Joseph Henry (1797-1878)

Joseph Henry spent fourteen years as a professor at the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, where he established a physical laboratory and taught natural history, chemistry, architecture, and natural philosophy. Rarely mentioned in Henry’s research is his assistant, Sam Parker, a freed black man who worked with Henry during his tenure as professor. Parker was well known by students and appears in many of their letters and notes. Parker was indispensable to Henry’s research, from fixing all manner of issues in the laboratory to, at times, serving as a test subject during electrical experiments. While Parker was recognized as essential in the laboratory, he was often teased, taunted, and sometimes worse by the students. Little is known about what happened to Parker after Henry moved to Washington, D.C. but the legacy of his contribution to Henry’s work lives on today.

Henry supported the New Jersey Colonization Society, which sought to move freed blacks from the United States to Liberia. He believed that Africans were not physically able to survive the cold climate of the North and that there was a hierarchy of human races. In 1862, while serving as the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Henry hosted a lecture series featuring prominent abolitionists; however, he barred renowned African American activist Frederick Douglass from speaking.