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The work of collecting and organizing primary source material on Princeton’s connections to slavery required coordinated efforts of faculty, students, and library staff. This essay highlights some of the ways Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library staff have provided valuable specialized knowledge for the Princeton & Slavery Project.

Princeton’s early students from Kentucky reflected their state’s ambivalent attitude toward slavery. Though many Kentuckians opposed the institution and the state never seceded from the Union, slavery did not end in Kentucky until the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865. Prominent state and national leaders from Kentucky, including Princeton alumni, also supported the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Tapping Reeve (1744-1823), Princeton alumnus and founder of the nation’s first law school, served as co-counsel in the 1781 case Brom and Bett v. J. Ashley, Esq., which led to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts.

Stephen Alexander, Princeton’s first astronomy professor, held moderate antislavery views but denied the equality of Black and white Americans. At the same time, he may have employed an African American man named Alfred Scudder as an assistant on campus.

When three Princeton students organized a petition protesting the acquittal of Emmett Till’s murderers in 1955, classmates dressed in KKK robes threatened their lives. Though the campus newspaper and Princeton administration characterized the incident as a “prank,” the event revealed deep divisions on campus over issues of racial justice.