Bennett College is a private historically black liberal arts college for women in Greensboro, North Carolina. It was founded in 1873 as a normal school to educate freedmen and train both men and women as teachers. Originally coed, in 1926 it became a four-year women's college. It is one of two historically black colleges that enroll only women, the other being Spelman College.
In 1956, Willa Beatrice Player was installed at Bennett College, becoming the first African-American woman president of an accredited, four-year liberal arts college. She encouraged her students to be activists in the issues of the day. Beginning in 1960, Bennett students took part in the ultimately successful campaign in Greensboro to integrate white lunch counters at local variety stores. The college expanded its academic offerings and classes related to women's leadership.
In December 2018, the college's regional accrediting body, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, announced that it intended to revoke Bennett College's accreditation. The college had been on probation for two years due to its considerable financial challenges. The college launched an emergency funding campaign, Change and Progress for Bennett, to raise at least $5 million. By February 2019, the campaign raised $8.2 million. That same month, SACS withdrew accreditation from the college despite fundraising efforts; however, Bennett College filed a lawsuit against the accreditor and the court ordered the accreditation to remain in place pending the legal challenge.
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History
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) provided $10,000 in funding to build a permanent campus. Bennett died soon after. The college was named Bennett Seminary. Hearing of Bennett's philanthropy, his coworkers commissioned a bell to be made in his honor and continued his mission by donating the bell to the school.
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.
Civil Rights Movement
Civil rights activism at Bennett increased throughout the Civil rights movement. In February 1960 students from Bennett College and North Carolina A&T began a civil rights protest in downtown Greensboro that sparked the Greensboro sit-ins. Bettye Davis, class of 1963, committed to sitting at the white-only lunch counter of F. and W. Woolworth's variety store with students from A&T, and to keep returning until the store integrated the facility. On February 4, 1960, close to a dozen "Bennett Belles" were arrested due to their continuing protest at Woolworth's.
On April 21, 1960, Bennett and A&T students were arrested for trespassing at the white S.H. Kress & Co. lunch counter. On April 22, 1960, The Daily News of New York broke the story of the arrests nationally, with front-page headlines and a picture of well-dressed female students entering the back of a paddy wagon without any help from the police officers surrounding it. It reported that Greensboro police were surprised that the "Bennett Belles" had protested, as they were considered refined young women from an "elitist finishing school." At the peak of the sit-in movement, more than 40% of Bennett's student body was jailed. President Player personally visited the students in jail, carrying assignments to them so they would not fall behind in their studies.
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.
Miller collaborated with other colleges and universities in Greensboro to form a consortium that expanded Bennett's academic program by giving students access to other local universities. His administration developed the biomedical research and interdisciplinary studies programs, along with a bridge program in conjunction with Meharry Medical College of Nashville, Tennessee. He collaborated with other HBCU presidents to establish the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, serving on the first board of directors. Miller's plans were supported by alumnae, who donated material and fiscal resources.
21st Century
Bennett underwent numerous changes under Sister President Emerita Johnnetta B. Cole, who was inaugurated in July 2002. In her first year at Bennett, Cole erased the school's $3.8 million deficit and raised an estimated $15 million in funding. Before Cole's tenure, Bennett College had been under SACS probation for two years, which was finally lifted in 2002. The school was revitalized and much-needed renovations were made to campus buildings; new buildings were built. In total, she led a $50 million campaign.
Numerous prominent figures spoke at the campus and some helped raise funds for its operations. Former President Bill Clinton, former US Senator Robert Dole, trustee emerita Maya Angelou, and Oprah Winfrey have all assisted in fundraising. The campaign closed successfully at the end of Cole's tenure on June 30, 2007.
On July 1, 2007, Julianne Malveaux became President of Bennett College. She led a $21 million expansion and renovation project for the college. She increased enrollment, added four new buildings, including a multimedia center, and renovated additional buildings. Malveaux enhanced the overall academic curriculum, which focuses on women's leadership, entrepreneurship, communications, and global studies.
