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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 His offer of admission was revoked when he arrived on campus and administrators learned that he was African American.

Samuel Stanhope Smith, Princeton’s seventh president (1795-1812), was an early defender of the unity of mankind—arguing that environment, not innate biological differences, determined one’s race.  His convictions, however, did not prevent him from owning slaves himself, and his teachings ultimately influenced Princeton alumni to establish the American Colonization Society.

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.

Betsey Stockton (1798?-1865), enslaved as a child in the household of Princeton president Ashbel Green, became a prominent and respected educator in Princeton, Philadelphia, and the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawai'i).