ABSTRACT
Julia Frances Allen, dean of women at Berea College, 1935-1959, faithfully sent an annual Christmas letter to her many colleagues, friends, and former students. Historians of southern liberalism have yet to evaluate and to appreciate the contributions of Berea College and of its faculty to the struggle for social and racial equality in the South. Julia Allen numbered among those persons and Berea College numbered among those exceptional institutions of higher education in the South who, in the critical period between the election of FDR and the Brown decision, eschewed parlor palaver for principled protest on behalf of racial equality. Political and social controversy plagued Berea College throughout its first century. For Allen and other white liberal activists, both on the Berea campus and throughout the South, the 1950s represented a more problematic decade. Constance Willard Williams, Berea 1956, readily acknowledged Julia Allen's central role in her college life, in her development as an autonomous individual.
