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Bruce Wright, future member of the New York Supreme Court, was accepted into Princeton in the mid-1930s. His offer of admission was revoked when he arrived on campus and administrators learned that he was African American.

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.

Nassau Hall’s memorial atrium—built in the 1920s—reflects the era’s reconciliationist politics, erasing the role of slavery and emancipation in the Civil War and granting moral equivalency to the Union and Confederate causes.

Thomas Carter Ruffin, Princeton alumnus and later Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, propounded the legal doctrine of slave-owners’ absolute power over their human property in the 1829 case State v. Mann.

African Americans were a constant presence at the College of New Jersey as servants, support staff, research and teaching assistants, and students. They labored under harsh conditions on a campus dominated by racism and white supremacy.