The Education of Betsey Stockton: An Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom

With Gregory Nobles

Thursday October 11, 2022, at 7pm ET

Approx. 1 hour

This hybrid program will be held in person at Antiquarian Hall and livestreamed to a virtual audience on YouTube. Closed captioning will be available for virtual attendees. COVID-19 vaccinations are required for all in person visitors. Doors open at 6:30pm and we encourage you to arrive early to present your proof of vaccination.

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Join us as historian Gregory Nobles discusses his latest publication, The Education of Betsey Stockton: An Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom. The life of Betsey Stockton (ca. 1798–1865) is a testament to the courage and commitment of a Black woman whose persistence grew into grassroots resistance to racism in the antebellum North. When she was a child, Betsey Stockton was “given, as a slave” to the household of Rev. Ashbel Green, a prominent pastor and later the president of what is now Princeton University. Although she never went to school, she devoured the books in Green’s library. After being emancipated, she used her education to benefit other people of color, first in Hawai‘i as a missionary, then in Philadelphia, and, for the last three decades of her life, in Princeton, New Jersey—a college town with a genteel veneer that never fully hid its racial hostility. Betsey Stockton became a revered figure in Princeton’s sizeable Black population, a founder of religious and educational institutions, and a leader engaged in the day-to-day business of building communities.

Gregory Nobles is Professor Emeritus of history at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Elected to AAS membership in 1995, he has served in a variety of roles, most recently as the Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence, 2016-2017, during which time he began research for The Education of Betsey Stockton: An Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 2022).