From 1955 to 1966, Player served as president of the historically black college, during a period of heightened civil rights activism in the South.

She supported Bennett students who took part in the lengthy sit-ins started by the Greensboro Four to achieve integration of lunch counters in downtown stores.

[5][6] Her family moved to Akron, Ohio, in 1917,[6] when Player was eight years old, as part of the Great Migration in the first half of the 20th century of African Americans to northern and midwestern industrial cities for work and educational opportunities.

Player and R. Nathaniel Dett advised the younger Jones as she led a boycott and protest of segregated movie theaters and racist portrayals in film offerings in downtown Greensboro.

[7][10] Jet reported that she was the first person of color to be offered the presidency of Spelman College in Atlanta that year, but chose to stay with Bennett.

Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and co-founder in 1957 of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was invited to Greensboro in February 1958 by local African-American clergy and the NAACP.

Initially unaware that Bennett students were planning civil rights protests after King, Howard Thurman and Benjamin E. Mays had spoken at the college, Player encouraged them in their participation in sit-ins in February 1950 to achieve integration of lunch counters.

She held meetings with faculty and staff during the Greensboro actions sit-ins to educate them, and arranged to support students in jail by delivering their assignments so they would not fall behind.

[2][7] In 1962, Player was named President of the National Association of Schools and Colleges of the Methodist Church, the first woman to hold the position.

[7] She was appointed that year by President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration as the first female Director of the Division of College Support in the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare,[13] a position she held until retiring in 1986.

She was a member of Kappa Delta Pi, Pi Lambda Theta, the South Atlantic Regional Philosophy Education Society, North Carolina and National Teachers associations, National Council of Negro Women; Women's Planning Committee, St. Matthews Methodist Church; and Japan International Christian University Foundation, Incorporated.

[16][17] In 1962 she received the Silver Medallion from the Greensboro chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ), for her leadership in the areas of "religious and racial understanding and tolerance.