A South Jersey summer camp is bringing Black history to life through hands-on learning centered on the Underground Railroad.

The Lawnside Historical Society kicked off its Underground Railroad summer camp Monday, giving middle school students the opportunity to visit sites tied to the fight for freedom and learn beyond the classroom.

“I was excited,” 10-year-old summer camper Harlan Jenifer III from Lawnside said. “I was happy to learn about my heritage and history.”

On Day 1, the Lawnside Historical Society brought students to the home of Peter Mott, a free Black man who opened his house as a place of refuge for freedom seekers escaping enslavement.

“The most interesting thing I learned so far was that this house was in Lawnside,” 13-year-old summer camper Stacey Johnson from Somerdale said. “I didn’t realize that the Underground Railroad was connected to New Jersey at all at one point.”

The weeklong camp includes scavenger hunts, tours and writing activities designed to deepen students’ understanding of what they learn in school.

“You will not find Peter Mott’s name most likely in the history books, but I want students to know that Lawnside, alongside Free Haven and Snow Hill, had a big part in the Underground Railroad,” Joyce Fowler, vice president of the Lawnside Historical Society, said.

Camp leaders said the program goes beyond traditional classroom lessons, highlighting details such as coded communication and the ways enslaved people navigated their journey to freedom.

“A lot of times the teachers don’t go into the study of the communication that enhanced and actually had to do with the struggle for freedom,” camp director Jacqueline Miller Bentley said.

Throughout the week, students will visit additional Underground Railroad sites across South Jersey, including Mt. Zion AME Church in Woolwich, Gloucester County, and museums.

Harlan said the camp has already changed his perspective.

“I just thought it was a history of something that was back in the past that I didn’t need to care about,” Harland said. “But right now, it’s making me want to learn more about it.”

The camp runs through Friday, when students will present paintings, poems and other creative projects inspired by what they’ve learned.

Mother Nature has a way of being unpredictable, which can leave residents in the dark.

Several days of scorching temperatures are suspected to have caused at least 19 deaths in New Jersey as a heat dome that had settled above parts of the central and eastern US gives way to severe storms that have knocked out power to close to 1 million homes and businesses. New Jersey officials said they began seeing what they believe are heat-related deaths as early as Thursday, the AP reports, with most occurring in the central and northern parts of the state. “Unfortunately, many of these individuals were found in homes without air conditioning,” state Health Commissioner Raynard Washington told reporters Saturday. “A few were outside their residences, some on the street and some even in parked cars.”

The ongoing weather is “the hottest stretch we’ve seen in over 14 years,” New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said. “The heat’s hitting all of us, not just seniors, not just with underlying health conditions, people of all ages.” On Thursday, LaGuardia Airport in New York set a record high of 104 degrees Fahrenheit, topping the previous record of 101 set in 1966, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weather Prediction Center. Trenton, New Jersey, reached 101, which broke the record of 100 set in 1901. Newark’s high Thursday was 105.

Even as the heat moved east, lowering temperatures a bit, severe storms blew in with heavy winds that toppled utility poles and split trees, causing their boles and branches to fall onto power lines. About 900,000 utility customers in parts of the central, eastern, and southern US were without electricity early Sunday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.com. More than 223,000 customers in Michigan and close to 170,000 in Pennsylvania had lost power. PPL Electric reported 121,417 without power Sunday morning, including about 47,000 in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, area.