Loving in Deed and Truth

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In the early 1840s, the wealthy abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay owned land in an area known as the Glade in Madison County, Kentucky. He sold land to people who did not own slaves at low prices and invited missionaries who believed in abolition to move into the Glade.

When I first read about this abolitionist, I was surprised because the name of champion boxer Muhammad Ali was Cassius Clay before he converted to Islam and changed his name. I learned that Ali was named for his father, Cassius Marcellus Clay, who was named for this abolitionist. Earlier in the summer, Ray and I went on a trip to Louisville with our son John and his sons. After they went back home, Ray and I took a drive through Louisville’s historic Cave Hill Cemetery, burial place of such notables as General George Rogers Clark (Revolutionary War hero and brother of William Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition), Colonel Harlan Sanders who founded Kentucky Fried Chicken (now KFC), and boxer Muhammad Ali. We tried to find the grave of Patty Hill, the kindergarten teacher who wrote the song “Happy Birthday,” but never did.

Entrance to Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville, Kentucky

George Rogers Clark

Colonel Harlan Sanders

Muhammad Ali

In the early 1850s, Clay offered his friend John G. Fee, a minister, scholar, and abolitionist with strong faith, ten acres of land at no cost. The land was on a ridge. Fee built a home there in 1854 and began a small anti-slavery church. The church named the ridge Berea after a town in Macedonia where Paul and Silas preached.

Now these people were more noble-minded
than those in Thessalonica, 
for they received the word with great eagerness,
examining the Scriptures daily
to see whether these things were so. 
Therefore, many of them believed, 
along with a significant number
of prominent Greek women and men.
Acts 17:11-12

A neighbor of Fee’s donated a lot to build a one-room school in 1855. The school also served as a church. Fee began making plans for a college which would provide an inexpensive but thorough education for all races. Fee and the first principal wanted the school to provide work for as many students as possible. They had two reasons. The work would help students pay for their expenses. It was also to demonstrate that work is dignified.

However, pro-slavery forces soon forced Fee and the school’s teachers to leave the county. During the Civil War (1861-1865), Fee raised money for the school. He and his followers returned to Berea in 1865. The school attracted 96 black students and 91 white students for the 1866-1867 school year. From that time until 1968, the school had elementary and secondary school programs. The first college freshmen enrolled in 1869. The first students to obtain bachelor’s degrees graduated in 1873. For many years, the school had almost equal numbers of black and white students. Fee served as the chairman of the board of trustees from 1858 to 1892.

In 1904 the Kentucky legislature passed a law that black and white students could not be educated together. When Kentucky amended that law in 1950, Berea College became the first college in Kentucky to admit black students again.

In 1911 the board of trustees amended the college constitution to declare that the southern Appalachian region was Berea’s special field of service. This continues today.

Since 1892 Berea College has offered full-tuition scholarships to all students. The college seeks students who are “of high promise and low economic means.” The average family income of a Berea student is less than $32,000 per year. One college goal is that Berea alumni will succeed financially so that their children will not qualify to attend.

Berea hires each of its students who work a minimum of ten hours per week. This helps to run the college and gives them work experience. Students earn about $2,500 per year. When students graduate, they receive an academic transcript and a work transcript. Berea even provides money to help graduates purchase professional clothes as they enter the work force.

I don’t tell this story to encourage your student to attend Berea. Though their website mentions Christianity, I don’t know the specific theology of the school. I am fascinated by its founding and its outreach to Appalachia and to students with great potential and limited means.

We know love by this,
that He laid down His life for us;
and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 
But whoever has the world’s goods,
and sees his brother in need
and closes his heart against him,
how does the love of God abide in him? 
Little children, let us not love
with word or with tongue,
but in deed and truth.
1 John 3:16-17

Some students work at Berea College’s Historic Boone Tavern Hotel. After Nellie Frost, whose husband William served as the third president of Berea College, welcomed 300 guests during one year, she suggested that the college build a hotel. The College’s Woodwork Department began construction in 1909. Students made its bricks in the college brickyard. Among the hotel’s famous guests since 1909 are President and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, poet Robert Frost, and industrialist Henry Ford.

When we planned our recent trip to Kentucky, we found the prices at this elegant hotel to be similar to prices at chains such as Holiday Inn Express and Choice Hotels. We all enjoyed our stay. It was like a step back in time. The room even had a real key instead of a key card.

See the tops of those pillows behind Ray? This is what the one on the left looks like up close.

“. . . He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; 
and He made from one man every nation of mankind
to live on all the face of the earth,
having determined their appointed times
and the boundaries of their habitation, 
that they would seek God,
if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him,
though He is not far from each one of us; 
for in Him we live and move and exist,
as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we also are His children.’”
Acts 17:25b-28

 

 

 

 

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