Black pioneer quits Spelman

Johnnetta Cole, the black woman college president regarded as one of the most influential figures in higher education as well as a champion of the needs of black students, is to leave Atlanta's Spelman College. Among the admirers lamenting her departure was black television comic Bill Cosby.

When she moved to Spelman in 1987 as its first black woman president, she said it would take ten years to move the historically black college to its "rightful place in American higher education".

During her tenure, Spelman increased its capital endowment from $40 to $140 million.

In 1992, the 2,000 student college, founded in 1881, won a number one ranking from the US News and Report college guide, as the top liberal arts college in the American South.

In 1992 Dr Cole was assigned to Bill Clinton's transition team to review the education department's budget and personnel. But conservative critics began calling her a "disciple of Fidel Castro" and a communist sympathiser.

Although Dr Cole denounced "right-wing extremists" for dredging up her ten-year-old membership of pro-Palestinian and pro-Cuban organisations, it was enough to take her out of the running for education secretary.

In 1988, Mr Cosby gave $20 million to the college. "I'm not happy," he said of her resignation. "To me it's as if Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughn, Carmen McRae and Ella Fitzgerald had all died on the same day."