Editor’s note: This story is part of a special series by Princeton University journalism students reporting on the discovery of an African burial ground in Key West, Florida, and how the legacy of slavery still reverberates there and beyond.
“Congratulations!”
I started this complicated story in my living room back home in Pennsylvania in the fall of 2023, staring at a giant tiger head on my computer screen, letting it sink in that I had just gotten into Princeton. I had a lot of emotions running through me, chiefly disbelief. Sure, it meant that the work I had put in during high school had paid off, but it wasn’t my work that meant the most to me. What my acceptance signified, more importantly, was that the struggle of my parents was showing some of its fruit.
My family had suffered enormously during the Liberian conflicts of the 1990s. I knew that I wanted to use my education to help Liberia and struggling nations like it, and I was ecstatic at the resources Princeton was offering me to do so. My parents were even more overjoyed, and not just because of the generous financial aid I would receive. When my father came to the United States after fleeing Liberia’s Second Civil War, he had an uphill battle toward raising a son he would send off to the U.S. News Number One-ranked university in the country — and another, younger one currently on track to surpass the first academically. I didn’t expect the opportunity, nor did I fully appreciate what I had gotten myself into.
Dr. Artemus Gaye’s family worked on the Firestone rubber plantation, whose profits funded the Princeton University library. Courtesy of Artemus W. Gaye, PhD DURING MY SOPHOMORE YEAR, as a fun extra, I enrolled in a journalism class. We would be reporting on a little known 19th-century story of trafficked slaves who were emancipated and sent from Key West, Florida, to West Africa to live freely. Early on in the class, I was shocked to hear my professor mention Liberia as their final destination.
Ten weeks into the semester, the class met Dr. Artemus Gaye, a scholar and activist from Liberia’s capital, Monrovia. He had taken our professor to meet the descendants of those freed slaves, and now he was visiting our class to share their story, and others like it. He started off with a brief but emotional history of his life in Liberia. He then took us on a tour of Princeton’s grounds, which he was seeing for the first time as he spoke about its connections to Liberia.
Editor’s picks
The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far
The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
100 Best Movies of the 21st Century
First stop: Pyne Hall, where Dr. Gaye and his two cousins looked up at the looming, nearly 18-foot statue of John Witherspoon. The Princeton University President from 1768 to 1794, Witherspoon was revered for expanding the campus enormously, as well as for signing the Declaration of Independence. Witherspoon was also a source of controversy four years ago, when student activists protested the statue venerating the man who resisted emancipation in his day, holding two enslaved people himself. Witherspoon believed that freed Blacks would be “free to their own ruin.” Despite the 2022 protests, two years later, in October of 2024, the university’s trustees decided that Witherspoon’s legacy was nuanced enough to let the positives justify his central place on campus.
Following Witherspoon’s gaze, Dr. Gaye led our group across Firestone Plaza toward the library of the same namesake, lovingly nicknamed “Stone” by students. While Princeton undergrads may think of Firestone Library as the dreaded location of their caffeine-fueled lock-in sessions during finals week, for Dr. Gaye and his family, the name holds a very different significance. His grandparents, aunts, and uncles — the parents of the cousins at his side — worked on the Firestone plantation in Harbel, some 40 miles southeast of Monrovia, still the largest contiguous rubber farm in the world.
Related Content
‘Since It Is a Black Cemetery and Has the Stigma of Slavery, No One Wants to Touch It’
The Secrets Buried Beneath the Sands of Key West
‘He Didn’t Judge Us’: The Priest Throwing a Lifeline to Men Leaving Prison
Cardi B Will Judge New Yorkers' Jingles for Zohran Mamdani's Free 2-K Song Contest
Dr. Gaye’s cousin, Nathan, recalled the stories of his parents and other workers at the plantation. He told us of the rancid smell of burning rubber. He told us of their $10 a month wage. He told us of the blackened shoulders and hunched backs, earned over years and years carrying bars holding buckets of latex — these were the backs that paid for our late-night study sessions and the extensive special collections housed deep in the heart of Firestone’s six floors and 70 miles of stacks.
Statue of John Witherspoon, Princeton University president from 1768 to 1794 who was also a slaveowner. John Greim/LightRocket/Getty Images Next, the group made its way down Nassau St. to the steps of the Nassau Presbyterian Church, where Dr. Gaye read passages by Reverend Robert Finley, a board member of the Princeton Theological Seminary over a century ago. Finley spoke of how free Black Americans would be disruptive to societal order and would be better off demonstrating their abilities in the “land of their fathers,” where they could civilize the savage Africans.
