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In September 1835, a crowd of students descended on Princeton’s African American neighborhood to apprehend an abolitionist. The assault underscored the presence on campus of a large number of students committed to slavery and white supremacy.

Albert Baldwin Dod (1805-1845) was a Princeton professor and a slaveholder at the time of the 1840 census.

Many faculty members at the College of New Jersey owned slaves during the first century of the college’s history.

James Carnahan, the College of New Jersey’s longest-serving president (1823-1854), was a slave-owner and a director of the American Colonization Society of New Jersey. Records show that Carnahan owned slaves in 1820, just before assuming the presidency, and that free African Americans resided in his household into the 1850s.

Between 1832 and 1863, more than 1,000 students lived in off-campus boarding houses while attending the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). Certain boarding houses catered to large numbers of southern students.