May 16, 1825. Minutes from the board of directors of Princeton seminary:
"Dr. McAuley, on behalf of the Presbytery of Albany, applied to the Board to have Theodore Wright, a fine young man of color, admitted into the Seminary.
"Dr. McAuley, on behalf of the Presbytery of Albany, applied to the Board to have Theodore Wright, a fine young man of color, admitted into the Seminary.
Whereupon, resolved that his color shall form no obstacle in the way of his reception.”
On that day, almost 100 years before J. Gresham Machen made public complaints about the integration of a "colored student" in the dorms, PTS became an integrated seminary.
On that day, almost 100 years before J. Gresham Machen made public complaints about the integration of a "colored student" in the dorms, PTS became an integrated seminary.
According to the archivist, through the archival records at PTS, we can identify many African American students who attended the seminary in the 19th century, including: "Henry M. Wilson (Class of 1848), Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs (Class of 1856), George Collins (Class of 1870),
Thomas McCants Stewart (Class of 1881), Matthew Anderson (Class of 1877), Francis James Grimke (Class of 1878), Hugh Mason Brown (Class of 1878), Daniel Wallace Cup (Class of 1879), William Alfred Byrd (Class of 1894), and Irwin William Langston Roundtree (Class of 1895)."
In fact, records show that the Seminary's dorms were integrated decades before Machen claimed it to be a new policy in his letter to his mother in 1913:
"The catalogues for 1874-75, 1875-1876 and 1876-1877 all list Matthew Anderson as living in what is today called Alexander
"The catalogues for 1874-75, 1875-1876 and 1876-1877 all list Matthew Anderson as living in what is today called Alexander
Hall... The catalogues for 1875-1876 and 1876-1877 show Francis Grimke living in Brown Hall his first two years at the Seminary and in Alexander Hall during his Senior year. The catalogues for 1875-1876, 1876-1877, and 1877-1878 all show Hugh Mason Brown living in Alexander Hall
all three years. The catalogues for 1877-1878 and 1878-1879 show Daniel Wallace Culp living in Alexander Hall those years."
In fact, BB Warfield was a student at PTS and lived in Brown Hall from 1873-1876 with several of the African-American students living in the dorms then.
In fact, BB Warfield was a student at PTS and lived in Brown Hall from 1873-1876 with several of the African-American students living in the dorms then.
Warfield, therefore, was in a "first-hand position to be able to refute the claims Machen was making in 1913," according to the archivist.
The implications of these findings are significant. Dr. Machen not only was vocally opposed to the integration of a Black student in the dorms, but he was pushing back against nearly a century old policy of integration in the seminary and several decades or more in the dorms.
Additionally, this brings up an interesting question. Was Dr. Machen completely ignorant of this longstanding policy even though he studied at Princeton in 1902 and taught there for several years? How was it possible that he told his mother this was something new and unheard of?
Lastly, the archival data tells us that long before Machen, the Reformed seminary had understood the rightness of integration. Being a "product of his time" is even less likely of an excuse given the long history of Black students living in dorms and taking classes at PTS.
Many thanks to Kenneth Woodrow Henke, archivist at Princeton Seminary for his assistance with looking into the historical archives. Many thanks to the seminary for its desire to tell the truth about our tradition's history regarding racism.