As his family’s griot, this story was particularly important for Gaye to tell. A griot, in West Africa, is the family’s designated storyteller. They are tasked with keeping track of records and family history and passing on oral tradition to the next generation. Dr. Gaye recounted his memories of growing up in Liberia, where he was a budding scholar who narrowly avoided becoming a child soldier. Instead, he was sent off to study abroad, his family’s story both propelling him and placing a grave weight on his shoulders. To Gaye, his family, and many others, including me, the story of Princeton and its long history with the Republic of Liberia must be told.
IN HIS 2021 BOOK Empire of Rubber, historian Gregg Mitman writes that “the history of Liberia is one intertwined with the history of the plantation in all its forms and meanings” — plantation labor in Liberia was a continuation of ancestral pain. The nation was founded between 1821 and 1822 by the American Colonization Society (ACS), with the premise that it would be an independent haven on the African continent to which the formerly enslaved could be sent. The selling points of this expensive project varied depending on who was speaking or listening, but they were equally, if uniquely, demeaning to Black people. One was that of course American social life could not function in harmony with free Blacks roaming the country as equals. Another was that they ought to return to their homeland: It’s where they belong and want to be. As a bonus, they could civilize and spread Christianity to the “savage tribes” inhabiting the land. This was the rhetoric of the ACS, which comprised numerous prominent white men who shrouded the movement in the language of progressivism to conceal what was an obvious deportation scheme.
Many of these early advocates were Princeton affiliates. Charles Mercer (class of 1797) was a figurehead in the African colonization movement. He sought out Elias Caldwell (1796) and Rev. Finley (1787) for support, and the three men would be key founders of what would become the ACS. Smith Thompson (1788) was another a major player, appointed by President James Monroe to enforce the 1819 act which allowed for the relocation of foreign slaves traded illegally (the Atlantic slave trade was made illegal in 1808). Just a few years later, Liberia would form the perfect place for Thompson to relocate free Black people.
According to Mitman, at an old slave port named Cape Mesurado, the land for Liberia was taken from the indigenous Dei people at gunpoint by Robert F. Stockton, a naval officer and part of a prominent Princeton family known to many of the ACS leaders. Stockton held a pistol to the head of the local chief, “King Peter,” as he was dubbed, after their early negotiations seemed unfavorable. Stockton would later become head of the New Jersey Colonization Society (NJCS), an offshoot of the ACS founded in 1824.
Another major proponent and later president of the NJCS was John Maclean Jr., Princeton University president from 1854 to 1868. Maclean was a beloved member of the Princeton community who was also known as a “dough face,” or a Northern panderer to the South; he was said to be especially accommodating of Southern students, particularly during the Civil War.
The Firestone farm in Harbel, Liberia, is still the world’s largest rubber plantation. Danielle Paquette/”The Washington Post/Getty Images Almost a century later, in 1926, the Firestone Rubber Company founded a massive rubber plantation in Harbel for pennies on the acre. In his seminal book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), historian Walter Rodney wrote, “to all intents and purposes, [Liberia] was a colony of the United States. In 1926, the Firestone Rubber Company of the United States was able to acquire one million acres of forest land in Liberia at a cost of six cents per acre and 1 percent of the value of the exported rubber. Because of the demand for and the strategic importance of rubber, Firestone’s profits from Liberia’s land and labor carried them to the twenty-fifth position among the giant companies of the United States.” This rubber bolstered the American economy and would be a critical foundation for the Allied forces in World War II.
The Firestone plantation’s creation was rife with problems. Natives to the land were displaced as controlled burns left their dwellings charred. As an alternative, they could join the plantation ranks, where indigenous laborers were paid 18 cents per day, distributed to chiefs who often did not give the workers their wages. Throughout the 20th century, men, women, and children were put to work on the plantation, which mimicked Southern antebellum plantations, with rubber “tappers” living in single-room huts without any basic amenities. These laborers produced the material for the tires which made the company fortunes.
It was this wealth that, 21 years later, in 1947, paid for ’Stone, Princeton’s crown jewel sitting right at the top corner of campus, fit with a bust of Harvey Firestone Sr., the head of Firestone Co. during the Liberian land grab. Its unveiling was attended by his sons, including rubber magnates Harvey Jr. (class of 1920) and Leonard (class of 1931), who would continue the company’s close relationship with Princeton. The library eventually amassed one of the largest manuscript collections in the world, helping the university to become a leading research institution while providing Firestone with continued advancements and scientists in the rubber industry.
