WINNER, NEW JERSEY STUDIES ACADEMIC ALLIANCE BOOK AWARD James
Collins Johnson made his name by escaping slavery in Maryland and
fleeing to Princeton, New Jersey, where he built a life in a
bustling community of African Americans working at what is now
Princeton University. After only four years, he was recognized by a
student from Maryland, arrested, and subjected to a trial for
extradition under the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act. On the eve of his
rendition, after attempts to free Johnson by force had failed, a
local aristocratic white woman purchased Johnson's freedom,
allowing him to avoid re-enslavement. The Princeton Fugitive Slave
reconstructs James Collins Johnson's life, from birth and enslaved
life in Maryland to his daring escape, sensational trial for
re-enslavement, and last-minute change of fortune, and through to
the end of his life in Princeton, where he remained a figure of
local fascination. Stories of Johnson's life in Princeton often
describe him as a contented, jovial soul, beloved on campus and
memorialized on his gravestone as "The Students Friend." But these
familiar accounts come from student writings and sentimental
recollections in alumni reports-stories from elite, predominantly
white, often southern sources whose relationships with Johnson were
hopelessly distorted by differences in race and social standing. In
interrogating these stories against archival records, newspaper
accounts, courtroom narratives, photographs, and family histories,
author Lolita Buckner Inniss builds a picture of Johnson on his own
terms, piecing together the sparse evidence and disaggregating him
from the other black vendors with whom he was sometimes confused.
By telling Johnson's story and examining the relationship between
antebellum Princeton's black residents and the economic engine that
supported their community, the book questions the distinction
between employment and servitude that shrinks and threatens to
disappear when an individual's freedom is circumscribed by
immobility, lack of opportunity, and contingency on local
interpretations of a hotly contested body of law.
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