By Beth Curlin

Dr. Jackie (Grisby) Burnside, '74 has researched Berea's Black history since the early 1970's.

Two brick gateposts, one with the initials "AJB" carved in the center and a broken date on the other, stand mutely on a Farristown road north of Berea. The driveway the mark leads to steps of a house no longer there, yards gone back to pasture, and only memories of the people who have long since left, the family of A.J. Baxter, a Berea student in 1893. His descendants, however, still live right across the road.

The gateposts are one site on a printed tour map of Berea, Farristown, Middletown and Bobtown, called Kentcucky's African American Heritage--Historic Black Berea: An Interracial Community 1866-1900's. This guide highlights remnants of the original Black settlers, who moved to Berea to be part of the radical racially integrate, non-sectarian community experiment in brotherhood that John G. Fee started 146 years ago. Descendants of some of the original residents still live in Berea and communities surrounding it, on land made available to their ancestors through Fee's efforts. Farristown, part of the histroric "Black Valley" described in 1866 by AMA minister and Berea teacher John A. R. Rogers was settled because hundreds of freedmen, walking or in rickety carts, saw Berea as their "land of promise."

The tour map was produced by an interracial committee of local residents with the help of students in Dr. Jackie Burnside's sociology class, "Studying Checkerboard City: Applying Historic Cultural Anthropology to an Interracial Community," and was based on Burnside's research and doctoral dissertation on the interracial history of Berea. The pamphlet chronicle the high points of Berea's African American heritage, provides a map to Black communities, a timeline of historical events, and interweaves old and present day photographs of sites with portraits of original Africann American settlers. It includes depictions of early students, cemeteries, and both early integrated classes and later segregated ones. The students and Burnside also created a Web site that fully details the project, including a photo gallery and transcripts of interviews.

"I learned a lot about Berea that changed my attitude about it. There's a whole lot more here than just the College," Xavier McKinzie, '03, from Atlanta, Ga., says. McKinzie interviewed A. J. Baxter's grandson, Paul Dunson. "The history behind Berea is very interesting and it has carried into today. Blacks still own some land and Whites and Blacks do business. They were forcedd at one time, now they want to! Everyone should know what went on in Berea and teh efforts by the whole town to integrate while everyone around them didn't want it to happen," he continues. It is a history of which some Bereans and Berea students are still not aware.

"The map's purpose is to educate the public about the contribution, achievements and heritage of African Americans in this brave interracial community in a former slave state," Burnside explains. She began research on Berea's Black History in the Berea College Archives as a student here in the early '70's. She and her husband Virgil, now assistant to the Vice President of Labor and Student Life, are both Berea alums who met at Berea and were involved in civil rights activities while they attended school here. Jackie, originally from Alabama, had been attracted to the Berea community because of the harmonious atitude she found here between Blacks and Whites.

Dr. Burnside and the sociology class that completed the research and developed the map and website on interracial Berea. Students participating were: Faith Calhoun, '03, Freda Johnson, '03, katharine McGrath, '03, Xavier McKinzie, '03, Eric Morton, '00, Brandi nwagbara, '01, Akili Ujima, '01, and Melissa VanWinkle, '03.

When I came here, I just saw a predominantly White campus, and that seemed normal," she jokes. But as she learned the history of Berea, and that John G. Fee's original idea had been equal numbers of Blacks and Whites, she and other students felt Berea should be closer to its roots. They asked for a realignment of the curriculum and admissions policies to encourage the return of more African Americans. Fee's original plan for the town of Bere had been to have a Black family live next door to a White family (thus the nickname "Checkerboard City"), and to have an equal number of Blacks and Whites attending school. The 1900 census, Burnside adds, shows an equal or higher percentage of Blacks who were landowners.

"Most of the students at that time weren't aware of Berea's history," Burnside says of her peers. The effects of the Day Law of 1904, and a stronger emphasis on Appalachian students rather than African Americans during the administration of President William Goodell Frost diminished the number of Black students, and many of their families who lived in Berea. Whole families moved elsewhere so that children could attend schools, such as Lincoln Institute and Kentucky State, or others in West Virginia or Ohio. But many kept their family homes here and returned to Berea fter the Day Law ended. When Plessy vs. Ferguson became law in 1896, the separate but equal doctrine took hold. By the late 1960's and early 1970's, according to Burnside, Berea was again on the bumpy road to re-integration of Blacks.

"It was clear that changes in the privileged White attitude needed to be made" she says."White students needed to be re-educated from their false sense of superiority and Black students needed to be re-educated out of their false feeling of inferiority."

After Burnside finished her dissertation at Yale, she came back to Berea to be asociate professor of sociology. She had made many friends in the Berea community as a student, and continued to learn local Black history. In 1999 at a Registration Orientation Weekend (ROW0, she was discussing with a student's mother the lack of written or oral documentation of Berea's rich history. Thus was born the short-term class idea, and nine students began the process of interviewing and taping local residents who were descendants of original African American settlers. The student's mother, Janet White Sikes, a research librarian in Atlanta, became a consultant for the project.

Other interested professors, including Andrew Baskin, '73, and Richard Sears, who have published research about Berea's early history, helped form a committee while Burnside wrote funding proposals for the Historic Black Berea project. Baskin, vice-chair of the Kentucky African-American Heritage Commission, also served as the project's liaison for the Commission's funds. Additional grants were provided by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Berea College's faculty development program.

When the class interviewed local descendants, the youngest resident was "young middle age" and the rest were in their seventies, eighties, and nineties. Burnside noted a "sad resignation" about the College's segregation due to the Day Law among intereviewees.

Mr. Mitchell Ballad is grandson of Henry Ballard, the first black man to buy property in Berea. His parents John and Sally Mitchell Ballard both attended bere. He was intereviewed by Brandi Nwagbara, '01.

"One lady in her eighties remembered her mother finally moved to Richmond, after trying to hold on to the hope that the law might change and get better. Finally she became dissatisfied. There was also a wonderment that people could be so mean spirited and let that stand for so long," Burnside recalls. "Ther people wer interviewed were the missing generation who would have been educated atBerea, but had t omove away. some of their grandparents had been aboe to attend Berea, and in some cases, their parents had. They still have a real fondness and love for the College and how vital it has been in making the quality of life here better."

Faith Calhoun, "03, a sociology major from Lebanon, Ky., interviewed 95-year old Jeanette Farris. Calhoun said the residents were "passionate" about keeping their hisory alive and getting recognition fro graveyards where relatives are buried."I didn't know anything about Berea's Checkerboard City. It makes me feel good to know that Berea tried to have people livign together interraciall," Calhoun says. "That's something to be pround of, that they tried to do a lot in the community,"

Burnside said that the tide had come in and gone out for African Americans in Berea, but that, even throught it is small, the tide is comeing back again.There is a slight increase in the African American po;pulation as more students graduate and are able to find jobs in the area. Other African Americans are moving here to work in the new indurstries locating arond Berea. Her personal goal is to increase the civic involvement of African Americans in the locals community. She was recently appointed to the Berea Independent School District Board, while Virrgil is an elected member of the Berea City Council. Their daughter Rachel attends Berea Community School.

"This map will make AFrican American history more accessible," Burnside said, " and hopefully lead to a more comprehensive history that will encourage African Americans that Berea is a good place to live--a community working toward racial harmony and brotherhood."

The web address for the project is www. berea. edu/SOC/Burnside/EarlyBlackBerea/bereahistory.html

Kentucky's African American Heritage is a companion to the early Black Berea hisory website.