Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Berea College’s Participation in the Selma to Montgomery March

Ain ' t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around": Berea College' s Participation in tbe Selma to Montgomery March DWAYNE MACK ELirly ona drizzlyspringmorningin 1965.a Greyhound busand four cars arrived in Montgomery,Alabama. Fiftyeight students and faculty nienibers fiuni Berea College in Kentucky, black and white, men and women,had traveled all night to participate in the final and most important leg of the Selina to Montgomery march. The historian Todd Gitlin, in his book The Sixties: Years of Hope,Days of Rage, has described the niarch . is the " high water mark of integrationism Berea's delegation. the largest of all Kentucky colleges and universities,had responded to the National Council of Churches and Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr., who had issued a call to acti011 to register black voters iii Dallas County.1 Selma's voter registration campaign spurred Berea activists to become involved in the civil rights movement;they wanted to continue the college's historical mission of promoting racial equality. The civil rights movement,especially the upheaval iii Selma, had polarized the Berea campus. Although the college's officials and the student government had declined formally to endorse the march, the activists forged ahead.3 Berea College, located in east central Kentucky where the Bluegrass meets Bet· ea students boarded the the Cumberland Mountains, was founded in 1855 by abolitionist John G. bus c, n Wednesday, March Fee. Berea was one of the first fully racially integrated colleges in the entire 24, 1965 Photograph front Berea College Pinnacle, South,enrolling an essentially equal number of blacks and whites from 1865 March 27.1965 to 1892. Racial coeducation in a slaveholding state was a monumental experiment . According to sociologist Jacqueline Burnside,Berea was devoted to eradicating „ caste prejudice by coeducation of the races." 4 In 1904,the Day Law,aimed specifically at Berea, outlawed integrated education ill Kentucky, FALL 2005 43 11* 11 17 G R F OUN A] N' T GONNA LET NOBODY TURN ME AROUND" thus forcing the institution to turn its focus toward educating impoverished white Appalachian students. Berea officials quickly responded to the policy change by using some of the college's eiidownient to establish Lincoln Institute in Simpsonville,near Louisville, to educate black studelits. i vot until the repeal of the Day Law in 1950 did the college recommit itself to educating black and white students together, and officials slc,wly readmitted African Americans."Approximately ten black students attended Keren from 1950 to 1954. In the latter year,Jessie Reasor Zander graduated from Berea with a degree in eleinental P eductitic, 11, making her the first African Ainerican student to earn a degree after desegregation.7 Yet as black students trickled back to Berea, they faced Jim Crow segregation in the Berea community. Ainiost a decade prior to the Greensboro, North Carolina, sitins , sonic local white and African American residents in Berea challenged racism iii the community. In the 195(} s, Dorothy Tredennick, a professor in Berta's art department,Julia Allen,the college's dean of women, alongside an African American resident of tc, wn,conducted a sitin at an area business that refused to serve black patrons. The demonstration successfully fc, reed the business to abandon its policy of refusing service tc,African American customers.8 A decade after the reappear. ince of black students at Berea, the civil rights inovement crested. In response to the crusade for equality and Berea's legacy ot campaigning for racial equality, several black and white niembers of the Berea campus community became more active iii the civil rights movemeilt. Although the college had (, nly thirtyfive African American students ( in a total student body of 1,400), a number of its students, faculty, and staff marched on the state capitol iii Frankfort on March 4, 1964, alc, ng with thousands of others. They listened to the keynote speaker,Dr. Martin Luther King, .] r., and k, bbied the state legislature to pass civil rights legislatic, 11: Although the college supported the Frank fort event by canceling classes and providing the demonstrators with transportation to the march,Berea officials later that same year refused to host a Mississippi Freedom Sunimer training school that the Council of Federated...