In Response to: Across Nassau Street

Published online July 6, 2017

Kudos to PAW for the wonderful article in the April 26 issue, “Across Nassau Street”: perhaps the finest article I remember ever reading in the publication. As an undergraduate student in the late Clueless Fifties, I recall hearing very slightly, perhaps from a professor in a lecture, that there was a “colored” population in Princeton, but no attention was ever paid to it. Nobody was encouraged to go there and no one was told not to – for all intents and purposes, such a thing existed largely in rumor (I certainly sensed, coming from Massachusetts, that Princeton was very much a Southern college, evidenced by so many of its students). I was delighted by the report of the oral-history project and learned a lot from it. And to add to that treasure, the photograph on the cover was a mute but stunning representation of Black Pride. Thank you so much!

Michael Ellis ’59
Hilliard, Ohio