Boone Tavern

Kentucky · United States · Hotel

The basement rooms are said to have hidden people escaping slavery. A photograph taken here shows a frightened Black boy of about ten.

Boone Tavern stands at Berea College in Kentucky, and the story attached to it is that its basement rooms were used to hide people escaping slavery.

One correction has to be made. Boone Tavern was built in 1909, decades after emancipation, so the building itself cannot have been part of the Underground Railroad.

What is true is bigger. Berea was founded in 1855 by abolitionists as the first college in the American south to educate Black and white students together, on equal terms, in a slave state. It was driven out by armed mobs before the war and reopened after it. In 1904 Kentucky passed a law specifically to force Berea to segregate, and the college fought it to the Supreme Court and lost.

Voices are heard in the building, and a photograph taken there shows a Black boy of about ten, frightened.

The hotel is run by the college and takes guests.

FAQ

Where is Boone Tavern located?

Boone Tavern is in Kentucky, United States.

Image: IMCBerea College / CC BY 2.0 — Wikimedia Commons