Princeton's Black Community Explored Through Princeton University Fellowship

Matthew Hersh

Last week at the Princeton Public Library, at a meeting about developmental possibilities of the Witherspoon Street corridor, Shirley Satterfield told a room packed with Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood residents that the history of the neighborhood is what would, or "should," ultimately design its future.

Likewise, James Floyd Sr., Princeton Township's first black mayor, stood up and said the direction of the neighborhood has never "been in the interest of the progenitors" and said that the time had come for that.

While the common perception tells us the first blacks came to Princeton with southern slaveowners, Princeton's black community dates back to the late 1600s when the Royal African Company, a major force in the slave trade, brought slaves into the colony and sold them to area landowners to cultivate the Princeton region's then-Virginia-like plantations. The community is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, community in Princeton. And while the geographic neighborhood behind Palmer Square, long identified with the black community, has undergone intense scrutiny in years past as to how to keep it in concert with developmental advances in surrounding neighborhoods, the history of that neighborhood has, to many, been largely overlooked.

Enter Jack Washington, Ewing resident and Trenton Central High School history teacher. In 2001, Dr. Washington was approached by Princeton University's Prof. Nell Painter to take part in a three-year fellowship to do the research for a comprehensive historical account of Princeton's black community.

The fellowship was funded by a research grant through the African-American Studies Department at the University. Prior to that, there had never really been a comprehensive book on the black community in Princeton. There have been case studies, oral histories, class projects at the University and some senior theses – but not one book in one volume.

"It's been a long journey for this history to come about," Dr. Washington said.

And appropriately, the book is titled The Long Journey Home.

While touching on the origins of Princeton's black community, the focus of the study is the 200 years between the country's birth and its bicentennial.

The culmination of Dr. Washington's research tells us that some of Princeton's most respected residents, in fact, owned slaves, and that slaves were the primary source of labor in the building of Morven, the governor's mansion. But the research also shows that while many prominent landowners in Princeton also owned slaves, there was a vocal part of the white community "sympathetic to the plight of the slave."

"I was looking at this as a historian and social activist and I was saying 'Here's the research, and these are things I am trying to accomplish.'"

And what was he trying to accomplish?

"Well, bringing the history to the community, and it's an interesting story: there are a lot of myths that this book will hopefully put to rest."

One of those myths, Dr. Washington said, is that there were no black people enrolled during Woodrow Wilson's tenure as University president, beginning in 1902. "That's not true, black people were attending the Graduate College in Wilson's time."

"That kind of flies in the face of what we've previously heard."

Further, in light of the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood's current self-examination, Dr. Washington said he wanted to offer accounts of how that neighborhood became not only a thriving residential, but a retail center for the black community. By the early 20th century, when the community was celebrating the 40th anniversary of the emancipation proclamation, black residents in Princeton owned and operated several local establishments.

The book further documents the growth of that commercial and residential activity through the 1902 James Margerum purchase of parts of Hulfish, John, and Jackson streets. "There was a long-established black community that continued to grow in Princeton," Dr. Washington said.

That said, The Long Journey Home, while illustrating the origins of a prominent Princeton community, is directly relevant to current issues the neighborhood is tackling, Dr. Washington said, adding that when he first accepted his fellowship, he would stir up enough information for what might be a prominent footnote in a University-dominated town.

"When I first took this project, I thought this would be a little, small story about a small community and I didn't think it would go far." But in his research, he found that community events directly mirrored national events and in some cases anticipated national trends, for example, the school district's decision to integrate its schools several years before Brown vs. Board.

"Princeton is the center of the world. Our whole national philosophy came out of Princeton. John Witherspoon taught many of the framers of the Constitution. This little small community had a tremendous impact on the world, I mean, it's just amazing."

The Long Journey Home is available at Micawber Books, the Historical Society of Princeton and the Princeton University Store.