#6

the present management, has had marked success.”7 At the beginning of the following year, T892, North Carolina Conference officials stated with delight that Bennett

opened this year with the largest number present on opening

day in history. This is a new evidence of the confidence

that the peOple have in President Grandison and his faculty.

The respect held by the whites of Greensboro for “the fine spi=

rit at Bennett College and the splendid class of students there," was

given by Mr. Corrothers as an important reason for the excellent race

relations in Greensboro during these years. He remembered that “wealthy

Southern white gentlemen“ lifted their hats to Mrs. Grandison.9

The physical facilities continued to consist of one large build= ing, yet too small for the demands placed upon it. The building served as dormitory and classroom building, and probably contained, based on Corrother's comments, a library, a chapel, and dining rooms for students

and for faculty.10 A new dormitory, the need of which Grandison stress-

ll

ed, seems to have been begun during his first or second year in office.

7Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society,'Quadrennial Re-= port to the General Conference;‘p. 42, in the Twenty-Sixth Annual BS"

port, l892. 8N. C. Conference, Minutes, p. hl.

9Corrothers, EE' cit., p. 207. Corrothers also said that the late Judge Albion w. Tourgge wrote A Fool's Errand in the library of Bennett College. Although Tourgée was associated with the college in various ways (see Chapter II) no evidence for this statement could be found among various newspaper clippings or in a recent, comprehensive biography of Tourgee, Carpetbagger's Crusade: The Life of Albion Wine- ga: Tourgee, by Otto H. Olsen (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1965).

l0

Ibid., pp. 106, l08-l09, ll2.

HFreedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society, Twenty-Fifth_ An— nual Report, l89l, p. 206.