily grew up in Wildwood and saw diversity,” Hines said.
As she got older, she began to see that diminish, an experience heightened during her college years at Rowan University that were eye-opening in another way.
“I had to do some deep soul-searching when I was coming out of Wildwood and it was a bit of a culture shock because our family was so well aware of their blackness and our church community as well, but when I would come back from college and come back into town, oftentimes I would have like weird experiences, experiences as if like I wasn’t even from Wildwood with police officers that did not know me or did not know my family,” she said.
“I would always have this like feeling of like, I am from Wildwood. I’m from here, but always feeling like I was kind of like an outsider.”
The diversity she saw growing up, however, left a strong impression on her starting when she was in middle school. In high school she began to write about it.
“I ended up getting … a scholarship award for writing about the African-American population that was once in Wildwood that was once thriving. That’s when I started to write more, not that I always wrote about that, but I started to really realize that my pen had power.”
In college she began to dive into Africana studies and the African diaspora with Dr. Gary Hunter.
“Suddenly I realized I didn’t know a lot about my history,” she said, being exposed in high school to snippets with major figures from Tubman and Still to Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I started to really throw myself into that history and I was researching it with Dr. Gary Hunter and suddenly he had a heart attack and passed away,” she said. “And so I was like lost for culture.”
She had been working on “rich projects” with the professor, transcribing audio of elders in the community and their history of being on the Underground Railroad or descendants of those who had.
Years later, she met Ralph E. Hunter Sr., who was not related to her former professor but who shared a similar zeal. He is the founder of the African American Heritage Museum of Southern New Jersey. He brought his traveling exhibit, “This Little Light of Mine: The Black Church,” to the Ocean City Historical Museum in February 2023. (See story, ocnjsentinel.com)
The two Hunters “have the same enthrallment with African-American history and Africana studies and come to find out they became best friends and I didn’t know this when I met either of them,” Hines said.
Meeting Ralph Hunter reconnected her to her own passion for history.
A couple of years ago, the Wildwood High School graduate, who has been a teacher in Middle Township School District for 20 years, visited the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May.
“I went there on a whim with one of my ex-fiancées. I was so excited to go in there. It was was a gift to someone else, but it became a gift to me … because all of the knowledge that I had already received from everyone around me in my community came back to me, like full throttle. It was a full-circle moment,” she said.
“And as I was listening and and asking the questions, I literally got hired on this on the spot after I finished the tour,” she said.
The Villas resident continues to tell the story of Harriet Tubman on Saturdays while doing tours at the museum and with the traveling “Harriet Tubman Experience.”
She has also been working with the Morristown Arts program in northern New Jersey, paralleling the work she does at the museum. That allows this creative woman to go in additional directions with her art while continuing to tell the story on Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad.
“I tell my own personal stories through poetry,” she said.
By DAVID NAHAN/Cape May Star and Wave
