The Witherspoon Street School

Betsey Stockton, a formerly enslaved person and revered educator established a school for African American children in Princeton sometime by the 1840s. While the school’s curriculum was set by the Princeton School District, the space was small and had a considerable lack of resources. In 1858, Stockton found a new home for the school, District School No. 6, that was the first public elementary and middle school for African Americans in Princeton. As the student population rapidly grew, a new building was needed. While a new building on the corner of MacLean and Witherspoon Streets was being built to account for this growth, District School No. 6 burned in a fire in 1870. Stockton died in 1865 before the new location on Witherspoon Street, the building depicted in this tile, was completed. This schoolhouse on Witherspoon Street is where the school received its name: The Witherspoon Street School.

As the population of Black children continued to increase, a larger school was built on Quarry Street. This was the school’s final location, where it continued to operate through the 1948-49 school year when the Princeton schools were fully integrated, known as the “Princeton Plan.” In 1966, students and faculty moved to their new home at John Witherspoon Middle School on Walnut Lane. When the Quarry Street building was renovated and turned into residential housing in the early 2000s, it was renamed The Waxwood in honor of Howard B. Waxwood, Jr., the principal of the Witherspoon Street School at the time of the “Princeton Plan.”

Resources for Further Research:

1. “The Witherspoon-Jackson Community”, “The Princeton Plan”, and  “Betsey Stockton” (The Princeton and Slavery Project)
2. The Albert Hinds Memorial Walking Tour (The Historical Society of Princeton)
3. Witherspoon-Jackson Historical and Cultural Society Heritage Tour
4. National Register of Historic Places
5. The Waxwood
6. Articles from the Papers of Princeton database:
   • Princeton History: The History of the African American Community in Princeton (Town Topics, 2002)
   • ‘Princeton Plan’ on TV (Town Topics, 1964)
   • Borough Schools Reorganized; Township Students to Transfer (Princeton Herald, 1948)
   • Poll Indicates School Merger Favored; Objectors See Integration Problems (Princeton Herald, 1965)
   • Non-Segregation ‘No Problem’ Local ‘Integration’ Process Called Success (Daily Princetonian, 1954)
   • New Witherspoon School on Quarry Street (Princeton News, 1938)
7. Titles from the Princeton Public Library Collection