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, construction began on a new building on the corner of MacLean and Witherspoon Streets. The District School No. 6 building 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.”

Websites

1. Heritage Tour (The Witherspoon-Jackson Historical and Cultural Society)
2. The Witherspoon-Jackson Community (The Princeton and Slavery Project)
3. The Princeton Plan (The Princeton and Slavery Project)
4. Betsey Stockton (The Princeton and Slavery Project)
5. The Albert Hinds Memorial Walking Tour (The Historical Society of Princeton)
6. Witherspoon Street School for Colored Children
7. The Waxwood: A History

Books

1. I Hear My People Singing: Voices of African American Princeton by Kathryn Watterson (Princeton Public Library)
2. She Calls Herself Betsey Stockton: the Illustrated Odyssey of a Princeton Slave by Constance K. Escher (Princeton Public Library)
3. The Princeton Plan 50 Years Later (Princeton Public Library)
4. The Long Journey Home: a Bicentennial History of the Black Community of Princeton, New Jersey 1776-1976 by Jack Washington (Princeton Public Library)
5. Reminiscences of Colored People of Princeton, N.J., 1800-1900 by Anna Amelia Bustill (Princeton Public Library)

Articles

1. “Princeton History: The History of the African American Community in Princeton” (Town Topics, 2 October 2002)
2. “‘Princeton Plan’ on TV” (Town Topics, 12 March 1964)
3. “Borough Schools Reorganized; Township Students to Transfer” (Princeton Herald, Volume 25, Number 43, 7 April 1948)
4. “Poll Indicates School Merger Favored; Objectors See Integration Problems” (Princeton Herald, Volume 42, Number 60, 25 June 1965)
5. “Non-Segregation ‘No Problem’ Local ‘Integration’ Process Called Success” (Daily Princetonian, Volume 78, Number 69, 18 May 1954)
6. “New Witherspoon School on Quarry Street” (Princeton News, Volume 4, Number 11, 29 December 1938