Berea enables young people of color to measure themselves by the standard of the race which has had greatest opportunities in the past, and teaches white young people to know the merits and respect the worth of colored students.
The school, like Hampton, is earnestly Christian, and managed by a board of trustees representing all the leading Christian bodies, no one of which has a controlling influence. It has buildings and equipments valued at above $150,000, including a library of over 15,000 volumes, and was attended in 1898 by 674 students, 169 of whom were colored. Alone among Southern schools it has had superior advantages sufficient to draw a considerable number of white students from the North.
The institution includes Collegiate, Normal, and Industrial Departments, and is making decided progress under the presidency of Wm. Goodell Frost, Ph. D., formerly of Oberlin College, who is a grandson of Wm. Goodell, the great anti-slavery editor. Associated with him are Geo. T. Fairchild, LL. D., late President of the State Agricultural College of Kansas, Mrs. General Putnam, and about thirty other instructors.
Receiving no aid from any State or society, Berea is mainly dependent upon individual gifts. Remittances should be made to the treasurer, and bequests to the trustees, of Berea College, Berea, Madison Co., Kentucky.
This college is now doing much good for the so-called "mountain whites" as well as for colored people.
Philadelphia is known for her facilities for education. Few American cities are better equipped with schools, public and private--free schools and those in which tuition fees are demanded--schools devoted to languages, schools devoted to art. In short, everything that one might desire as a means for obtaining an education in any known branch is provided for the student, and the road to knowledge is made about as easy as it can possibly be made.
But of all the schools provided for the instruction of children, youths and adults, none is of greater importance, perhaps, than that known as the "_Institute for Colored Youth_." Strange to say, it had its origin in the kindly forethought of one who had once been a slave-holder. In the year 1832 Richard Humphreys, a native of the West Indies, but at that time a citizen of Philadelphia, died, leaving $10,000 to found an institution, "having," as he worded it, "for its object the benevolent design of instructing the descendants of the African race in school-learning, in the various branches of the mechanic arts and trades, and in agriculture, in order to prepare, fit and qualify them to act as teachers."