History

Association of Black Princeton Alumni Founders

The Association of Black Princeton Alumni (ABPA) was founded by Howard W. Bell, Jr. '70, Michael C. Calhoun '70, W. Roderick Hamilton '69, Henry H. Kennedy, Jr. '70, Jerome Davis '71, Carl E. Drummond '71, and Girardeau Spann '71. Black alumni were less than one percent of Princeton's alumni and ABPA's initial goals were to foster Black alumni interaction and improve the Black student experience. The group had the support of outgoing University president, Robert F. Goheen '40 *48. Mike Calhoun and Jerome Davis met with the new University president, William G. Bowen *58, in June, 1972, to express their desire to start a black alumni group and President Bowen offered his support. The ABPA was founded in the fall of 1972.

Association of Black Princeton Alumni Annual Reunion Awards Reception

The original idea for the Association of Black Princeton Alumni Annual Reunion Awards Reception was developed by Emmett Haines Pritchard '71, at that time an ABPA board member. The first reception was held in 1981. C. Steve Dawson '70, the ABPA president at that time, conceived the idea for the annual awards. The first awards were presented in 1982 during reunions at the Second Annual ABPA Reunions gathering.

Looking Back: Reflections of Black Princeton Alumni
Princeton Today, Summer '97

When John L. Howard '47 and James E. Ward '48 arrived at Princeton as World War II Naval cadets, they and two other black servicemen from the U.S. Navy broke the color barrier on the University's segregated campus. This spring, both Howard and Ward were back on campus and on hand for the Association of Black Princeton Alumni (ABPA) and Alumni Council's showing of a 250th-sponsored documentary "Looking Back: Reflections of Black Princeton Alumni" produced by Melvin R. McCray, Jr., and Calvin H. Norman III '77. The video, which includes a kaleidoscope of perspectives, traces the often difficult and painful experiences of black alumni on campus.

While individual black students in all the eras from the '40s to the '90s faced different problems, Howard and Ward were admitted as part of the wartime V-12 program of officer training -- a positive experience for each of them. Both also transferred pre-war college credits and got their Princeton degrees in record time. "This was wartime Princeton, populated mainly by military guys" says Ward, now an investigator for the Texas Commission on Human Rights, who arrived after serving in the South Pacific. "It wasn't traditional Princeton. I loved it. But if you'd been out in the South Pacific for a couple of years with a bunch of Seabees, wouldn't you have loved it, too?"

Howard, the first African American to receive a Princeton degree, had previously gone to elite white schools in New York, including Columbia University, before the war, so he felt very comfortable on campus. "I was pre-med, so for me it was all books and very little play," says Howard, whose grandfather was born into slavery in Alabama. But I had open arms for Princeton. I felt no barriers to what I wanted to do when I was there.

Following the ABPA reception, Howard stayed on for reunions-his first in 50 years. "It was a very mellow experience, a very warm reception" says Howard, an orthopedic surgeon from Los Angeles. "Now I'm excited about coming back to Princeton again and again."

A Princeton pioneer
When Joseph Ralph Moss ’51 broke through the color line

By Mark F. Bernstein ’83 - Princeton Alumni Weekly June 7, 2006

Princeton’s newest crop of undergraduates — the Class of 2010, which will enter in the fall — could well include a record number of minority students: According to the Prince, 37 percent of students who accepted Princeton’s offer of admission have minority backgrounds. Given the great effort spent on recruiting top candidates from all ethnic groups, it may be startling to learn that the student believed to be the University’s first regularly admitted black undergraduate arrived only in the fall of 1947, just months after Jackie Robinson integrated baseball. The name of that student, all but forgotten now, was Joseph Ralph Moss ’51, though he endured the nickname "Peatmoss.” To everyone who knew him well, he was just "Pete.”

Moss, who died in 1984, was a private person who had little contact with his classmates after graduation; once-sharp memories of him have dulled. He was a "townie,” born in Princeton in 1930. His parents had moved north from Georgia around the time of World War I and settled on Quarry Street in an integrated neighborhood. Moss’ father, who died when he was 12, had an eighth-grade education and worked as a servant for Professor Edward Corwin, the constitutional scholar. Moss’ mother, Mary, had graduated from what is now Paine College in Georgia and worked for a local nursery school. She threw herself into community affairs; a small park on John Street, just a few blocks from campus, is named for her.

Continue this article at http://www.princeton.edu/paw/archive_new/PAW05-06/14-0607/features_jrmoss.html

Brief History of Students of Color at Princeton

The first ethnic minority to matriculate at Princeton was Jacob Wooley, a Delaware Indian, member of the Class of 1762. He was followed by two more tribal Delaware men in the Classes of 1776 and 1789. The Continental Congress paid the tuition of one of these students, George Morgan White Eyes, in what may be the first instance of U.S. federal aid to education. Three Cherokee men graduated in the 19th century, and a Choctaw was a member of the Class of 1863. A Seneca and a Sioux graduated in the Classes of 1901 and 1923.

Continue this article from Thriving at Princeton, 2007 - 2008 at http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pub/thriving/07/history/