Laura Weill Cone: Alumna and Suffragist

Laura Weill, Class of 1910

Laura Weill, Class of 1910, was one of the most illustrious alumna to graduate from the State Normal and Industrial College (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro). Weill was born on September 19, 1888 in Wilmington, North Carolina, to prominent lawyer Solomon Weill and his wife, Elinora. In 1906, she entered Dana Hall School, a preparatory institution for Wellesley College, and transferred to State Normal the following year. She distinguished herself at State Normal as the president of her graduating class of 1910; Editor-in-Chief of the State Normal Magazine and The Carolinian; and the Vice-President of the Athletic Association. She was even the author of The College Song, which focused on loyalty and the school’s devotion to service. Service had been an important part of State Normal’s mission, but it was the motto of the Class of 1910, and they “willed it” to the college during graduation.

Weill also showed an interest in women’s rights while she was at State Normal, penning “Self-Government in Women’s College,” for a school essay. Upon graduation, Laura Weill taught high school in Wilmington, North Carolina, but then returned to Greensboro where in 1917, she became the first woman on the Greensboro School Board. Weill married lawyer David Stern (1882-1915) and they had one child, Frances (1913-1993). After Stern’s death, she married Julius W. Cone, a member of a prominent Greensboro textile family and president of Cone Export Commission Company, a division of Cone Mills. They had two sons, Edward Toner (1917-2004) and Julius Washington (1920-1925). 

Cone continued her interest in educational causes, and also became a strong advocate for women’s rights, serving as Treasurer and Vice-President of the Greensboro Equal Suffrage League. She also worked with other North Carolina suffragists, such as Gertrude Weil and Louise Alexander, to push for the ratification of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. She joined in their disappointment when the North Carolina legislature postponed the vote on suffrage, thus allowing Tennessee to become the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Amendment, the number required for women to gain the right to vote. The Amendment was not ratified in North Carolina until 1971.

Cone Residence Hall

Cone remained active in the community, promoting women’s rights, labor, and racial equality. When Woman’s College (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) librarian Charles Adams was criticized for allowing black students from Bennett College and North Carolina A & T to use the school library, Cone strongly defended him. She also continued to support local education initiatives, serving on the Board of Trustees for Bennett College, a local historically black liberal arts college for women, for almost three decades. She also served for twenty-two years on the Board of Trustees of her alma mater, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), and as a member of its executive committee from 1934 until 1953. When discussion began regarding the possible co-education of Woman’s College, Cone opposed it, as did many of the administration faculty, feeling that there would always be a place for a public women’s college. Her influence on campus also included architectural choices. Cone's taste in architecture was traditional and she preferred a more cohesive campus plan, continuing the Georgian design prevalent in many of the buildings on College Avenue. Ironically, she would have a residence hall named in her honor in 1967, reflecting the typically modern architecture of the time.

Her interests also included community health, and she was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Moses Cone Memorial Hospital, where she died in 1970 after a brief illness.

Eleanor Roosevelt’s Campus Visits

During her long and politically influential life, Eleanor Roosevelt made several visits to the North Carolina College for Women, now called The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG).  Her first visit occurred in November 1931 as part of a campaign stop during her husband’s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1932 bid for the United States presidency.  She was described by the local papers as “the wife of the presidential candidate” with great personal charm whose grandmother had familial connection to a prominent family in Savannah, Georgia.

As part of her 1931 visit, Mrs. Roosevelt spoke to the students in Aycock Auditorium on the subject of “Opportunities for Modern Women in the Business World.”  While hesitant to express any strong political opinions in newspaper interviews, Mrs. Roosevelt was not shy in articulating her clear support for women seeking second careers after their children had left the home. She also predicted that women would eventually have a growing role in American politics and that someday soon, political candidates would be chosen based on their qualifications and not on their gender. The following November, Franklin Roosevelt defeated presidential incumbent Herbert Hoover to become the 32nd president.  During his next twelve years in office, Eleanor Roosevelt would establish herself as one of the most important women in politics.


Mrs. Roosevelt meets with Dr. W. C. Jackson
and Student Government Association  president, Woody Hewett during her 1945 visit

Mrs. Roosevelt’s second visit to the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina (now UNCG), and the first in her role as the First Lady, occurred in March 1945.  While touring the campus, she described it as “charming” and made several positive comments on the buildings that had been constructed by the Works Progress Administration, which was part of her husband’s New Deal Program.  During her visit, she gave a speech that focused on the privilege of education and the responsibility of America’s youth in building a better world. Her day also included lunch with her personal friend Harriet Elliott, Dr. Walter C. Jackson, and members of the faculty, and tea at the Weil-Winfield Residence Hall with students.  Before leaving Greensboro, Mrs. Roosevelt also visited the Overseas Replacement Depot, Bennett College, Greensboro College, and the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina (now North Carolina A & T University). 



