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This chapter provides a local analysis of lived experiences on three integrated college campuses – Berea (KY), Howard (DC) and Oberlin (OH). Selected from among thirty colleges open to blacks and whites after 1870, these three were widely endorsed as models for replication by important cultural, political, and media figures. Diaries and personal letters from college presidents, students, and others reveal the intensity with which campus-level actors were attached to the ideal of integration. Administrative reports, budgets, fundraising materials and detailed minutes from Board of Trustee meetings illustrate decision-making processes and practices in structuring racial contact on campus. Fundraising materials, including speeches, pamphlets and letters to donors show how the colleges depicted their mission to potential students, donors, and policymakers; an independently-constructed data set of over four hundred newspaper articles shows how these colleges were portrayed to readers across the United States. Berea, Howard, and Oberlin differed in racial composition, recruitment strategies, and black representation on faculty and administration. Despite variation on key factors thought to predict inter-racial cooperation, on-campus dynamics were insufficient to resist segregationist pressures from beyond the campus gates.

Chapter 7 chronicles the efforts of Berea’s leaders to construct Appalachians as a particular brand of poor whites, and without the stigma of the Confederacy attached to other Southern whites. By the mid-1880s, a new wave of benevolent agencies launched a new form of colleges designed for this newly categorized group— “mountain education.” The mountain education movement treated poor white Southerners as deserving of Northern philanthropic aid by arguing that class oppression could rival racial oppression. Here, competitive dynamics, as navigated by organizational leaders, produced not only particular types of education but also consecrated groups of people.

This chapter examines Weatherford’s close attention to the concerns of Appalachian poverty, education, and religion. His involvement in these issues grew out of his work with Berea College in Kentucky. Since the late 1910s he had been a member of its Board of Trustees, but upon retirement from Fisk in 1946, he turned his full effort toward Berea, sponsoring a play (Wilderness Road by the famed southern liberal playwright) to highlight the school’s history) as well as setting up accompanying conferences to “improve” mountain religious institutions. These programs also led him to guide a new survey of Appalachia in 1962 and to be a part of the War on Poverty movement at that time. Just as Weatherford’s belief that all persons were sacred had led him to a concern for blacks in the early 1900s, this same philosophy drove him to take up the plight of Appalachian residents. Still, his efforts, like those made for blacks during most of his life, stopped short of calling for major structural changes in the economic system of capitalism.

Roslea Johnson was a child of what historian Chad Berry referred to as the “northern exiles”, or Appalachians, who had to relocate to Northern industrial enters to look for employment opportunities during World War II. Her family's financial situation, when Johnson's father lost his job, led her to Berea College where she took classes under Perley Ayer—leader of the CSM. After which, Johnson began to attend CSM conferences as she learned about “mountain culture.” Johnson served as the student representative at the first AV meeting after Ayer and President Kennedy discussed the possibility for establishing a “Domestic Peace Corps.” One of the first projects of the new organization involved repairing schools in Kentucky which had only one or two rooms. Another goal of the organization was to recruit soldiers for the fundamental mission in advocating self-help in improving life conditions.

After a short tenure as a math teacher in McDowell County, North Carolina, Milton Ogle—born in Floyd County, Virginia, and graduated from Berea College in 1955—went back to Berea and administered the broom factory of the college. He found his job enjoyable as he was able to interact with people across the region. He was also able to appreciate how Berea College contributed to the life of the Southern mountains. He maintained this attitude as he joined the CSM in 1959 and the AVs in 1963. Ogle asserted that the fundamental goal of the CSM and the AVs was to show how people could participate in efforts that would affect their lives. In explaining the cause of poverty, the two most influential explanations involved colonialism and the culture of poverty. This chapter illustrates how Mill Creek, Kentucky, was chosen to be involved with the Ford Foundation and the CSM's supplementary academic efforts.