Bennett College

Overview

Bennett College is a private historically Black liberal arts college for women in Greensboro, North Carolina, founded in 1873 as a coeducational normal school to train freedmen as teachers, becoming a four-year women’s college in 1926 — one of only two HBCUs that enroll women exclusively, alongside Spelman College. In 1956, Willa Beatrice Player was installed as Bennett’s president, becoming the first African-American woman to lead an accredited four-year liberal arts college, and she encouraged her students toward activism; beginning in 1960, Bennett students took part in the ultimately successful campaign to integrate lunch counters at Greensboro variety stores. In December 2018, the college’s accrediting body announced its intent to revoke Bennett’s accreditation after two years of probation over its finances; an emergency fundraising campaign raised $8.2 million by February 2019, but the accreditor withdrew accreditation anyway — Bennett sued, and a court ordered its accreditation to remain in place while the case proceeded.