Mrs. Roosevelt speaks to a capacity crowd in Aycock Auditorium during her 1953 visit

Her third and final visit to the campus occurred in February of 1953, during which her message to the students of the Woman’s College focused on the United Nations (UN). In December 1945, President Harry S. Truman appointed Mrs. Roosevelt as a delegate to the newly established UN General Assembly.  Addressing a capacity crowd in Aycock Auditorium, she gave what was considered an optimistic, but also realistic, speech on the current world condition, covering the politically strained relationship between the United States and Russia, the health conditions in India, and the importance of the UN as the last hope for world peace.  Recognizing the serious tone of her talk, she attempted to lighten the mood by recounting tales of her early days in the UN. She described how her male colleagues were generally suspicious of her motives and fearing that she might do “something dangerous” she was placed on a committee where they though she couldn’t “do much harm.” To their surprise, Mrs. Roosevelt would go on to become the first chairperson of the UN Commission on Human Rights where she was instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Mrs. Roosevelt remains one of the most illustrious and memorable persons to ever visit the UNCG campus.


Walter Clinton Jackson, Race, and WC Resources

Throughout the first seven decades of its existence, the institution now known as UNCG grappled with a number of questions regarding facility use by students from neighboring colleges, particularly the nearby African-American institutions such as North Carolina A&T and Bennett College.

Interior of the College Library, circa 1923

As early as February 1929, administrators were discussing use of the Library by students from A&T. Then Vice President (and later Chancellor) Walter Clinton Jackson wrote College President Julius Foust on February 15, 1929, requesting that an A&T student be allowed to borrow books from the College Library. Jackson wrote, “it seems to me rather incongruous that we should refuse a little courtesy of this kind to a neighbor institution, even though a negro institution. It is a very small matter, in a way, but it has large consequences so far as the Negroes are concerned.”

Foust agreed to discuss the matter with the College Librarian and “do anything we can to aid these students.” He quickly added, however, that Jackson should be acutely award “that certain embarrassments may arise in our attempt to do what they request” and that he “doubt[ed] the wisdom of permitting negro students to take the books out of our library.” While he agreed to consider the idea, Foust added that he would ask the Librarian to consult with Dr. Anna Gove, the student health coordinator, to learn more “about the danger that may arise from disease if these students are permitted to take the books and use them when our students must use them when they are returned to the library.”

Jackson’s decision to support the use of the WC Library by African-American students ran counter to the Jim Crow laws that were prevalent across North Carolina at the time. Jackson, however, was well known as a champion of racial equality. He arrived at the institution then known as State Normal in 1909 to lead the history department. A native of Georgia, he studied at Mercer University and spoke frequently on the topic of race relations in American history. Although he was forced to work within the framework of the segregated South, he served as chairman of local, state, and southern regional Commissions on Interracial Cooperation. From 1938 to 1953, he served as chairman of the Board of Trustees at Bennett College.

Walter Clinton Jackson, 1948

Throughout his sixteen-year tenure as Woman’s College chancellor (1934-1950), Jackson opened many venues for progress and collaboration between WC and its neighboring educational institutions, including those that were African American. In a June 17, 1935, letter to Charlotte Hawkins Brown, he expressed dismay that WC would not be able to openly welcome students from Brown’s Palmer Institute, a school for African Americans in Sedalia, North Carolina, just outside of Greensboro. After Brown declined to bring her students to a music performance at the WC due to the segregated seating requirements, Jackson wrote, “I hope the time will speedily come when difficulties which confront us may be more easily resolved.”

State laws and regulations, however, did not support open sharing of resources between WC and its African-American neighbor institutions. “Separate but equal” policies resulted in the segregation of public schools, public spaces, transportation, restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains. Since 1901, North Carolina state law had explicitly required separate facilities for the consumption of library materials by white and black citizens. While a number of prominent North Carolinians, including Governor W. Kerr Scott (1949-1953), believed in extended some degree of civil liberties to African Americans, the general consensus across the state favored the continuation of segregationist policies.

Jackson’s willingness to push these boundaries and search for concessions whenever possible led to him being recognized as a “pioneer in the field of better race relations” when he received an honorary doctorate from Bennett in 1949. While Jackson was no longer Chancellor when the WC was officially desegregated in 1956, he stood as an early leader in creating a more open and accepting campus.