Scope and Contents

These are the papers of A.A. Burleigh, one of the first African Americans to attend and graduate from Berea College.  Materials include biographical information, correspondence, pension applications, medical and death records, and additional print material.

Abstract

Wright was the chair of Natural History at Berea College from 1870 to 1872. A few years after leaving Berea, he would be appointed professor of Geology and Natural History at Oberlin College.  While at Berea College, Wright also served as the faculty meeting clerk. On September 21, 1874, he married Mary Lyon Bedortha (1846-1877), of Saratoga Springs, New York.  Professor Albert Allen Wright died April 2, 1905.

Scope and Contents

A collection of materials documenting the history of blacks at Berea College as well as race relations at the College. Materials include clippings, notes, writings, correspondence, College memorandum and notices, and other.

Abstract On Thursday, March 25, 1965, fifty-eight Berea College student, faculty and staff joined 25,000 other demonstrators in the last phase of the March on Montgomery from Selma, Alabama. The trip made by students and other members of the college was neither officially recognized by the College or endorsed by the Student Association Senate. Berea's participation in the march was organized by a committee of students which organized in response to a controversial letter from the Associate Dean of...

Abstract The Day Law, "An Act to Prohibit White and Colored Persons from Attending the Same School," was signed into law in the Commonwealth of Kentucky by Governor J.C.W. Beckham in March 1904. The law effectively forced Berea College, the only integrated college in Kentucky, to segregate. As the bill was being debated in the Kentucky House of Representatives Committee on Education, two groups came to Frankfort to lobby the legislators. One group was led...

Abstract Lincoln Institute was an all-black boarding high school in Simpsonville, Kentucky, near Louisville, that operated from 1912 to 1966. The school was created by the trustees of Berea College after the Kentucky State Legislature passed the Day Law (1904) putting an end to the racially integrated education at Berea that had existed since the end of the Civil War. The founders originally intended Lincoln to be a college as well as a high school, but by the 1930s it gave up its junior college...

Abstract

On Thursday, March 5, 1964, 170 Berea students and 30 faculty and townspeople joined approximately 10,000 other demonstrators for a March on Frankfort. At the March, demonstrators listened to speeches by Frank Stanley Jr., Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackie Robinson, D.E. King, and Ralph Abernathy. Speakers pleaded for the Governor Breathitt and state legislature to consider seriously the House-sponsored Public Accomodations Bill.