Desegregation of Centre College

In response to Berea College's policy of admitting African-American students, in 1904 the Kentucky legislature passed the Day Law. Proposed by state representative Carl Day, the law prohibited any person, group of people, or corporation from the teaching of black and white students in the same school. After Berea College's challenge to the law failed before the Kentucky Supreme Court, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state, although Justice John Harlan, a Centre College graduate, vigorously dissented, writing that "The capacity to impart instruction to others is given by the Almighty for beneficent purposes and its use may not be forbidden or interfered with by Government ...." The result of the Supreme Court ruling was to allow Kentucky to prohibit integrated schooling in private institutions, as well as in public schools until 1954 when Brown v. Board of Education case struck down segregation laws.

Although Centre never had a policy that expressly denied African-American students admittance, for the first half of the twentieth-century it operated under the restrictions of the Day Law. However, beginning in the late 1940's the issue began to play an increasingly important, and controversial, role.

In 1948 Centre received applications from two Nigerian students attending Kentucky State College. The school asked Kentucky's Attorney General for an opinion on the application of the Day Law in this situation. The response was very clear: "... Centre College, being a school organized and operating under the laws of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and being subject to Kentucky's laws, cannot be permitted to accept negro or colored students as long as white students attend the school. There is no difference between a privately owned school and a publically owned school as far as the application of the law is concerned."

The Day Law was amended March 21, 1950, permitting schools above the high school level to voluntarily desegregate if they so wished. On May 12, 1950, President Walter Groves wrote a confidential memorandum to the Board of Trustees asking that they give consideration to enrolling African American students. He noted it was a question that sooner or later must be answered by the college. In fact, the school had received an application from an African American to attend summer school in 1950 (the application would be turned down). In the memorandum Groves stated his position as being in favor of desegregation, but also his belief that any change in current policy would require support by a decisive majority of Centre's trustees, faculty, and the congregations of Kentucky's Presbyterian churches. The previous year a Centre faculty member had polled the faculty on their views of admitting "Negroes or other widely divergent races" to Centre. Of the 26 faculty members replying to the questionnare, fifteen were in favor of accepting African American students, seven opposed, and four felt the time was not yet right. Groves clearly lacked his "decisive" majority at least of the faculty.