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 Elise Walsh, who was previously deputy director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Postsecondary Success division. Walsh stepped down in June 2025.
Following a period of interim leadership, Bennett named Ronald L. Carter as its acting president in May 2026.
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.
The college lost its accreditation from SACS on February 18, 2019. It was on probation for two years in the early 2000s because the college was struggling with significant financial challenges. In 2016, SACS placed the college on probation again for the same reason. In December 2018, SACS voted to withdraw the college's accreditation. The college launched a fundraising campaign and appealed the SACS decision.
In February 2019 it lost accreditation although it had succeeded in building its financial resources. A court ordered the accreditation to remain upright while the college filed a lawsuit against the accreditor.
Presidents
1874–1877: W.J. Parker (principal)
1877–1881: Edward Olin Thayer
1881–1889: Wilbur F. Steele
1889–1892: Charles N. Grandison
1892–1905: Jordan D. Chavis
1905–1913: Silas A. Peeler
1913–1915: James E. Wallace
1915–1926: Frank Trigg
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
2019–2025: Suzanne Elise Walsh
2025–2026: Teresa Hardee (interim)
2026–present: Ronald L. Carter (acting)
Academics
Bennett College offers 24 majors and nineteen minors under three divisions: the Division of Natural and Behavioral Sciences and Mathematics, the Division of Social Sciences and Education, and the Division of Humanities. These disciplines include degrees in Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Arts and Science in interdisciplinary studies, bachelor of Social Work, and the Bachelor of Fine Arts. Bennett also offers five dual degree programs including Chemistry/Chemical Engineering with NC A&T, Chemistry/Pharmacy with Howard University, Mathematics/Mechanical Engineering with NC A&T, Mathematics/Electrical Engineering with NC A&T, and Mathematics/Industrial Engineering with NC A&T.
The Early/Middle College at Bennett College
The Middle College at Bennett is one of only two all-female high schools in the state of North Carolina. It began in 2003 as a "middle college", serving female 11th- and 12th-grade students who were at risk of dropping out of high school. By 2006, with the help of The New Schools Project Reform Initiative, The Middle College expanded to include 9th and 10th graders and began offering dual enrollment. With dual enrollment, students take college courses and earn transferable college credit as they earn their high school diploma. Students begin taking college courses in their 9th-grade year and may earn up to two years of transferable college credit hours by completion of their senior year.
Campus
Global Learning Center houses administrative offices of the President and Institutional Advancement. The GLC has four classrooms, study rooms and a multipurpose room.
Susie W. Jones Alumnae House, the oldest structure on campus, was built in 1915. Later named for the wife of Bennett's President David D. Jones it is used to house alumnae activities and offices.
Wilbur F. Steele Hall, erected in 1922, is named for the Reverend Wilbur Steele, president of Bennett from 1881 to 1889. Renovations were completed in 2004.
Robert E. Jones Residence Hall, built in 1922, is named for the first black minister elected as a general superintendent with full Episcopal responsibilities in the Methodist Church.
John H. Race Administration Building, erected in 1925, is named for a Methodist church Publishing House official and trustee of Bennett College. It houses Business and Finance, Human Resources, Global Studies, the Entrepreneurship Institute, and Public Relations.
Enrollment Management Center houses the offices of Financial Aid and Admissions.
Pfeiffer Residence Hall, constructed in 1924, was the nucleus of the current Bennett College campus and the first of five structures that bear some variation of the names of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Pfeiffer, the institution's most generous early benefactors.
Black Hall was built in 1937 as Henry Pfeiffer Science Hall and was renamed for Ethel F. Black, a Bennett College trustee, when a new Henry Pfeiffer Science Hall was built in 1967–68. It is one of two principal classroom buildings. The building houses the administrative offices of Enrollment Management, the Registrar's Office, the Division of Social Sciences and Education including the Departments of Business and Economics, Curriculum and Instruction, Political Science and Social Work/Sociology, and one computer laboratory.
Student life
There are over sixty campus social, service, religious, and student government association organizations. Bennett College also has collegiate sports.