[1] Like the related Plessy v. Ferguson case,[2] it was also marked by a strongly worded dissent by John Marshall Harlan.

It was founded in 1855 as a coeducational and desegregated school, admitting both black and white students and treating them without discrimination.

Since at the time Berea was the only such integrated school in Kentucky (and the only such college in the South), it was clearly the target of this law.

[1] Justice Harlan vigorously dissented, arguing that the formal title of the law, "An Act to Prohibit White and Colored Persons from Attending the Same School," and the nature of its provisions made clear that no such distinction between individual and corporate restriction existed in the intentions of the legislators, and that the separate consideration of those aspects of the law was not appropriate.

Kentucky eventually amended the Day Law in 1950 to allow voluntary integration, shortly prior to the Brown v. Board of Education case which struck down racial segregation.