March 22, 2023
I Hear My People Singing: Voices of African-American Princeton
Kathryn (“Kitsi”) Watterson
Journalist; Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania
Shirley Satterfeild, Penelope Edwards-Carter (guest presenters), Kathryn Watterson (speaker), and Lanny Jones (introducer)
Minutes of the 24th Meeting of the 81st Year
President John Cotton called the meeting to order at 10:15, at which time he led the invocation, noting that we “almost” got the first verse of America correct. Maybe next week.
Julie Denny read the minutes of the previous meeting.
There were several guests, none of whom were being introduced as prospective members. They were:
Nancy Prince, guest of Welmoet van Kammen;
Nancy Light, guest of Madelaine Shellaby;
Penelope Edwards-Carter, guest of Shirley Satterfield;
Sheldon Sturgis and Tatiana Popova, guests of Lanny Jones
A moment of silence honored the death of William David Humes, an Old Guard member since 2017.
Lanny Jones introduced the speaker and two guest presenters.
Kathryn “Kitsi” Watterson is an accomplished journalist who has written for magazines, literary journals, and newspapers, including the New York Times and International Herald Tribune. Three of her previous books were New York Times Notable Books of the Year.
Kitsi was born in Iowa City, Iowa, and received her B.A. from the University of Arizona. She came to Philadelphia as a reporter and feature writer for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, and now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
Also introduced were Shirley Satterfield, Old Guard Member, a former teacher/guidance counselor in Princeton and Historian of the Witherspoon Jackson (W-J) neighborhood, and Penelope “Penny” Edwards Carter, longtime Town Clerk of the Borough of Princeton, both of whose parents were contributors to the oral histories in the book, I Hear My People Singing, published by Princeton University Press in 2017.
The program began as a “Two-Stool” format where Lanny asked questions of the speaker. As the widely acknowledged Master of the Two-Stool format, Lanny’s questions provoked not just answers, but narratives that took the audience inside the book, the author, and the subject matter. And Lanny’s other secret that was well in evidence is knowing when to be quiet and “just listen.”
First up: “How did the book come about? What was its evolution?
The story: In 1999, while teaching “non-fiction creative writing” at Princeton, Watterson read that students retain classroom learning for only about three months. She wanted to give them experience in “worlds they had not lived in.”
Henry F. “Hank” Pannell, a Princeton maintenance supervisor and Buster Thomas, a labor negotiator, expressed to Kitsi the urgent need for an oral history of the neighborhood “before it’s too late.” That was the match that, as she related, caused Kitsi’s hair to “catch on fire.”
Ninety-eight-year-old Albert Hines was the first of 15 elders interviewed by the team. Hines told the story of his grandfather, the first in his family to arrive in Princeton. Grandpa was nicknamed “Runner,” because he was able to outrun the dogs that plantation owners would unleash to try to catch runaway slaves.
Were there surprises? asked Lanny. She discussed two:
That one in six residents of W-J had family connections going back to slavery. She described how Richard Stockton arrived in 1696 with sever persons in servitude. She shared a statistic that seemed to say New Jersey had more slaves than all other states, but the correct statistic is more likely that NJ had more slaves per capita than any other free state. The first nine presidents of Princeton University were slave holders, and according to historian Craig Steven Wilder, in the 1700s, one out of six residents in Princeton were Black/of African descent, and nearly every white family in Princeton owned at least one Black person.
And the second surprise was that integration of Princeton Schools in 1948 was a net negative for the first generation of integrated black children. The teachers in the School for Colored Children were fully dedicated to the kids, as you might expect. But many of the teachers in the previously all-white school, Nassau Street School, considered the Black students as inferior, wouldn’t call on them, and generally ignored them. College applications by Black students plummeted from previous levels after integration.
Next, what impact did the project have on the Princeton University students who participated?
One wrote a letter to the author, saying, “This experience changed the trajectory of my life. I realized that personal greatness comes from character and grace, not a list of accomplishments."
Community was a constant theme of the oral histories in her book. The team gathered for Wednesday night pizza, and often the interviewees would attend, reinforcing the bonds between the community and the students. Albert Einstein often walked W-J and called slavery America’s worst disease.
Betsy Stockton was born into slavery and ended up starting the Princeton School for Colored Children, teaching kids by day and adult literacy by night.
There was a Black newspaper called the Princeton Citizen. At the time, the “white” newspapers would report white victims of crimes and fires by name, but Black victims only by occupation, such as “maid.”
Shirley Satterfield read from her mother’s narrative in the book, recounting a story about Alice Satterfield once telling her daughter that if there were ever any race trouble, she should ask the trouble-maker why, then tell the teacher, and then defend herself. Alice got a call from the principal saying Shirley’s sister had hit another child. When questioned, she said, “He called me a nigger, and I asked ‘why.’ No answer. I told the teacher, who did nothing. So I hit him over the head with my lunchbox.”
Penny Carter told of her mother’s relocation to Princeton from South Carolina as a child in the 1920s, and that, in 1963, Princeton Mayor Henry Patterson hired Penny to work for the town, the first Black female to do so. Patterson told Penny’s mother that Penny was “so cute” in a photo of her as a child in a pink dress. Katheen, replied, “That’s not new. I already knew she was cute.”
The “community” kept coming back. Witherspoon Presbyterian Church would hold an annual fall harvest fund raiser, the motto for which was “poor in means, rich in faith.” Alice Satterfield walked to farms miles around Princeton arranging for meat and produce.
During questions, Shirley recounted that the community taught “manners, respect, and doing a good job.” It was not a neighborhood as a “laborhood,” as residents of Witherspoon provided much of the construction and domestic labor for Princeton.
The storytellers in the book came back again and again to community. There was the Polish shoemaker, and Billy the Greek who made the best hot sausages.
