Berea College

Founded in 1855 by the abolitionist 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, founder John Gregg Fee and the teachers were forced out of the area by pro-slavery supporters in that same year.

Fee spent the Civil War years raising funds for the school, trying to provide for his family in Cincinnati, Ohio, 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, school and church.

An ad for Berea College from 1900, placed in a black newspaper in Minnesota.

In 1866, Berea's first full year after the war, it had 187 students, 96 African American and 91 white. It began with preparatory classes to ready students for advanced 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 private and state colleges in the South were racially segregated. Berea was the main exception until a new state law in 1904 forced its segregation.[6] The college challenged the law in state court and further appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in Berea College v. Kentucky. When the challenge failed, the college had to become a segregated school, but it set aside funds to help establish the Lincoln Institute near Louisville to educate black students.[7] In 1950, when the law was amended to allow integration of schools at the college level, Berea promptly resumed its integrated policies.

In 1925 famed advertiser Bruce Barton, a future congressman, sent a letter to 24 wealthy men in America to raise funds for the college. Every single 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.[8]

Up until the 1960s, Berea provided pre-college education in addition to college level curriculum. In 1968, the elementary and secondary schools (Foundation School) were discontinued in favor of focusing on undergraduate college education.[9]

Draper Building

The college provides significant funding to assist students in studying abroad.[10] Berea students are also eligible to win the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which provides funding for a year of study abroad following graduation.[11] Like many private colleges, Berea does not enroll students based upon semester hours. Berea College uses a course credit system, which has the following equivalencies:

• A 0.25 credit course is the equivalent of 1 semester hour.
• A 0.50 credit course is the equivalent of 2 semester hours.
• A 0.75 credit course is equivalent to 3 semester hours.
• A 1.00 credit course is the equivalent to 4 semester hours.[12]

All students are required to attend the college on a full-time basis, which is 3.00 course credits of enrollment, or 12 semester hours. Students must be enrolled in at least 4.00 course credits to be considered for the Dean's list. Enrollment in 4.75 or more course credits requires the approval of the Academic Adviser, and a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.30. There are also optional Summer opportunities to engage in study. Students may take between 1 and 2.25 credits during Summer. One Berea course credit is equivalent to four semester hours (6 quarter hours). Part-time enrollment is not permitted except during Summer term. A cumulative GPA of 2.0 is required in all majors in order to graduate with a bachelor's degree.

Berea College

Since 2002, all students at Berea receive laptops that they take with them when they graduate. Students are not required to pay for the computers, though they do provide a small fee to support the technological infrastructure. Students are also not allowed to have cars on campus without a special permit, and student permits for cars are rarely granted to first- or second-year students. The college provides students with supplemental transport through a shuttle bus system.

• John "Bam" Carney – educator; member of the Kentucky House of Representatives from Campbellsville
• Dean W. Colvard – former president of Mississippi State University, notable for his role in a 1963 controversy surrounding the participation of the university's basketball team in the NCAA Tournament
• William H. Danforth – creator of Purina Dog Chow, author of I Dare You!
• R. Kern Eutsler – bishop in the United Methodist Church.[30]
• John Fenn – recipient of 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.[31] Despite his future success, Fenn always felt that he was handicapped by the lack of meaningful math education in his undergrad years.[32]
• Rodney Griffin – award-winning songwriter and baritone with Southern gospel group Greater Vision
• Finley Hamilton – United States Representative from Kentucky.
• Miss B Hollywood – pop rap recording artist
• bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins) – Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies, author of over thirty books
• Julia Britton Hooks – second African-American woman in the United States to graduate from college and paternal grandmother of Benjamin Hooks
• Silas House – NEH Chair in Appalachian Studies, author and activist
• George Samuel Hurst - A health physicist and professor of physics at the University of Kentucky
• Juanita M. Kreps – U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Jimmy Carter
• Helen Matthews Lewis - sociologist, historian, and activist
• C.E. Morgan – author of All the Living[33]
• Tharon Musser – Tony Award-winning lighting designer known especially for her work on A Chorus Line
• Willie Parker – abortion provider and reproductive rights activist[34]
• K.C. Potter – academic administrator and LGBT rights activist
• Jeffrey Reddick – American screenwriter, best known for creating the Final Destination series[35]
• Jack Roush – founder, CEO, and owner of Roush Fenway Racing, a NASCAR team
• Tijan Sallah - Gambian poet, short story writer, biographer and economist at the World Bank
• Helen Maynor Scheirbeck – Assistant Director for Public Programs at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian
• James Thindwa – community activist with Chicago's "Jobs with Justice"[36]
• Djuan Trent – Miss Kentucky 2010
• Horace M. Trent - American physicist[37]
• Rocky Tuan – vice-chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong
• C. C. Vaughn - Kentucky educator and minister
• Muse Watson – American actor
• Billy Edd Wheeler – songwriter, performer and writer
• Carter G. Woodson – African-American historian, author, journalist and co-founder of Black History Month

• Gott v. Berea College

• Adams, John D (2012). "The Berea College Mission to the Mountains: Teacher Training, The Normal Department, and Rural Community Development". Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. 110 (1): 33–66. doi:10.1353/khs.2012.0005.
• Harris, Adam (October 2018). "The Little College Where Tuition Is Free and Every Student Is Given a Job". The Atlantic.
• Peck, Elizabeth. Berea's First Century, 1855–1955. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1955.
• Wilson, Shannon H. Berea College: An Illustrated History. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. ISBN 978-0-8131-2379-0

Media related to Berea College at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website
• Official athletic website