In the early 1960s, a group of African American students enrolled at East Carolina College, beginning the desegregation process. Laura Marie Leary was the only black student on campus when she enrolled in 1963, but the following year, she was followed by sixteen more black students. Bennie Teel (1946-1985) was among this group. He soon emerged as a campus leader, becoming the first African-American to serve as managing editor of the student newspaper, The East Carolinian.
Teel was born and raised in Greenville, and graduated with honors from C. M. Eppes High School. He enrolled at East Carolina in 1964, and was only the second black student to do so. Despite the small number of African American students on campus in the following few years, he and his cohort were tight-knit and ambitious. Teel majored in English and French, and served as an assistant director of the Greenville Tutorial Service. In 1966, he became managing editor of the The East Carolinian, a student-led campus newspaper. This was a special opportunity for a black student on campus in the early days of desegregation, and his exceptional leadership of the paper earned him the respect of his peers. Teel was also active in the Glee Club, serving as the group’s vice-president in 1966 and its president in 1967. As a testament to Teel’s prominence on campus, he was one of thirty-two seniors at East Carolina named to Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities in 1967. He was an honors graduate, earning a B.A. in French and English in 1967.
Teel went on to earn master’s degrees at Trinity College in Connecticut and Harvard University. He also pursued advanced study at the Sorbonne. He taught in Marseille, Barcelona, and Paris before returning to the United States to become a professor of Romance languages at Harvard while pursuing his Ph.D. Teel was an active member of the Adams House community at Harvard, serving as a tutor there for five years. Teel’s dissertation research focused on the Haitian Creole language, and the ways in which illiterate Haitians learned French. However, he never completed his dissertation: he passed away on July 30, 1985 after a short stint in Massachusetts General Hospital. Following his death, Adams House created the Benjamin Teel Memorial Prize in his honor. The house continues granting the award to a senior “who has served the House with the same generous, gentle, and happy spirit as Benjamin Teel.”
Sources
- “Adams House Friends Remember Former Tutor.” The Harvard Crimson. October 22, 1985.
- Bratton, Mary Jo Jackson. East Carolina: The Formative Years, 1907-1982. Greenville, NC: East Carolina University Alumni Association, 1986.
- Dr. Dennis E. Chestnut Oral History Interview, April 23, 2008, East Carolina Digital Collections, J. Y. Joyner Library, Greenville, North Carolina, USA. http://digital.lib.ecu.edu/1254.
- East Carolina’s Buccaneer Yearbooks 1964-1967, East Carolina Digital Collections, J. Y. Joyner Library, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.
- “Obituary: Teel.” The Daily Reflector. August 2, 1985.
- “Teaching Assistant.” Hartford Courant. September 14, 1972.
Citation Information
Title: Benjamin “Bennie” Earl Teel
Author: John A. Tucker, PhD
Date of Publication: 6/25/2019