Camp Nelson, Kentucky, was designed in 1863 as a military supply depot for the Union Army. Later it became one of the country's most important recruiting stations and training camps for black soldiers and Kentucky's chief center for issuing emancipation papers to former slaves. Richard D. Sears tells the story of the rise and fall of the camp through the shifting perspective of a changing cast of characters -- teachers, civilians, missionaries such as the Reverend John G. Fee, and fleeing slaves and enlisted blacks who describe their pitiless treatment at the hands of slave owners and...

A major social and educational experiment in race relations was conducted in Berea, Kentucky, from 1866 to 1904. During those years Berea contained a community, school, and church which were all fully integrated: white people, mostly from the Kentucky Appalachian region, and black people, former slaves and their children, from the Blue Grass country, lived, worked, and studied together in an atmosphere designed to foster social equality. Sears demonstrates that integration and social equality among the races are not unrealizable ideals; at Berea in the second half of the 19th century these...