Carl Day

Day claimed to have been motivated by a November 1903 trip to Berea, Kentucky^[10] — home of Berea College, which was Kentucky's only racially integrated educational institution^[11] — where he witnessed an interracial embrace between two female students.^[12][13][14]

Historian T. R. C. Hutton has noted that, although "various commentators [have] blamed" the Day law on "Carl Day's egregious personal racism or his personal vendetta towards Berea College," it may also — or instead — have been a ploy meant to increase the influence of Day's extended family in Breathitt County: "more a cynical political maneuver than a sincere attack on integration." Hutton has also pointed out that Day's only other bill was one which allowed timberland owners to deny right of way to adjoining lands, thereby making it impossible for smaller landowners to reach markets or bodies of water — a "final nail in the coffin for the (...) free-ranging mountain economy".^[15]

In March 1904, Day began experiencing symptoms of "inflammatory rheumatism" and was hospitalized. He died of pneumonia on April 12, 1904. His funeral was conducted by the Elks Lodge and Knights of Pythias, after which he was interred in his family's cemetery in Breathitt County.^[2]