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The story
Founded by Cassius M. Clay and John Gregg Fee in 1855.1
Founded in 1855 by the abolitionist and Augusta College graduate John Gregg Fee (1816–1901), Berea College admitted both black and white students in a fully integrated curriculum, making it the first non-segregated, coeducational college in the South and one of a handful of institutions of higher learning to admit both male and female students in the mid-19th century. The college began as a one-room schoolhouse that also served as a church on Sundays on land that was granted to Fee by politician and abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay. Fee named the new community after the biblical Berea. Although the school's first articles of incorporation were adopted in 1859, slavery supporters forced Fee and the teachers out of the area that year.
Fee spent the Civil War years raising funds for the school, trying to provide for his family in Cincinnati, and working at Camp Nelson. He returned afterward to continue his work at Berea. He spent nearly 18 months working mostly at Camp Nelson, where he helped provide facilities for the freedmen and their families, as well as teaching and preaching. He helped get funds for barracks, a hospital, a school, and a church.
In 1866, Berea's first full year after the war, it had 187 students, 96 Black and 91 white. It began with preparatory classes to ready students for study at the college level. In 1869, the first college students were admitted, and the first bachelor's degrees were awarded in 1873. Almost all the South's private and state colleges were racially segregated. Berea was the main exception until a new state law in 1904 forced its segregation. The college challenged the law in state court and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in Berea College v. Kentucky. When the challenge failed, the college had to become an all-white school, but it raised funds to establish the Lincoln Institute in 1912 in Simpsonville, Kentucky, to educate Black students. In 1950, when the Day Law was amended to allow integration of schools at the college level, Berea resumed its integrated policies.
In 1911, the college restricted students to eating at college-owned facilities. A local businessman sued but the Kentucky Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that the college's restriction was legal (Gott v. Berea College).
In 1925, advertiser Bruce Barton, a future congressman, sent a letter to 24 wealthy men in America to raise funds for the college. Every letter was returned with a minimum of $1,000 in donation. During World War II, Berea was one of 131 colleges nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to a navy commission.
Until 1968, Berea provided pre-college education in addition to a college-level curriculum. That year, the elementary and secondary schools (Foundation School) were discontinued in favor of focusing on undergraduate college education.
Presidents
Presidents of the college have included:
From Wikipedia’s article on Berea College, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5