Berea College

after the biblical Berea. Although the school's first articles of incorporation were adopted in 1859, slavery supporters forced Fee and the teachers out of the area that year.
Fee spent the Civil War years raising funds for the school, trying to provide for his family in Cincinnati, Ohio, and working at Camp Nelson. He returned afterward to continue his work at Berea. He spent nearly 18 months working mostly at Camp Nelson, where he helped provide facilities for the freedmen and their families, as well as teaching and preaching. He helped get funds for barracks, a hospital, a school, and a church.
In 1866, Berea's first full year after the war, it had 187 students, 96 Black and 91 white. It began with preparatory classes to ready students for study at the college level. In 1869, the first college students were admitted, and the first bachelor's degrees were awarded in 1873. Almost all the South's private and state colleges were racially segregated. Berea was the main exception until a new state law in 1904 forced …