Sutton, Virginia Ann

THE EARLY HISTORY OF BENNETT COLLEGE GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA Thesis under the direction of George J. Griffin, Ph. 0., Professor

of Religion.

At the close of the Civil War, many northern religious denomi- nations moved into the South to educate and evangelize the recently freed Negroes. The Methodist Episc0pal Church was among a number of these denominations that worked successfully in North Carolina. The Freedmen's Aid Society of this church established a school for freedmen near Greensboro, North Carolina, in late 1873 or early l87h. Within a short time the school was known as Bennett Seminary, in honor of its most generous benefactor.

During its first sixteen years Bennett Seminary was headed by three white principals. The size of the faculty and student body in-

creased significantly and college studies were added to the elementary

and secondary courses of study already in the curriculum. The school

moved from its temporary location in a church basement to a spacious permanent campus on the outskirts of Greensboro. The first period of its history ended in l889 when the school was chartered by the state of North Carolina as Bennett College.

The transition into a new period of history in 1889 became even more apparent when the first Negro to head any of the Freedmen's Aid

Society institutions became president of Bennett College. Since that

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