I have studied many times in Firestone, consciously grateful to be at such a storied academic institution, and blissfully unaware of its role in the pillaging of my father’s country. In the 1990s, rebel forces in Liberia embarked on a protracted and horrifically violent uprising led by Charles Taylor, who forced child soldiers into service and pushed the conflict outside of Liberia’s borders. It was this violence which sent my father, Dr. Gaye, and thousands of other Liberians abroad, and would contribute to the deep trauma of Liberia. Despite Taylor’s naked abuses — which eventually saw him convicted of war crimes in the Hague, and have him serving a 50-year prison sentence — and lack of international backing, the Firestone Company continued to work with him; their million acres fell under his control. Their hands, it seems, were unfortunately tied tight.
Princeton’s connection to the founding and tumultuous history of Liberia is not entirely unknown, and it is certainly not undocumented. Much of the story can even be found on Princeton’s own website, after some deliberate searching. Dr. Gaye, for example, has been telling Liberia’s story for years, and even wrote a book on its history. Even so, many in the Princeton community remain unaware.
Princeton’s entanglements with America’s systems of oppression have been brought to the forefront of university discourse largely through the efforts of student organizers like the Black Justice League, beginning several years ago. Among their demands were the changing of the name of the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs (which is now called the Princeton School for Public and International Affairs due to outcry over President Woodrow Wilson’s racism), designated Black affinity spaces, cultural training for staff, an undergraduate requirement on minority history, and the creation of an African American Studies concentration. However, there has been no formal effort to address Princeton’s relationship with Liberia, the ACS, and Firestone, and how it might be reconciled.
BEHIND THE TWO LOCKED DOORS leading into the offices of Morrison Hall, through reception and a comfortable lounge, around to the end of a short hallway, behind another unmarked and locked door guarded by an electric doorbell with a camera staring back, which sits in front of yet another locked door, sits the office of Eddie Glaude Jr., the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies. I visited him in March to discuss all I had learned and reflected on from Dr. Gaye’s visit. I had heard Dr. Glaude speak before at Princeton, when I attended the annual Malcolm X Memorial Lecture earlier this year, but I’d never had the opportunity to speak with him one on one before. That lecture had occurred in the backdrop of a semester marred by many universities across the country targeting DEI, a federal crackdown on mentions of Black history deemed “woke,” and a freshman class at Princeton with the lowest Black admissions numbers since 1968.
Colleges across America have seen consistent drops in minority, and especially Black, admissions following the 2023 repeal of college and university racial affirmative action programs in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Elite institutions like Princeton have faced particularly sharp declines in Black enrollment. As the effects of the ruling settle in, Princeton’s Black admissions have dwindled from nine percent in 2023 to just 5.4 percent last academic year. These declines, combined with fierce White House-led financial attacks in retaliation for DEI and the uplifting of underprivileged groups at universities, paint a dire picture for higher education.
Professor Glaude listened attentively as I shared the winding history of Liberia and its intimate relationship with Princeton, thinking deeply before sharing his thoughts. Dr. Glaude is never shy about speaking the truth of this country, hence the extra security to his office; he and his family are frequently the target of threats due to his public criticisms of America and white supremacy. He is also a Baldwin aficionado. As I gazed at the three walls of bookshelves filled up to the ceiling, he thumbed through a book pulled from his vast collection. Finding the desired page in about four seconds flat, he quoted from Nothing Personal: “If one cannot use the past, one cannot function in the present, and so one can never be free.”
Trending Stories
Donald Trump Took a Wrecking Ball to the White House. The Next President Must Do the Same
Jimmy Kimmel Says James Talarico Interview Won’t Air on TV After Trump’s FCC Threatened His Show
Lil Durk Acquitted of All Charges at Trial Over Shooting That Killed Quando Rondo's Cousin
Hear Dolly Parton’s First Posthumous Song — From a New Stanley Brothers Tribute Album
There in his office, he told me that “we’re in a moment of disremembering, to use Toni Morrison’s word,” referring to the esteemed writer, longtime Princeton professor, and namesake of the building we sat in. As an institution “often thought of as the ‘Southern Ivy,’” Glaude noted, Princeton “plays a central role [in erasing Black history] in many ways — in reproducing ideologies that would undergird racist policies and institutions in the country… You can see this in regards to slavery, you can see this in regards to Jim Crow, you know, with Woodrow Wilson, why Paul Robeson had to go to Rutgers as opposed to here, how late in the game Princeton actually is in terms of admitting Black students, and the current reality [of Black admissions].”
But remembrance is what we need to strive for. It’s why Dr. Gaye is his family’s griot, it’s why I am an African American Studies major, and it’s why I’m writing this story. I plan to travel back to Liberia, with this newfound knowledge and direction, and visit Monrovia and the Firestone plantation in Harbel to see it today. To see the lives that Princeton and the United States have forgotten, and to see where we can go.
