Book Description

This history of the origin, evolution, and demise of the Greenville Women's College (1854-1961), a small, underfunded Baptist institution in upstate South Carolina, traces its beginnings from a female academy through its organization by the South Carolina Baptist Convention, its struggle for survival and improvement during the years after the Civil War, to its rising aspirations and drive for accreditation in the 1920s. Unendowed and unable to withstand the financial turmoil of the Great Depression, it was forced to merge with nearby Furman University in the 1930s, but it endured as a coordinate college until 1961 when its students joined the men at Furman at a new coeducational campus. This book, the first history of the college, provides the missing half of Furman University's history. A social and institutional history, it focuses on Southern women's changing collegiate experience and the college's relationship to the South Carolina Baptist Convention. It emphasizes the changing nature of student life, examines the role of South Carolina Baptists in the college, and examines the impact of the accreditation movement.