Michael Bailey, Associate Professor of Government and International Studies

When I first moved to Rome, I knew in a nebulous way that the Cherokee Trail of Tears was somehow connected to Georgia. But only recently have I begun to absorb the density of its connection to our collective backyard here at Berry College—to where I sit at this moment and type these words.   

You know the outlines of the story. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson pushed through Congress the “Indian Removal Act,” which authorized the federal government to pursue treaties with the “Five Civilized Tribes” for the purpose of prompting these nations to move from their land. A few Cherokee leaders, including Major Ridge, believed that removal was the only option available to save the Cherokee peoples from certain destruction, and so they signed such a treaty. Cherokees were rounded up by American soldiers, sometimes without the opportunity to gather personal belongings. They were imprisoned in makeshift removal camps (essentially internment camps). By 1839, around 15,000 Cherokees were rounded up and marched nearly a thousand miles to Oklahoma. Their journey was later described as the Trail of Tears. The toll of the march was devastating, both during and after, and thousands perished. 

Floyd County was an area of intense military activity in the removal. Fort Means was located roughly halfway between Berry College and Kingston, about ten miles away from Berry College. Letters suggest Fort Means briefly held nearly 500 Cherokee before they were marched northward. Camp Malone was also located in Floyd County.  It is thought to have held 70 prisoners. A National Park Service map places its location quite possibly on today’s Berry College property. These prisoners, along with others from the Cedar Town Encampment, were marched north along an established Cherokee north-south trail.  

Established Cherokee trail—let’s put that trail, and thus the march, into a perspective that all of us here at Berry College can appreciate. The trail these Cherokees followed later became the route for Highway 27, more commonly referred to in these parts as Martha Berry Boulevard.  

It is haunting to contemplate hundreds of Cherokee—families, with aged grandparents and babies—marching north on a path straddled by what today is Berry’s main campus and the President’s home.  

It is sobering to consider that Major Ridge’s home, “Chieftains Museum,” is located across the river from Martha Berry’s home, Oak Hill.  

It is painful to consider that Berry College’s most notable claim to fame, our thousands of acres in this beautiful corner of the world, is land the College holds on account of a grievously tragic national transgression.  

There is no remedying this wrong. It is one of those moral shames that, once concluded, can only be remembered, never remedied. And yet that does not mean we cannot acknowledge—meaningfully acknowledge—our debt. Nor does it mean we cannot make our remembrance more meaningful, more authentic, by attaching it to deeds.

So what I offer here for your consideration, as a member of the Berry College community, is the following proposal:   

I propose that Berry College establish an endowment that grants two scholarships a year to academically qualified descendants of the tribal nations that were evicted from their lands during this period. Preference, when possible, ought to go to a Cherokee descendent. The scholarship should amount to a full ride—tuition, room and board, and fees. In a four-year cycle, eight students would be beneficiaries of this scholarship. 

This proposal is expensive. Assuming that the cost would be roughly 50,000 dollars a year per student, this scholarship would entail a four hundred thousand dollar a year commitment. Paying this through interest drawn on the fund’s principal would entail an investment of many millions of dollars, possibly twenty million dollars.  

It is also the case that the Berry College endowment presently is roughly 800 million dollars, a fair portion of it derived from land—land available ultimately on account of the eviction of an innocent people.  

I do not conceive this proposal as a form of reparation. The misdeeds of 1838-1839 were too monstrous, too enormous in magnitude, too removed in time, to flatter ourselves that any number of scholarships—or even selling the college and donating the proceeds to the Cherokee peoples—could remotely rebalance the scales of justice. Moreover the descendants of the Cherokee Nation do not view themselves as broken victims but as strong survivors who have proudly overcome every imaginable adversity.  

I make this proposal rather because I believe it is good for Berry College. Tennis courts and retirement villages are terrific, but they should not define us, no matter how alluring their branding potential. The proposal I advance strengthens our Berry College identity because it emerges from our belief in the liberal arts, in the belief that the “mystic chords of memory” link us to time and place and lead us along the path to self-understanding. Adopting this proposal will help us as a community to bear empathetic witness to a people whose own anguish made possible our beloved college.  

There are plenty of reasons not to adopt this proposal. Take your pick. Obviously money. Logistics is another. And aren’t we indebted to other wronged peoples as well?  Significant objections, all. But there is always a ready supply of reasons not to do the right thing.

History, taken seriously, is neither abstract nor irrelevant. As Faulkner reminds us, it is not even past. Let’s acknowledge our history, and therefore who we are by adopting this manageable but meaningful gesture.