May 19, 1927. This was front-page news even in the white newspapers. In one of his rare speeches, Rockefeller eulogized the Spelman sisters—his mother and his aunt Lucy—whose estates had paid for the chapel and for whom it was named. The tone of the ceremony was proud and festive, though mindful of racial politics. Every effort was made to foster the notion that Negro education was benign, posing no threat to the social or political order.
