In light of the Trustees Ad Hoc Com­mit­tee on Diver­sity that is work­ing to develop rec­om­men­da­tions for strate­gies to attract and retain more diverse cam­pus com­mu­nity mem­bers, (includ­ing peo­ple of color and women, in areas where the University’s efforts to advance diver­sity have had more lim­ited suc­cess), we offer this his­tor­i­cal timeline.

The mid to late 19^th cen­tury sees the first wave of democ­ra­ti­za­tion of col­le­giate edu­ca­tion, includ­ing cre­ation of the land grant uni­ver­si­ties, His­tor­i­cally Black Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties (HBCUs), women’s col­leges, and early coeducation.

1837: Cheyney Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia founded as the nation’s first HBCU.  In the same year, Mount Holyoke Col­lege opened, mak­ing it the old­est remain­ing higher edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tion for women.

1856: The African Methodist Epis­co­pal church founded Wilber­force Uni­ver­sity, which is the first black school of higher learn­ing that was owned and oper­ated by African Amer­i­cans. Records sug­gest that Mt. Pis­gah A.M.E. church in Prince­ton, NJ, was involved in fundrais­ing efforts for Wilberforce.

1862: The Mor­rill Land Grant Act autho­rizes states to use the pro­ceeds from the sale of pub­lic lands to estab­lish state col­leges of agri­cul­ture and the mechan­i­cal arts.

1865: The Freed­man Bureau—initially known as the Fed­eral Bureau of Refugees, Freed­man and Aban­doned Lands—was cre­ated. The bureau  was instru­men­tal in found­ing a num­ber of HBCU’s  in 1867, includ­ing, Howard Uni­ver­sity in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Fisk Uni­ver­sity in Nashville, Ten­nessee, St. Augus­tine Col­lege in Raleigh, North Car­olina, Atlanta Uni­ver­sity in Geor­gia, and in 1868, Hamp­ton Insti­tute in Hamp­ton, Virginia.

1876: Meharry Med­ical Col­lege in Nashville, Ten­nessee, opens the first med­ical school in the South for African Americans.

1881: Spel­man Col­lege in Atlanta, Geor­gia, became the first col­lege for­mally founded for African Amer­i­can women. In the same year, Booker T. Wash­ing­ton founded The Tuskegee Nor­mal and Indus­trial Insti­tute in Alabama, now known as Tuskegee University.

By the early 20th cen­tury, higher edu­ca­tion lead­ers assume roles as “social reg­u­la­tors” between socioe­co­nomic classes and eth­nic groups, rationing access to under­grad­u­ate degrees. 

1900: A con­sor­tium of col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties devel­ops the Com­mon Entrance Exam, which will evolve in 1926 into the SAT.

1909: Woodrow Wil­son pro­tects Princeton’s racial homo­gene­ity, writ­ing that it would be “alto­gether inad­vis­able for a col­ored man to enter.”

1922:  Prince­ton changes under­grad­u­ate admis­sions pro­ce­dures to include greater con­sid­er­a­tion of sub­jec­tive non-academic cri­te­ria, largely in order to limit admis­sion of Jew­ish applicants.

Mid-century, there is renewed national move­ment toward democ­ra­ti­za­tion of access to higher education.

1942: Prince­ton belat­edly admits its first African Amer­i­can under­grad­u­ates in con­junc­tion with the Navy’s V-12 pro­gram. This fed­eral gov­ern­ment pro­gram was designed to select and train highly qual­i­fied men for com­mis­sion­ing as offi­cers in the Navy.

1944: Con­gress passes the GI Bill of Rights, which pro­vides WWII vet­er­ans with ben­e­fits includ­ing edu­ca­tion grants. This year also marked the estab­lish­ment of the United Negro Col­lege Fund (UNCF) by Fred­er­ick D. Pat­ter­son, for which was orga­nized to help sup­port African Amer­i­can col­lege stu­dents. At Prince­ton, John Leroy Howard is the first to grad­u­ate from the Navy’s V-12 program.

