William J. Trent Jr.; Led Negro College Fund
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GREENSBORO, N.C. — William J. Trent Jr., who helped form the United Negro College Fund and ran it for 20 years, has died. He was 83.
Trent, adviser and friend to several U.S. presidents, died Nov. 27 of natural causes at Moses Cone Memorial Hospital, said his daughter, Kay Holloway.
Trent was an economics teacher and basketball coach at Bennett College in Greensboro when he joined the Administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 as an adviser on black affairs.
In 1944, Trent was asked to help form an association of private black colleges. He helped raise millions of dollars for 41 colleges and universities during his 20-year stint as executive director of the fund.
A Yale University student named George Bush introduced himself in 1948 after one of Trent’s lectures about the fund at Yale. The conversation grew into a lasting friendship with the future President.
Trent left his director’s post in 1964 to become an executive with publishing giant Time Inc. He returned to Greensboro in the mid-1970s.
Besides his wife, Trent is survived by three daughters, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
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