COMING OCTOBER 2024
FROM UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

Lessons from the Foothills: Berea College and its Unique Role in America

In 1859, a mob of sixty-five prominent armed men rode into Berea, Kentucky, and forced the closure of its integrated one-room schoolhouse. Founded by Kentucky-born abolitionist John Gregg Fee, the school was open to anyone, regardless of their race or gender—a notion that horrified white supremacists. The mob evicted thirty-six community members, including Fee’s family, but Fee and the others returned to Berea in 1864 and reestablished the institution, still committed to educating Appalachia’s most vulnerable populations.

In Lessons from the Foothills, Gretchen Dykstra profiles modern Berea College with its rich and beloved history. This book is the first to focus on contemporary Berea and its eight Great Commitments—the principles and practices that provide clear aspirations for the college and its community. Each chapter functions as a deep dive into the history, practice, and significance of one Great Commitment, from providing opportunity for the most marginalized, to the college’s high academic standards and its commitment to environmental sustainability. The college has pledged to “provide an educational opportunity for students of all races, primarily from Appalachia, who have great promise and limited economic resources.” To achieve this goal, the college eliminated tuition in 1892 and it also provides jobs for students to assist with living expenses. 

Drawn from interviews with a range of members of the Berea community, including alumni, students, faculty, and staff, Lessons from the Foothills is an engaging portrait of a unique and historic institution and its enduring commitment to nurture and support academic excellence and service. 

“Berea College provides a fine education, tuition-free, to a richly diverse student body, made up entirely of low-income students. To read how Berea came about, and how well and in how many ways it continues to serve, is to see that a kinder, fairer, more responsible society is not as unreachable as it seems. If society paid heed and turned its resources in the directions Berea has taken, think what we might accomplish. A richly reported, wonderfully written paean to a great American institution.”

—GENEVA OVERHOLSER
Former editor of the Des Moines Register, columnist at the New York Times and Washington Post, and former director of USC Annenberg School of Journalism