Berry College: A History

Introduction

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [-13], (5) Lines: 64 to 81 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Short Page PgEnds: TEX [-13], (5) Introduction Although not yet allowed to vote in the United States,womenreceivednewopportunitiesforpublic 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 the suffering of the poor masses in the nation’s cities. A decade later, near the small town of Rome in northwest Georgia, Martha Berry was equally moved by the plight of the poor, and despite her friends’ and family’s admonitions not to become involved, Berry embarked on a quest to provide opportunities for a largely forgotten segment of the population. A young woman such as Berry, with little formal education and no prior business or educational experience, would seem to have had little chance of success establishing an educational institution at the beginning of the twentieth century, much less developing it into a four-year college, yet that is what Martha Berry accomplished. Having grown up as part of the landed gentry in the southern Appalachian foothills, surrounded by the destitution of rural areas, she recognized that lack of education kept much of the population trapped in a cycle of poverty. Berry’s vision was to break that cycle by making education available and affordable for the region’s children, and she turned that vision into reality by devoting her resources and time to the fulfillment of her dream. Berry’sinitialeffortswerestraightforward—movingsmallnumbersofstudentsfromilliteracytohigh school diplomas. She gained momentum through wealthy family and friends in the East, and those friendships and connections helped her expand her following even more. Unlike her contemporary, Mary McLeod Bethune, the daughter of a former slave who worked her way through college and later founded Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, Martha Berry knew little of the meaning of work until she envisioned a school to “free” mountain children from the bonds of poverty and improve their quality of life on the homestead. And although she was well read, Berry’s formal education consisted of little more than a few years of home tutoring and a few months of finishing school. TheexpectedpathforawomanofMarthaBerry’s social standing was marriage and motherhood, but she instead chose to claim her students as her children . Berry devoted her efforts toward school fundraising and the daily direction of her institution. Her efforts helped her acquire the resources to turn her institution from a small, whitewashed day school into a residential campus of three institutions with a combined enrollment of more than one thousand students at the time of her death in 1942. Berry’slegacyextendedwellbeyondherschools, however. Susan Asbury, a researcher and former curator of the Martha Berry Museum, noted in her foreword to the 2002 reprinting of Miracle in the MountainsthatMarthaBerry’sinvolvementinsocial xiii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [-14], (6) Lines: 81 to ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Short Page PgEnds: TEX [-14], (6) movements extended to such concerns and ideologies as “home economics, colonial revival, scientific management,culturalpreservation,andeducational reform. . . . She was an avid social reformer . . . who undertook a role as ‘moral housekeeper’ to a particular region.”1 VisitorsfromasfarawayasIndiaandJapancame to inspect Berry’s schools, which focused on the education of the head, the heart, and the hands, and other institutions were created with characteristics fashioned after Berry’s or designed to fill another void.AftervisitingBerry’sschools,theGeorgiacommissionerofeducation ,W.B.Merritt,statedin1906 that Martha Berry had “blazed the way for the establishmentofthedistrictagriculturalschoolsthrough out the state.” These schools were the forerunners of such institutions of public higher education as Georgia Southern University, Georgia Southwestern State University, State University of West Georgia , Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, Middle Georgia College, and South Georgia College. Virginia and Tennessee educators also studied Berry’s efforts before embarking on their own. At Berry’s death, J. R. McCain, president of Agnes Scott CollegeinAtlanta ,wrote,“Oneofthegreataccomplishments of her life was influencing other schools to put on work programs and personalized training. I happen to know of her influence on Nacoochee Institute and Rabun...