1948: James Everett Ward and Arthur Jew­ell Wil­son, Jr. both admit­ted to the Navy’s V-12 Pro­gram in 1945 grad­u­ate from Prince­ton.  On August 24th, Prince­ton issued a state­ment to the Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee on the Assem­bly of the State Leg­is­la­ture in response to the Pro­posed Act Assem­bly 512, leg­is­la­tion that chal­lenged dis­crim­i­na­tory prac­tices in insti­tu­tions of higher learn­ing in NJ: “It is, how­ever, the posi­tion of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity that dis­crim­i­na­tory prac­tices in a pri­vate edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tions can­not be cor­rected, in any fun­da­men­tal or long-range man­ner, by police leg­is­la­tion. The only sound pre­scrip­tion for their erad­i­ca­tion is to pro­vide a cli­mate in which they can­not thrive. No puni­tive law can cre­ate such a climate.”

1951: Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity con­ferred the Doc­tor of Laws hon­orary degree upon activist, intel­lec­tual, and politi­cian Ralph John­son Bunch, mak­ing him the first African Amer­i­can to receive such an honor from the col­lege. In addi­tion, Joseph Ralph Moss was the first African Amer­i­can admit­ted after the war in the fall of 1947. He grad­u­ated on June 12, 1951.

1954: Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion deci­sion holds that racially seg­re­gated schools are inher­ently unequal.

1955: Prince­ton appoints its first African Amer­i­can pro­fes­sor, Charles T. Davis.

1957: The “Lit­tle Rock Nine” inte­grates Lit­tle Rock Cen­tral High School in Arkansas.

1958: In response to the Cold War, Con­gress autho­rizes the National Defense Edu­ca­tion Act, which pro­vides fed­eral aid to improve the teach­ing of math, sci­ence and for­eign lan­guages and cre­ates the first fed­eral loans for higher education.

1959: Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity con­ferred the Doc­tor of Human­i­ties hon­orary degree upon opera singer Mar­ian Ander­son, mak­ing her the first African Amer­i­can woman to receive such an honor from the college.

1960: The Stu­dent Non­vi­o­lent Coor­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee (SNCC) was formed by an inter­ra­cial group of col­lege stu­dents. SNCC was instru­men­tal in help­ing to ener­gize col­lege stu­dents and encour­aged their involve­ment in the Civil Rights move­ment, par­tic­u­larly sit-ins and free­dom rides.

1962: James Mered­ith was the first African Amer­i­can stu­dent to enroll at the Uni­ver­sity of Mississippi.

1963: The Prince­ton Coop­er­a­tive School-College pro­gram was estab­lished, aim­ing to “enlarge the pool of qual­i­fied Negro can­di­dates for higher edu­ca­tion.” It later sought to include stu­dents from other socio-economically dis­ad­van­taged groups from area pub­lic and pri­vate schools.

1964: Prince­ton awards a Ph.D degree to a woman, T’sai-ying Cheng, for the first time.  In the same year, Prince­ton ends com­pul­sory chapel for freshmen.

By the mid-1960s, access to higher edu­ca­tion is increas­ingly viewed as a social jus­tice imper­a­tive and cor­rec­tive “Affir­ma­tive Action” mea­sure for under-represented pop­u­la­tions.  Major fed­eral leg­is­la­tion expands pro­tec­tions for a vari­ety of pop­u­la­tions. Pri­vate col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties begin to rede­fine their role as the edu­ca­tors of soci­etal lead­ers to include women and mem­bers of minor­ity groups in the lead­er­ship cadre.

1965: The Higher Edu­ca­tion Act increases fed­eral funds for col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, cre­ates schol­ar­ships, and pro­vides low-interest loans for students.

1968: Carl A. Fields is appointed as assis­tant dean of the col­lege, becom­ing the first African Amer­i­can to serve as dean at an Ivy League insti­tu­tion.  In the same year, Suzanne Keller becomes the first tenured female mem­ber of the fac­ulty and Henry and Cecelia Drewry were hired to teach Princeton’s first courses in black his­tory and cul­ture. In Octo­ber and Novem­ber, the Com­mit­tee for Black Aware­ness sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als per­tain­ing to improv­ing the recruit­ment efforts, admis­sion and expe­ri­ence of African Amer­i­can grad­u­ate stu­dents at the college.

1969: Prince­ton trustees vote to admit women to the under­grad­u­ate stu­dent body.  In this same year, the Ford foun­da­tion donated $1 mil­lion dol­lars to Howard Uni­ver­sity, Yale, and Mor­gan State Uni­ver­sity to help pre­pare fac­ulty mem­bers to teach African Amer­i­can stud­ies courses.

