PU students hear of life of blacks beyond the gates.
By: Jeff Milgram
Princeton University senior Yuvon Mobley may be from Florida but she knows a lot about the John-Witherspoon area.
"I’m a member of Mount Pisgah Church," Ms. Mobley said.
She was unaware, however, that the 1832 Methodist church, at the corner of Witherspoon and Maclean streets, is the oldest black church in Princeton.
"I didn’t know anything about the history," Ms. Mobley said Wednesday after going on a virtual historical tour of the John-Witherspoon neighborhood as part of the Princeton University Student Volunteer Council’s "Visions" series.
Her "tour guides" couldn’t have been better informed.
Leading the program were Albert Hinds who, at 101, claims to be the oldest living alumnus of Princeton High School (and no one has stepped forward to challenge him) and Shirley Satterfield, a fourth-generation Princeton resident who has twice "retired" as a guidance counselor at PHS.
In true town-gown spirit, about 30 people students and residents of the community attended the lunch-hour program in Murray-Dodge Hall.
The two experts were introduced by Jessica Lautin, who graduated from the university in June. Her senior thesis was "That Side of Paradise: A Story of Princeton the University, the Town and the African-American Community."
Ms. Lautin met Mr. Hinds in her freshman year. Her research led to a four-part series on the black community in The Daily Princetonian and then to her thesis.
"My experience at the university was made so much more rich by stepping outside the gates," she said.
For much of its life, the history of Princeton’s black community was dominated by segregation and Jim Crow laws. Not allowed to shop or eat on Nassau Street, blacks opened their own grocery stores, florists, barbershops, candy stores, beauty parlors, restaurants and clothing stores.
"Princeton was so segregated that there were stores on Nassau Street we couldn’t go into," Ms. Satterfield said.
Ms. Satterfield, who was the primary tour guide, showed slides, including one of the Fleet Bank at Nassau and Witherspoon. The building was once the home of Caesar Trent, the first black property owner in Princeton.
She went on to tell the story of how Edgar Palmer’s decision to build the square that bears his name meant that homes on Baker Street had to be moved to Birch Avenue.
The move forced residents to walk further to their jobs at the university.
Ms. Satterfield went on to explain the importance of churches to the black community. Take, for example, the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church, built in 1840.
"People say the underground railroad stopped here, but we have no evidence," Ms. Satterfield said.
Church leaders and members spoke out against slavery and later were active in the civil rights movement. Its pastor, the Rev. Benjamin Anderson, led the effort to build Princeton’s first integrated housing development in the 1950s, she said.
Many of the community’s landmarks are gone. Such is the fate of the Charcoal Inn on John Street, a social club that solicited members by invitation only.
Also only a memory is The Citizen, the oldest black newspaper in New Jersey, Mr. Hinds said.
Other places live on, but with a different use. The Arts Council of Princeton is built on the site of the "colored" YMCA.
High school education was separate until 1915, but it took the 1948 Princeton Plan to fully desegregate the school system. Mr. Hinds, who graduated from PHS in 1923, was an all-star end on the football team.
But there was prejudice at PHS. "I never saw a guidance counselor in four years at Princeton High School because they never thought we would go to college," Ms. Satterfield said.
Mr. Hinds was encouraged to apply to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, rather than to Princeton.
"All my uncles went to Lincoln," Ms. Satterfield said.
The bias extended to Princeton Cemetery, which had a separate section for blacks. "Just like the town, the cemetery was segregated," Mr. Hinds said. The parents of Paul Robeson, the famous actor, singer and civil rights advocate, were the first blacks to be buried in the white section.
The John-Witherspoon neighborhood was never completely black. Every new immigrant group first ended up in John-Witherspoon, Ms. Satterfield said.
Now, blacks are being forced out by Latinos and whites who are looking for reasonably priced housing, Mr. Hinds said.
"Blacks used to be 90 percent of the population," Mr. Hinds said. "We used to be the majority of the minority. Now we’re the minority of the minority."
Hendricks Davis, a John-Witherspoon resident who is the director of the Princeton Blairstown Center, said the economy of the neighborhood should be studied and a way found to bring stability to the community.
Ms. Mobley, filled with a new sense of the history, said the physical condition of the neighborhood buildings shows they need to be renovated.