Berea College and Its Impact on Appalachia

Berea College was founded in 1859, and until 1904 it successfully educated both African American and white students under the same roof in Berea, Kentucky. For an integrated college to survive during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era in Kentucky is remarkable, and in order to fathom how such a feat was accomplished, a closer look needs to be taken. In order to understand what happened in Berea, Kentucky during this time period, an examination of the history of the college must take place, including why its founders wanted to start such an institution, why they chose Berea to do it in, and what was going on around Berea during this time. Additionally, the successes and failures of Berea need to be explored, along with what it meant in the bigger picture, how its existence contributed to the development of the entire United States.

Berea College began as an idea in the mind of John Gregg Fee, the son of middle class farmers and slave owners in Bracken County, Kentucky, and a devoted abolitionist. In 1853, Cassius M. Clay, an affluent landowner with considerable power and influence in Kentucky, invited Fee to “found an anti-slavery church and school in Madison County, Kentucky” (Ealy, 1990, p. 2). Fee accepted and immediately set out to find the perfect location for such a project. He decided upon Berea, Kentucky in 1858, and in 1859, he founded Berea College. All of this was possible because Clay’s considerable pull in the community enabled him to “keep many of the irate locals at bay and thus offer some degree of protection to Fee” (Ealy, 1990, p. 4). This was essential because there were very few who were willing to accept the idea of an interracial college in the heart of the slave state of Kentucky at this point in history.

After founding Berea College, Fee began writing a constitution that would provide the framework of the institution. Included in this constitution, Fee stated that “this College shall be under an influence strictly Christian, and as such opposed to sectarianism, slaveholding, caste, and every other wrong institution or practice” (Peck, 1980, p. 13). Fee then explained that opposition to caste meant an opposition to separate education of blacks and whites (Fee, 1981, p. 83).

Once Fee’s expectations for the institution were put on paper, Clay and Fee realized that they had very different views on what the ultimate goals of the school’s founding were to be. Fee believed that “slavery was contrary to the word of God and should be excised immediately from American life