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Of Princeton's more than 160 endowed professorships and lectureships, four honor men who derived their fortunes from slave labor or contributed to the legacy of slavery in New Jersey and the United States.

The financial contributions of Moses Taylor Pyne (Class of 1877), one of Princeton's most prominent benefactors, reveal the complex relationship between Princeton, the American sugar trade, and the slave economy.

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.

William Taylor, a black entrepreneur in Princeton in the first half of the 20th century, was the third and last in a line of independent African American vendors who sold refreshments to students. The nickname students used for Taylor (a racial slur) reflected the casual racism in Princeton was still very much present during the postbellum era, as in the days of the first campus vendor, former fugitive slave James Collins Johnson.

Princeton students performed in blackface in the 19th and 20th centuries, until as late as 1949. The legacy of Princeton’s minstrel traditions continues to live on in American culture through the popular folk song “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”