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Watterson, who now teaches in the University of Pennsylvania’s creative writing program, excerpted her Princeton students’ interviews, organized them into thematic chapters, and wrote introductions placing the residents’ stories in historical context. The book is based largely on interviews that three dozen University students conducted between 19, initially as an assignment for two writing courses taught by journalist and author Kathryn Watterson. The book brings to vivid life the working-class neighborhood’s experiences of racism and segregation, as well as the strong bonds of community that helped residents survive in what was often called “the North’s most Southern town” or “the South’s most Northern town.” Rivers is one of dozens of Witherspoon residents who tell their stories in I Hear My People Singing: Voices of African American Princeton, an oral history of Princeton’s three-centuries-old black community that Princeton University Press will publish in May. “We knew that when you crossed Nassau Street and you went to the University, that was not us.” It was never open - never,” Leonard Rivers, who grew up in Princeton and later coached football and baseball at the University, recalls in a new book about the neighborhood. And for much of the 20th century, that imposing wrought-iron portal wordlessly conveyed an unmistakable message about the University’s relationship with the black community. FitzRandolph Gate, the official entrance to the University campus, stands at the top of Witherspoon Street, the main artery of Princeton’s historically African American Witherspoon neighborhood.

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