1971: Third World Cen­ter (now Carl A. Fields Cen­ter) and Women’s Cen­ter founded. This same year, Swann v. Char­lotte Meck­len­burg (1971) made the bus­ing of stu­dents for the pur­pose of pro­mot­ing inte­gra­tion in pub­lic schools con­sti­tu­tional. This case was sug­ges­tive of how the nation was still grap­pling with the imple­men­ta­tion of the Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion decision.

1972: Title IX of the Edu­ca­tion Amend­ments of 1972 bans dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of gender.

1974: A group of Princeton’s Puerto Rican and Chi­cano stu­dents, which included Sonia Sotomayor, peti­tioned the Office of Health, Edu­ca­tion, and Wel­fare to review the college’s Affir­ma­tive Action pol­icy, par­tic­u­larly, what the stu­dents charged were Princeton’s defi­cien­cies in address­ing the con­cerns of Puerto Rican and Chi­cano stu­dents. There­after, Sotomayor went on to pro­pose the first stu­dent ini­ti­ated sem­i­nar on the his­tory and pol­i­tics of Puerto-Rico to be admin­is­tered in the spring of 1974.

1973: Sec­tion 504 of the Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Act guar­an­tees civil rights for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties in the con­text of federally-funded institutions.

1978: Regents of the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia v. Bakke deci­sion con­demns use of quo­tas in col­lege admis­sion but con­cludes that it is per­mis­si­ble to take race into account, as one among sev­eral fac­tors, in seek­ing to secure the edu­ca­tional ben­e­fits of diver­sity.  Jus­tice Powell’s deci­sion quotes Pres­i­dent William Bowen’s writ­ing on the value of diversity.

Dur­ing the 1980s and 1990s, def­i­n­i­tions of diver­sity in a higher edu­ca­tion con­text broaden to include a wider range of dif­fer­ence in expe­ri­ence and back­ground, includ­ing dis­abil­i­ties, reli­gion, socio-economic class, sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, national ori­gin, etc.  Work­place con­cep­tions of diver­sity as a form of com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, par­tic­u­larly in a glob­al­ized world, enter the national dialogue.

1992: Tiger Inn becomes the last Eat­ing Club to accept women.

1993: On March 1^st, Vice Provost Ruth Sim­mons issues “Report on Cam­pus Race Relations.”

1994: Cen­ter for Jew­ish Life established.

1995: Eth­nic stud­ies protest waged by stu­dents at Prince­ton cul­mi­nated with a sit-in at Nas­sau Hall. The stu­dents were call­ing for a more diverse lib­eral arts cur­ricu­lum that would include Asian and Latin Amer­i­can studies.

1998: Prince­ton takes first major steps to trans­form its finan­cial aid poli­cies, fol­lowed in 2001 by the ground-breaking “no-loan” policy.

2002: Princeton’s Office of the Vice Pres­i­dent for Cam­pus Life launched the Bild­ner Fund for the Advance­ment of Diver­sity on Cam­pus. These funds were used to sup­port pro­gram­ming and projects deal­ing with race, eth­nic­ity, gen­der, faith, class, social jus­tice, among oth­ers issues.

2003: Supreme Court upholds the affir­ma­tive action poli­cies of the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan in Grut­ter v. Bollinger.

2005: Prince­ton launches the Les­bian Gay Bisex­ual Trans­gen­der Center.

2006: Prince­ton launches the Office of Dis­abil­i­ties Services.

2007: Prince­ton announces a strate­gic plan to expand its inter­na­tional ini­tia­tives. In addi­tion, the Cen­ter for African Amer­i­can Stud­ies (CAAS) opens in Stan­hope Hall.

2009: Prince­ton hires the country’s first full-time col­lege Hindu Chap­lain. Also, the pro­gram in Latino Stud­ies is estab­lished dur­ing this year.

2011: Princeton’s Pro­gram in Women and Gen­der Stud­ies changed its name to the Pro­gram in Gen­der and Sex­u­al­ity Stud­ies to “reflect the new devel­op­ment and chang­ing focus of schol­ar­ship in the field.”