The Importance Of Interracial Education

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Integrated colleges in the South prior to the start of Civil War were uncommon, yet, Reverend John Gregg Fee was able to promote interracial education by founding the town of Berea and Berea College. As the South’s first interracial and coeducational college, educating Blacks and Whites individuals, both males and females, Kentuckians saw this as taboo in a predominately slave practicing society. Fee had many accomplishments, such as starting the utopian community of Berea and establishing a non-sectarian church that did not discriminate on one’s denomination. Fee was a strong advocate for “impartial love,” believing one’s race, gender, or religion should not be a factor for obtaining this type of love. Fee’s major accomplishment was the founding of Berea College as an interracial college in a slave-holding state. However, this accomplishment did not last long and by examining the effects of the Day Law, actions of former Berea College presidents, and the world outside the Berea community, one will see how the College has not been consistent in Fee’s goal of an equal interracial education.
Before Berea’s creation in 1855, Kentucky did not have colleges available for Blacks to have the opportunity to receive a college education. Berea College was the only college in Kentucky educating blacks for thirty-one years, until Kentucky State University, the only Historically Blacks College and University [HBCU] in the state of Kentucky was formed in 1886, which provided Blacks from the state the opportunity for an education. Because Berea College was the first established school to allow Blacks a college education alongside whites, this was an important element for Blacks and former slaves in the area as well as the southern whites tha...

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...ntry, especially people in the South. Although Fee achieved this amazing goal, it has been diminished by laws in Kentucky, the ideas and beliefs of former college presidents, and other people outside the Berea community. An interracial education still exists in present day Berea, however, it does not resemble Fee’s vision when Berea College was established. Berea College was once a Colege with a fifty-fifty ratio, when it came to white and black students, however, today it is over 60 percent white while the other 40 percent is part of a minority. The fifty-fifty ratio was an example of an ideal interracial education and how one certain group was too large, overpowering others. Without an ideal interracial education similar to what Fee originally created at Berea College, the College will not be able to restore Fee’s vision of Berea College as an interracial college.

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