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On an 1855 trip to Princeton, Louisianan Ann Maria Davison visited fourteen homes in the town’s black neighborhood.  Davison’s observations convinced her that Princeton’s free black residents were intelligent and hard-working people fully capable of supporting themselves and their families—a position that contradicted common arguments in favor of slavery.

In June 1846, more than a dozen Southern students mobbed, whipped, and nearly killed an African American man in Princeton—but only after fighting off another group of classmates who opposed them. This brief flashpoint of violence, in which Princeton students came to blows after dividing along regional lines, revealed the tensions over race and slavery present even at a college known for its moderate conservatism.

Alexander Dumas Watkins (1855-1903), a self-taught biologist, conducted significant scientific research alongside Princeton University professors from the 1880s until his death in 1903. Despite holding no formal academic position, Watkins worked in Princeton’s laboratories and taught courses as the University’s first Black instructor—and the last until the 1950s.

Samuel Davies, Princeton’s fourth president (1759-61), was a pioneering Presbyterian minister on Virginia’s western frontier and one of the earliest missionaries to enslaved people in the British colonies. Davies preached the spiritual equality of Africans and African Americans and supported the education of enslaved people, but owned at least two slaves during his life.

After a fire destroyed Nassau Hall in 1802, Princeton alumnus Joseph Clark canvassed Virginia on a nine-month fundraising mission. Throughout the trip, Clark relied on the hospitality and financial contributions of fellow Princeton alumni and their connections among Virginia’s slave-owning elite.