Martha Berry and the Berry Schools

BA, History, Brevard College, 2000

Educat.D., Auburn University, 1966

PhD, University of Tennessee Knoxville, 1994.
The history of the Berry Schools parallels important social and educational changes in the South throughout the twentieth century. In its first forty years, the school embraced a philosophy similar to that of the Southern Education Movement, whose leaders advocated practical mechanical and agricultural train in g as a means to uplift the South. Also, the school strove to inculcate its rural students with the paternalistic, planter-class values of its founder, Martha Berry. The school did this by developing a work program which trained students in practical matters such as farming, animal husbandry, construction, and carpentry. The student work program also enabled Berry, a boarding school, to keep its operating expenses at a minimum. With the onset of the Depression and the designation of the South as the "number one" problem facing America, leaders at the Berry Schools found themselves struggling against a tide of change. Radical leftists, such as Don West, charged Berry exploited its students for their labor. Berry students began to balk at the restrictive social life policies. With Martha Berry’ s death in 1942, school officials found themselves facing enormous pressures both within and outside Berry.

PhD, Geography, University of Cambridge, 2017
"Both the Berry Schools and Rabun Gap illustrate the discourse of the Southern educational awakening as it applied to Poor Whites. These were no mere schools but centres of racial reclamation. After graduation the students were expected to stay in the region and convert their friends and neighbors."
The efforts of various governments, organizations and experts to discipline, control and uplift the group necessarily disadvantaged other races. These controls, such as color bars and Jim Crow laws, had an enormous effect on the countries where the Poor Whites were seen as a problem. The results can still be seen in the profoundly unequal contemporary racial landscape, and which is given expression by protest groups such as Black Lives Matter. Yet the efforts to manage the Poor Whites have thus far been examined on a national basis — as a problem of the United States, or of South Africa, to name just the most significant locales and regimes. This dissertation attempts to expand our understanding of the geography of the Poor Whites by arguing that the ‘Poor White Problem’ was a transnational concern rooted in racial interests that transcended national concerns. The racial solidarity displayed by so-called ‘white men’s countries’ was also extended to the Poor Whites. Efforts to control and discipline the population were thus in service of the white race as a whole, and ignored national interests and national borders. The transnational management of the Poor Whites was done through a network of transnational organizations such as the League of Nations and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as the careering experts they employed. The dissertation argues that these attempts constituted a transnational ‘governmentality’ according to which these organizations and their experts attempted to discipline a Poor White population that they viewed as transnational in order to uphold white prestige and tacitly maintain both global and local racial systems. This dissertation examines some of the ways in which Poor Whites were disciplined and racially rehabilitated. It examines health and sanitation, education and training, housing standards and the management of urban space, and finally photographic representation.

MA, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1984.

PhD, Education, Georgia State University, 2009.
Women’s clubs in Georgia provide a lens for exploring how women were able to influence educational developments during the Progressive Era. Archival data show that the Georgia Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Atlanta Woman’s Club, and the Athens Woman’s Club played in important role in educational advancements in Georgia during the Progressive Era. Archival and primary source materials were used to support an analysis of gender, social class, and geographic differences on women’s roles in educational changes. This study analyzes how women were able to affect education in Georgia at a time when men dominated educational decision-making.

PhD, Education, Columbia University, 1960
William T. Hollingsworth was Dean of Students at Berry College 1957-1960

PhD, Theology, Boston University, 1950
The adequacy of any program of education depends upon the results produced. This dissertation has been an attempt to discover specific evidences in the program of education at the Berry Schools which would be valuable to those who are guiding the religious growth of Southern Highland youth. In order to do this certain criteria have been established, that there might be a basis for a comparison with this program. Several educational approaches could have been made and the conclusions of the accompanying evaluation would have corresponded to the particular approach. The trend of thought of leading religious educators such as William Clayton Bower, George A. Coe, Paul H. Vieth, Ernest J. Chave, and Roy A. Burkhart has been followed in setting up the criteria for this comparison. It is referred to as the creative approach.
Thomas Isbell received a BA from Berry College in 1936.

Educat.D., University of Georgia, 1984
This is a study of on-campus student work programs at Alice Lloyd College, Pippa Passes, Kentucky; Berea College, Berea, Kentucky; Berry College, Mt. Berry, Georgia; Blackburn College, Carlinville, Illinois; Oakwood College, Huntsville, Alabama; The School of the Ozarks, Point Lookout, Missouri; and Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, North Carolina. The criteria for inclusion in the study included: (1) an educational purpose for the work program, (2) at least 50% of the students enrolled in the institution working in the program, and (3) having the program in operation for more than one-half of the life of the institution. The study examines the general characteristics and the history of each institution, the operation of each student work program, students' opinions about the program, administrators' comments about the program, and the gains of students and the institution from the program.