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This Week in Princeton History for January 25-31
In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, a photographer finishes a series of images of places and people on campus, an alumni accent is criticized, and more. January 25, 1877—The Princetonian reports that a “female servant” is working in Witherspoon Hall.…
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Techniques for Unmuting Archival Silence: Recovering More of Princeton University’s 19th-Century Black Graduate Students
About two and a half years ago, I wrote about the strategies I had used to uncover African American alumni from the 19th century whose records were absent from the University Archives due to the legacy of institutional racism passed down to us. At the time, I had primarily used the Board of Trustees minutes…
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The Problem with “Firsts,” Part II: Archival Silence and Black Staff at Princeton University
This is the second in a two-part series about archival silence and the “first” African Americans at Princeton University. The first post in this series addressed the history of Black students. In last week’s post in this series, focused on Black students, I wrote about how questions of definition and gaps in the archival record…
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The Problem with “Firsts,” Part I: Archival Silence and Black Students at Princeton University
This is the first in a two-part series about archival silence and the “first” Black Princetonians. The second post in this series will consider Black staff. People often ask us about the “first” person to do something in a given demographic. I previously wrote about the difficulty with determining who the “first” Jewish student was—and…
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This Week in Princeton History for January 20-26
In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, the Graduate School reports increased diversity, gym users ask for protection from prying eyes, and more. January 20, 1949—At “the first 11:00 catharsis in 15 years,” students celebrate the end of final exams with…
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Debating Race at Princeton in the 1940s, Part II: Roundtable News and the Liberal Union
This is the second post in a two-part series examining Princeton University’s debates over admitting African Americans in the 1940s. These debates began in earnest due to the dedication of one undergraduate in the Class of 1943, Francis Lyons “Frank” Broderick, whose efforts were the focus of the first post in this series. Here, I…
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This Week in Princeton History for December 2-8
In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, campus proctors nab serial burglars, a comedian gives an ominous warning, and more. December 2, 1942—Charles Bagley III ’44 writes to the Daily Princetonian in response to a November 30 editorial that, among other…
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Debating Race at Princeton in the 1940s, Part I: Francis L. Broderick ’43
This is the first post in a two-part series examining Princeton University’s debates over admitting African Americans in the 1940s, which began in earnest partly due to the dedication of one undergraduate in the Class of 1943, Francis Lyons “Frank” Broderick. By April C. Armstrong *14 and Dan Linke At first glance, Francis Lyons “Frank”…
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Whatever Happened to “The Vigil”?
By Iliyah Coles ’22 I have been looking for information about The Vigil, a minority newspaper that the University published in the late twentieth century. As a black student at a predominantly-white institution, I wanted to see what the newspaper would be about and how effectively it incorporated voices not usually heard. After researching and…
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This Week in Princeton History for September 2-8
In this week’s installment of our recurring series bringing you the history of Princeton University and its faculty, students, and alumni, Frist Campus Center opens, an alum writes to Princeton about surviving a major earthquake in Japan, and more. September 2, 1973—An article in today’s Sunday magazine of the New York Times provokes contentious correspondence…
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