Bennett College was founded on August 1, 1873, as a
normal school for teacher training. It opened with seventy African-American men and women (
freedmen, or former slaves). The school's founder,
Albion W. Tourgee, was a
Civil War veteran and jurist from Ohio who worked in North Carolina during Reconstruction and championed the cause of racial justice. The school held its inaugural classes in the basement of Warnersville Methodist Episcopal Church North (now St. Matthew's United Methodist) in Greensboro. Bennett was coeducational and offered both high school and college-level courses, to help many blacks compensate for their previous lack of educational opportunity. The year after its founding, the school became sponsored by the
Freedman's Aid Society and Southern Education Society of the northern
Methodist Episcopal Church (like the Baptists, the Methodist churches had split in the years before the war over the issue of slavery, and established two regional conferences). Bennett remained affiliated for 50 years with the Freedman's Aid Society. In 1878, freedmen purchased land for a future college campus (which was developed as the current site). Hearing about the college, New York businessman Lyman Bennett (1801–1879) In 1888, Bennett Seminary elected its first African-American president, the Reverend
Charles N. Grandison. Grandison spearheaded a successful drive to have the school chartered as a four-year college in 1889. Two of the first African-American bishops of the
Methodist Episcopal Church were graduates of the college, including
Robert Elijah Jones, an 1895 graduate. His brother was the future Bennett College president
David Dallas Jones. Under the direction of Reverend Grandison and succeeding President Jordan Chavis, Bennett College grew from 11 undergraduate students to a total of 251 undergraduates by 1905. The enrollment leveled out in the 1910s at roughly 300. In 1916, a survey conducted by the
Phelps-Stokes Foundation recommended Bennett College be converted to a college exclusively for women. The
Women's Home Missionary Society, which had supported women at the college since 1886, had found that there was no four-year college exclusively for African-American women, and they wanted to establish such a college. The
North Carolina Board of Education offered Bennett College for that purpose. After ten years, during which it studied other locations and conducted fundraising, the Women's Home Missionary Society and the NC Board of Education decided to develop the college in its current location. Bennett fully transitioned to a women's college in 1926. (
Note: The Women's Home Missionary Society's on-campus involvement with Bennett women dates back to 1886.) Around this time, Bennett alumnae were nicknamed the "Bennett Belles" and the school gained a reputation as an institution of quality. In 1926,
David Dallas Jones was installed as president of the new women's college and served. Under his leadership, the college expanded, reaching an enrollment of 400. It became known in the black community as the
Vassar College of the South, and Jones recruited faculty, staff, and students, from all cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The school was expanded to a 42-acre campus with 33 buildings, and its endowment increased to $1.5 million. During Player's tenure, Bennett became the first black college to be fully accredited by the
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. On April 21, 1960, Bennett and A&T students were arrested for trespassing at the white
S.H. Kress & Co. lunch counter. Willa B. Player led Bennett until 1966. She was succeeded by Isaac H. Miller. His father had been an administrator at Bennett during President Frank Trigg's tenure. Miller maintained the "Bennett Ideal," despite the social changes of the late 1960s. Students protested the strict dress codes, disciplinary policies, and
curfew. During the 1967–1968 school year, freshwomen walked out of dormitories one minute before curfew. Students took over the student union while demanding change to college policies. Miller surrounded the buildings with campus security, and brought in family and sleeping bags, changing the protest to a campus-wide "sleepover". Students were required to wear dresses or skirts, and hats and gloves until the early 1970s. Before Cole's tenure, Bennett College had been under SACS probation for two years, which was finally lifted in 2002. On July 1, 2012, Esther Terry '61 became the first alumna to lead the college. Already serving as the college's provost, Terry was made interim president for a full academic year. In 2013, the Board of Trustees announced Terry would be the sixteenth president of Bennett College. Former provost Phyllis Worthy Dawkins assumed the presidency on August 15, 2016. Dawkins focused on faculty/staff recruitment and reinvigorating living-learning communities; she launched a leadership institute. She was replaced in 2019 by Suzanne Walsh, who was previously deputy director of the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Postsecondary Success division. Since 1930, Bennett has graduated more than 7,000 students.
Accreditations and memberships In 1930, on the graduation of its first four women with a four-year bachelor's degree, the "A" rating was granted to the college by the North Carolina State Department of Education. This same rating was granted to the college in 1936 by the
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), the college's
regional accreditor. Today, the college is accredited by the
Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and the
National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). In 1957, Bennett was one of the first and the only private black college to be admitted into full membership in the
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. It has also been a member of the American Association of Colleges, The Commission on Black Colleges of the University Senate, the American Association of Registrars and Admission Officers, the American Council of Education, the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, the College Fund/UNCF, the Council on Independent Colleges, the Women's College Coalition, the North Carolina Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, the NCB Piedmont Automated Library System (NCBPALS), the Greater Greensboro Consortium, and the New York University Faculty Resource Network. In February 2019 it lost accreditation although it had succeeded in building its financial resources. : 1877–1881: Edward Olin Thayer : 1913–1915: James E. Wallace : 1915–1926:
Frank Trigg Bennett College for Women : 1926–1955: David Dallas Jones : 1955–1966:
Willa Beatrice Player – Bennett's first female president : 1966–1987: Isaac H. Miller, Jr. : 1987–2001:
Gloria Randle Scott : 2001–2002: Althia F. Collins : 2002–2007:
Johnnetta B. Cole : 2007–2012:
Julianne Malveaux : 2012–2013: Esther Terry – Bennett's first alumna president : 2013–2016: Rosalind Fuse-Hall : 2016–2019: Phyllis Worthy Dawkins : 2019–present: Suzanne Walsh == Academics ==