Benedict College

Overview

Benedict College is a private historically Black college in Columbia, South Carolina, founded in 1870 on the site of a former 110-acre plantation, funded by a $13,000 gift from Bathsheba A. Benedict of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on behalf of the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Benedict Institute opened on December 12, 1870, with a first class of ten freedmen taught by the Rev. Timothy Dodge, who also served as the school’s first president. Classes were initially held in the plantation’s “Big House,” built in 1839, and began at the grammar-school level in reading, writing, and math, plus Bible and theology, since enslaved people had been barred by law from learning to read or write; the school’s stated mission was to prepare its students to be “powers for good in society.” The campus is now part of the Benedict College Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.