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Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina is one of two remaining African American women's colleges in the United States. It currently serves roughly 600 undergraduates.
Bennett's founding and coeducational years
Bennett College was founded in 1873 as a normal school to provide education to newly emancipated slaves, holding its inaugural classes in the basement of Warnersville Methodist Episcopal Church North (now St. Matthew's United Methodist) in Greensboro. At its inception, Bennett was a coeducational school (offering both high school and college level courses), and remained so until 1926. The year after its founding, the school became sponsored by the Freedmen's Aid Society and Southern Education Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The school remained in temporary quarters for several years, until donations from a New York businessman named Lyman Bennett provided sufficient funds to build a permanent campus. Bennett died soon thereafter, and the school was named Bennett Seminary in his honor.
In 1888, Bennett Seminary elected its first African-American school president, the Reverend Charles Grandison. Grandison spearheaded a successful drive to have the school chartered as a four year college in 1889. Under his direction, and the direction of the president who followed him (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.
Reorganization as a women's college In 1926, Bennett College, which had long had a close working relationship with the Women's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, chose to reorganize as Bennett College for Women. In the wake of World War I, increased opportunities for women had increased the need for colleges that would prepare young women for greater social and commercial opportunity. David Dallas Jones was appointed the first president of the women's college -- under his leadership, the high school campus at Bennett was closed to focus the attentions of the staff fully on expanding and enriching the college curriculum. After Jones's death, Willa B. Player assumed the presidency -- under her guidance, Bennett College became one of the first 15 four-year Negro colleges to be admitted to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Bennett today Bennett College's current president is Johnnetta B. Cole, a graduate of Oberlin College and Northwestern University, a professor emerita of Emory University, and past president of Spelman College. Roughly 600 students, all women and primarily of African-American descent, are enrolled in one of Bennett's 24 degree programs. Bennett is consistently ranked among the top historically black colleges and universities, both for its academic achievements and its relatively reasonable tuition rates.
Notable alumnae Among Bennett's more distinguished alumnae are: - Dr. Glenora M. Putnam, the first African-American woman to serve as president of the national YWCA
- Faye Robinson, an accomplished and internationally well-known opera singer
- Dr. Hatie Carwell, a noted research scientist and expert in the study of radiation
- Barbara Hamm, the first African-American woman to serve as a television news director in the United States
- Patricia Brown, serving as Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA) as of 2004
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