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Today Princeton University has the largest percentage of black students in the Ivy League. In the 1920s the university was a model of southern Jim Crow.
THEY SAY WITHERSPOON Street is named after the path that John Witherspoon took from his home to the university and back. In modern times and for over a century, a walk north on this block, once an Indian trail, leads to the African-American community. Before it was Witherspoon Street it was Hill Road, also known as Rocky Hill, African Lane, or African Alley. Witherspoon and the neighboring clay, Maclean, Quarry, and John streets look today like other parts of the town, sleepy and tree-filled. Some of the houses may be a little smaller, not as modern or pristine, but there's nothing to indicate that this little section has a history more like that of Selma, Alabama, than New Jersey. "The black community was separated and set apart," Princeton public librarian Terri Nelson said, commenting on the historic social conditions in town. "At the same time, they were completely involved in the very fabric of Princeton's daily life." Paul Robeson, who was born in Princeton, called it "the northernmost town in the South."
There are black people today in Princeton who remember not being allowed in certain restaurants and not being served in certain stores. At the movies they were required to sit in the "colored" section, and they had to go out of town to attend high school. Princeton was different from nearby towns like New Brunswick or Trenton, which surely had racism but not such a long history of ingrained Jim Crowism. "In New Brunswick," as one resident put it in the 1940s, "you went to school based on your address, not your skin color."
There have been tales that Princeton University was built with slave quarters on campus. Most historians believe there is no evidence of that. However, there is no doubt that the university, a bastion of intellectual thought, was at the vanguard of instituting and perpetuating harsh racial segregation in the town.
Bruce Wright, a writer, activist, and former judge in New York's criminal court, who had developed a reputation during his 16-year tenure for his progressive and controversial rulings, was born in Princeton....