Our Little Worldly Community was how life in Witherspoon-Jackson was described. And the oral histories of the 55 elders who participated in Kitsi Watterson’s book help keep the story going…now and into the future.
Respectfully submitted,
Owen G. Leach
Julie Denny read the minutes of the previous meeting.
There were several guests, none of whom were being introduced as prospective members. They were:
Nancy Prince, guest of Welmoet van Kammen;
Nancy Light, guest of Madelaine Shellaby;
Penelope Edwards-Carter, guest of Shirley Satterfield;
Sheldon Sturgis and Tatiana Popova, guests of Lanny Jones
A moment of silence honored the death of William David Humes, an Old Guard member since 2017.
Lanny Jones introduced the speaker and two guest presenters.
Kathryn “Kitsi” Watterson is an accomplished journalist who has written for magazines, literary journals, and newspapers, including the New York Times and International Herald Tribune. Three of her previous books were New York Times Notable Books of the Year.
Kitsi was born in Iowa City, Iowa, and received her B.A. from the University of Arizona. She came to Philadelphia as a reporter and feature writer for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, and now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
Also introduced were Shirley Satterfield, Old Guard Member, a former teacher/guidance counselor in Princeton and Historian of the Witherspoon Jackson (W-J) neighborhood, and Penelope “Penny” Edwards Carter, longtime Town Clerk of the Borough of Princeton, both of whose parents were contributors to the oral histories in the book, I Hear My People Singing, published by Princeton University Press in 2017.
The program began as a “Two-Stool” format where Lanny asked questions of the speaker. As the widely acknowledged Master of the Two-Stool format, Lanny’s questions provoked not just answers, but narratives that took the audience inside the book, the author, and the subject matter. And Lanny’s other secret that was well in evidence is knowing when to be quiet and “just listen.”
First up: “How did the book come about? What was its evolution?
The story: In 1999, while teaching “non-fiction creative writing” at Princeton, Watterson read that students retain classroom learning for only about three months. She wanted to give them experience in “worlds they had not lived in.”
Henry F. “Hank” Pannell, a Princeton maintenance supervisor and Buster Thomas, a labor negotiator, expressed to Kitsi the urgent need for an oral history of the neighborhood “before it’s too late.” That was the match that, as she related, caused Kitsi’s hair to “catch on fire.”
Ninety-eight-year-old Albert Hines was the first of 15 elders interviewed by the team. Hines told the story of his grandfather, the first in his family to arrive in Princeton. Grandpa was nicknamed “Runner,” because he was able to outrun the dogs that plantation owners would unleash to try to catch runaway slaves.
Were there surprises? asked Lanny. She discussed two:
That one in six residents of W-J had family connections going back to slavery. She described how Richard Stockton arrived in 1696 with sever persons in servitude. She shared a statistic that seemed to say New Jersey had more slaves than all other states, but the correct statistic is more likely that NJ had more slaves per capita than any other free state. The first nine presidents of Princeton University were slave holders, and according to historian Craig Steven Wilder, in the 1700s, one out of six residents in Princeton were Black/of African descent, and nearly every white family in Princeton owned at least one Black person.
And the second surprise was that integration of Princeton Schools in 1948 was a net negative for the first generation of integrated black children. The teachers in the School for Colored Children were fully dedicated to the kids, as you might expect. But many of the teachers in the previously all-white school, Nassau Street School, considered the Black students as inferior, wouldn’t call on them, and generally ignored them. College applications by Black students plummeted from previous levels after integration.
Next, what impact did the project have on the Princeton University students who participated?
One wrote a letter to the author, saying, “This experience changed the trajectory of my life. I realized that personal greatness comes from character and grace, not a list of accomplishments."
Community was a constant theme of the oral histories in her book. The team gathered for Wednesday night pizza, and often the interviewees would attend, reinforcing the bonds between the community and the students. Albert Einstein often walked W-J and called slavery America’s worst disease.
Betsy Stockton was born into slavery and ended up starting the Princeton School for Colored Children, teaching kids by day and adult literacy by night.
There was a Black newspaper called the Princeton Citizen. At the time, the “white” newspapers would report white victims of crimes and fires by name, but Black victims only by occupation, such as “maid.”
Shirley Satterfield read from her mother’s narrative in the book, recounting a story about Alice Satterfield once telling her daughter that if there were ever any race trouble, she should ask the trouble-maker why, then tell the teacher, and then defend herself. Alice got a call from the principal saying Shirley’s sister had hit another child. When questioned, she said, “He called me a nigger, and I asked ‘why.’ No answer. I told the teacher, who did nothing. So I hit him over the head with my lunchbox.”
Penny Carter told of her mother’s relocation to Princeton from South Carolina as a child in the 1920s, and that, in 1963, Princeton Mayor Henry Patterson hired Penny to work for the town, the first Black female to do so. Patterson told Penny’s mother that Penny was “so cute” in a photo of her as a child in a pink dress. Katheen, replied, “That’s not new. I already knew she was cute.”
The “community” kept coming back. Witherspoon Presbyterian Church would hold an annual fall harvest fund raiser, the motto for which was “poor in means, rich in faith.” Alice Satterfield walked to farms miles around Princeton arranging for meat and produce.
During questions, Shirley recounted that the community taught “manners, respect, and doing a good job.” It was not a neighborhood as a “laborhood,” as residents of Witherspoon provided much of the construction and domestic labor for Princeton.
The storytellers in the book came back again and again to community. There was the Polish shoemaker, and Billy the Greek who made the best hot sausages.
Our Little Worldly Community was how life in Witherspoon-Jackson was described. And the oral histories of the 55 elders who participated in Kitsi Watterson’s book help keep the story going…now and into the future.
Respectfully submitted,
Owen G. Leach