High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole (born October 19, 1936) is an American academic. Cole was the first African American female president of Spelman College from 1987- 1997. She was president of Bennett College from 2002-2007. She is currently serving as director of the Smithsonian s National Museum of African Art. Cole is a descendant of Florida's first black millionaire Abraham Lincoln Lewis and Mary Kingsley Sammis, the great granddaughter of Zephaniah Kingsley, a slave trader and slave owner, and his wife and former slave Anna Madgigine Jai, whose Fort George Island home is protected as Kingsley Plantation. Cole enrolled in Fisk University at age 15, but transferred to Oberlin College, where she completed a B.A. in sociology in 1957. She attended graduate school at Northwestern University, earning her masters (1959) and Ph.D.