Berry College

A History

Ouida Dickey

Publication Year: 2005

Illustrated with more than a hundred photographs, this is the most detailed and comprehensive history to date of Berry College, located in northwest Georgia. Ranging from Berry's modest beginnings in 1902 as a trade school for rural Appalachian youth to its present-day standing among the Southeast's best liberal arts colleges, the book tells how Martha Berry's founding vision--to educate the head, the heart, and the hands--evolved to meet the challenges of each new generation. The photographs, many of them rarely seen before, capture happenings at Berry over its first century: preparations for the world wars, visits by renowned benefactors, student protests, expansions of campus facilities, and diverse aspects of daily life in and out of the classroom.

Parts of Berry's history have achieved legendary status--the story, for example, of how Martha Berry was inspired to start a school after visiting with poor mountain children in her log cabin. Ouida Dickey and Doyle Mathis separate myth from fact as they address Berry's traditions, controversies, and triumphs and relate important developments at Berry to wider events in Georgia and Appalachia.

As Berry graduates and career-long members of its faculty and staff, Dickey and Mathis themselves are part of the Berry tradition. Their meticulous research draws on a rich trove of documents to reveal a story that surpasses many of the familiar and beloved tales connected to the school. Berry's enviable standing--as a model for work-study colleges nationwide, as a place intimately tied to the cultural life of its region, as a choice recipient of philanthropy--makes this new book important to historians, scholars of higher education, and thousands of Berry students, faculty, and alumni.

Published by: University of Georgia Press

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Cover

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Foreword

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pp. ix-x

The history of Berry College has long been considered the story of its founder, Martha Berry. For many of us, it is hard to separate Martha Berry and her remarkable career from the story of the institution that bears her name. I have told alumni audiences that Martha Berry floats through my office and often looks overmy shoulder as I carry out the business of...

Acknowledgments

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pp. xi-xii

The authors thank many individuals for their assistance with the development of this book. Scott Colley, president of Berry College, encouraged us from the beginning of the project and prepared the foreword. Evelyn Pendley, Berry associate professor of English emerita, and John Lipscomb, Berry vice...

Introduction

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pp. xiii-xvi

Although not yet allowed to vote in the United States, women received new opportunities for public life as a consequence of the Progressive spirit that began sweeping the nation in the 1890s. Pioneers such as Jane Addams and Florence Kelley initiated a settlement-house movement to alleviate...

ONE. Origin of a Vision

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pp. 1-13

The Georgia Constitution of 1777, written just a year after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, called for the building of schools in each county to be supported by the state, and six years later the state legislature authorized the first of these schools, which came to be known...

TWO. Sharpening the Focus

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pp. 14-33

In 1953, W.W. Phillips, one of those three boys, recalled a slightly different version of the story. He and two brothers, Tom and Albert Carter, were returning from their regular Sunday afternoon swim in the Oostanaula River when Martha and her two youngest sisters, Frances and Laura...

THREE. Growing Pains

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pp. 34-61

According to a school catalog, "From the time [Martha Berry] began the little Sunday school in the old pine-pole cabin she had it in her heart to have a school for girls, for she realized how narrow and shut-in their lives are, and how much harder it is for the country girl to get an...

FOUR. Expanding the Charter

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pp. 62-83

In the fall of 1923, Berry planned to begin offering college courses and thereby to enable its graduates to enter other colleges and universities as sophomores or juniors. Berry high-school graduates had performed well at many of the South's leading colleges and universities, but other students...

FIVE. Challenges and Changes

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pp. 84-110

While a committee appointed by the chairman of the board of trustees searched for a replacement for Martha Berry, Acting Director Gordon Keown quietly and efficiently oversaw all the schools' operations. His first responsibilities were to continue contacts with the friends and...

SIX. Foundation for the Future

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pp. 111-132

William McChesney Martin Jr., chairman of Berry's board of trustees and the schools' acting president, had met John R. Bertrand through Charles N. Shepardson, a member of the Federal Reserve Board. Shepardson had been dean of agriculture at Texas A&M University, and Bertrand...

SEVEN. Triumphs and Tribulations

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pp. 133-154

Prior to the twentieth century, private and church-related institutions of higher learning were among the major initiators of change, with public institutions in time following suit. Such was the case with desegregation. Oberlin Collegiate Institute, begun in 1834 by missionaries, established...

EIGHT. Polishing the Image

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pp. 155-175

In February 1979, the Berry Schools' board of trustees selected Dr. Gloria Shatto, the George R. Brown Professor of Economics at Trinity University, in San Antonio, Texas, since 1977 and a Berry trustee since 1975, as president-designate of Berry College and Berry Academy.¹ Prior to her...

NINE. Into the Second Century

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pp. 176-189

On February 21, 1998, Berry's board of trustees unanimously selected Dr. John Scott Colley, provost and dean of the faculty at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, as Berry's seventh president. H. G. Pattillo, chair of the board, said that Colley's "exemplary experience as a faculty...

APPENDIX A. Important Dates in the Life of Martha Berry and the Development of Her Schools

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pp. 191-193

E-ISBN-13: 9780820330792
E-ISBN-10: 0820330795
Print-ISBN-13: 9780820327587
Print-ISBN-10: 0820327581

Page Count: 256
Publication Year: 2005