Site Search

Princeton residents published at least 28 newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves between 1774 and 1818. Each tells a unique story of courage and resistance in the face of tremendous odds.

James Collins Johnson, a fugitive slave freed after an 1843 trial in Princeton, became a prominent figure in town and on campus over the course of his many decades working at the College of New Jersey.

Robert Joseph Rivers (Class of 1953) was one of Princeton’s first Black undergraduate students and one of the first two Black members of the Board of Trustees. While in town and on campus, Rivers witnessed firsthand Princeton’s legacy of privileging the comfort of white southern students over racial justice.

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 His offer of admission was revoked when he arrived on campus and administrators learned that he was African American.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 the late-19th and early-20th centuries, several African American men attended Princeton as graduate students. Princeton president Woodrow Wilson’s administration may have attempted to erase their presence from institutional memory, creating an inaccurate historical justification for excluding black students from the university.