Of One Blood

Had he been a less dedicated man, the abolitionist preacher called John Gregg Fee might have thought he had done enough for the illiterate mountain folk he had come to serve. On a desolate tract of land donated by Cassius Clay, he had established a whole new community at the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains in Kentucky. He had dug the well, built the nonsectarian church, opened the one-room schoolhouse in 1855. But now, he wrote later in the American Missionary, "we need a college here . . . an antislavery, anti-caste, anti-rum, antitobacco, anti-sectarian, pious school under Christian influence, a school that will furnish the best possible facilities for those with small means." Last week, as Berea College celebrated its 100th anniversary, it was everything that its founder could have hoped for. "We need working men," Preacher Fee had said. "The rich, the proud and the indolent will not come to such a school as we propose."

To help the college celebrate, friends and alumni from all over the U.S. gathered last week in Berea (pop. 3,400). Governor Lawrence Wetherby of Kentucky was on hand, and along with Berea's President Francis S. Hutchins,* he happily climbed into a horse-drawn surrey to lead the big parade through the town. The main event, however, was the opening of a play called Wilderness Road, which was written especially for the occasion by Southern Author Paul Green. The play was in every way appropriate--a warm tribute to the builders of Berea who decades ago traveled down the wilderness road of ignorance and persecution "in the service of their ideal."

Exiles' Return. Because of those early travelers, thousands of young mountaineers have been able to get an education they would otherwise never have had. But the sort of education they received involved far more than opening up the world of books. In 1859, Berea's leaders were exiled from the state for their anti-slavery stand; Founder Fee himself was mobbed and beaten no fewer than 13 times. Nevertheless, in 1866, the faculty was back again to make the daring announcement that Berea would take in Negroes. Even when Kentucky's Day Law of 1904 specifically forbade the practice, Berea remained faithful to its trust. It dipped into its meager savings and with $400,000 started the Lincoln Institute to take care of those whom until 1950 it could not legally accept.

From the start, Berea's fees were minimal (it charges no tuition). Its first barefooted students merely brought whatever they could. Some came with potatoes, others with eggs; one boy walked 50 miles leading a cow. Then a few students began to bring homemade quilts, and these, President William Frost discovered, could be sold. From quilts, the students went on to furniture, gradually built up Berea's famed Student Industries which now do some $400,000 worth of business a year.

The Good Teacher. Today, the college's 1,162 students still divide their time between study and labor. But as a result of the administrations of Frost, William J. Hutchins and his son Francis, the old campus looks like anything but a pioneer settlement. Its endowment has grown to $16 million. It has a school of nursing, runs a 357-student Foundation School where anyone, no matter what his age, can get a basic education. Berea students help run the college's 65-bed hospital. They can study forestry on its 5,600 acres of woodland, learn agriculture and animal husbandry on 803 acres of farm and dairy land.

Working under the supervision of a dean of labor, they bake the community's bread, man the local tavern (still bone dry), learn to turn out such dishes as chicken flakes in bird's nest, eggnog pie, toasted Brazil-nut pie and ginger biscuits. They weave bedspreads, napkins and tablecloths, produce a vast assortment of wooden furniture. Though no student graduates without a thorough grounding in the liberal arts. Berea regards its work program as an essential part of its education. Whether black or white, foreign or native, every boy or girl must put in at least ten hours a week at some sort of labor. "In Berea," says President Hutchins, "we refer to labor as the good teacher."

Over the years, the college has produced its share of doctors, lawyers, businessmen and college presidents. But half of its graduates still go back to their mountain communities, and of these, many become teachers. Thus the message of Berea returns continually to the mountains. To a whole region it has brought learning where no learning was before, but perhaps even more important, it has also brought its motto: "God hath made of one blood all nations of men."

*Brother of onetime Chancellor Robert Hutchins of the University of Chicago.

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