Gretchen Dykstra is an author who has written about everything from the two years she spent living in Wuhan, China before the COVID-19 pandemic, to a book examining the songs that came from the lumberjack era in the 1800s. Her latest work, though, is titled "Lessons from the Foothills: Berea College and its unique role in America."
LPM News' Bill Burton spoke to Dykstra about her newest work.
Bill Burton: Gretchen, welcome.
Gretchen Dykstra: Oh, thank you for having me, Bill.
BB: So what is it that makes Berea so unique in higher education?
GD: Well, I think there lots of ways that we could unpack that, but certainly its history and its founding in a slave state 10 years before the Civil War makes it unique. But I think that the fact that it's never lost that commitment to equal opportunity, co-education, and interracial Education is what is in fact in this day and age, unique and a lesson to be learned.
BB: In the book, you write about John Greg Fee. What was his role in the creation of Berea?
GD: Oh well, he was the founder and he is the reason why all the students know who John Fee is. The college is very insistent that people know that they are standing on the shoulders of a real incredibly brave and courageous man. He was the son of a slave owner in northeastern Kentucky, had, I think, 13 slaves, and John, the son, went to Miami of Ohio, and then he went to divinity school in Cincinnati, where two of his classmates challenged him about being the son of a slave owner, and he became an abolitionist. And he returned to Kentucky, became an itinerant Presbyterian minister, going around from church to church trying to convince those ministers to exclude slave owners from the churches. It's one thing for the Presbyterian Church to condemn slavery, but he said it's something else for individuals to own slaves. He eventually left the Presbyterian Church, but never his faith, and in 1855, thanks to Cassius Clay, the famous son of Kentucky, who gave him 10 acres of land on a gorgeous ridge that overlooks the foothills of the Appalachians. John Fee started the first school in the South that was co-educational for both men and women, black and white, and that is Berea and still exists today.
BB: You do have a chapter devoted to Fee, but your book really focuses on the eight great commitments that the college has, and one of which is, quote, "Provide an educational opportunity for students of all races primarily from Appalachia who have great promise and limited economic resources." What does that meant for those who have attended Berea and just the region at large?
GD: Well, I think what it means is that 98% of all the students at Berea are low income. Last year, the average income for the families was $27,000. They all get free tuition. It is multiracial, although 40% of the students do come from Central Appalachia and Kentucky, but Berea focuses on the territory south of Albany all the way to Birmingham. 25% or 30% of the students come from elsewhere in the United States, also low income, and 5 to 7% are international students from 70 different countries.
In fact, Bill, one of the stories that I love to tell is back in the 60s, one of the presidents of Berea was showing a Pakistani woman around the college. She was dressed in her sari, and at a distance she saw a bald-headed man in saffron robes, and she turned to the president and said, 'Who's that?' And he said, 'Oh, that's a man from Cambodia. He's head of Buddhist education in Cambodia.' And the woman turned to him and said, 'Oh, it is true, then everybody eventually does end up at Berea.' I love that.
BB: The author is Gretchen Dykstra. The book is titled, "Lessons from the Foothills, Berea College and its unique Role in America." Gretchen, it was a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much for your time.
GD: Thank you, Bill.
Dykstra will speak about her book at the Filson Historical Society Tuesday night at 6.